Days Gone (PS5) - An overlooked classic?

 

Run, run, as if you had a choice...

I don't know why Days Gone seems to have riled so many reviewers up, when it was originally released for the PS4 all those years ago. Other than making my PS5 sound like a Harrier Jump Jet while it was installing, I think this is probably one of the best games to demonstrate how narrow the technology gap is between PS4 and PS5. 

Bend Studios' excellent tactical adventure-shooter might start off with some fairly cheesy "End of the World" type shenanigans and the storyline has (quite rightly) been called cliched and stereotypical, but like any other Zombie-thon, it wears its influences on its raggedy denim biker sleeves, and does a lot of things that other games have struggled to emulate successfully. 

You start off as Deacon St John, a 'good guy' turned bad in a world ripped apart by the rotting teeth and gnarled nails of the undead. The whys and wherefores of how the plague began aren't really that important, but what is important is that you start off relatively well kitted out with a nice hefty drifter bike, and a ton of weaponry which you very quickly lose. 

The game opens as Deac's better half is injured, and airlifted onto a chopper never to be seen again. This changes Deac's whole point of view on life, leaving him bitter and angry, and ready to mince any zombies that get in his way. 

The game guides you through a hard reset, leaving you to team up with your biker buddy Boozer to try and scratch out a living in "The Shit" as the wreck of North America is lovingly referred to as the game opens. 

Deac's buddy ends up being attacked by Rippers, pseudo-religious nutbags who love nothing better than to torture hapless passers by. After having his arm torched with a blowtorch (owch), Boozer is pretty much out of the frame for the early part of the game, leaving Deac to begin the long struggle of getting a salvaged crapheap of a motorbike back up to scratch in order to escape their environs to (hopefully) a better life elsewhere. 

Scattered throughout the games map, Deac will find various encampments where more resourceful types have set themselves up as feudal lords with the intention of eking out a living amongst the ruins of civilisation. These camps soon come in handy as a source of jobs and bounties, as well as having places for Deacon to upgrade his weapons, bike and skills. Though not all the camp leaders are to be trusted, and in fact some of them are downright devious, willing to do almost anything to maintain their grip on power. 

BUNDLE!

The game's real stars though are the undead themselves. Most of them wander around fairly aimlessly, twitchy little buggers who react just as Zombies should to any human contact. They're nasty unpredictable buggers but they are at their very worst when they begin to mass, and turn into the game's jaw-droppingly-scary hordes (see the image above for a flavour of what it looks like when the game engine ramps up the sheer number of enemies you end up fighting). 

As you get used to the slightly cumbersome controls (there are so many control choices that drove me crackers at first, but you do quickly learn to cope), and you start to ramp up your skills and weapons, you'll get crazy ideas about taking on these hordes - and you will very quickly get your arse handed to you (or eaten, eep) as the sheer weight of numbers takes its toll. But later on in the game you'll start to understand the tactics, and that zombies are fairly uninterested once you put some distance between them and yourself (and they are, just like Max Brooks described, absolutely bloody useless at climbing or even getting through a simple door!)

There's something in this game that many open-world games don't have, and it's that sense that you can play the game in many different ways. Though most missions are fairly similar (go here, kill that dude or go here, pick this up or fix this thing) there are some missions where you need to really think about your skills and equipment, and how you're going to achieve the seemingly impossible. 

On the PS5, this game is a real looker, and whether or not it was intentional that the PS4 version runs without dropping a frame at a very silky smooth framerate with no tearing, and characters that really do look as good as those screenshots, it is one of the most attractive open world games out there - and it's a great shame that Sony and Bend had such a massive falling out over the alleged poor sales performance of the game. 

It's available for a shade over a tenner on the PS store at the moment, and it's still worth every penny so if you're in the market for a really great open world shooter chock full of groaning zombies, you really ought to pick up a copy of this (and lament the fact that it never turned into a franchise once you reach the end of the game and realise it so easily could have).