Days Gone

First impressions:

Need to get this out of the way - the UI design is near identical to Mafia III so I looked it up and it turns out it's the same designers. :cool:

Graphics are stunning for base PS4 and it runs very well. Despite what I heard about the performance there have been no crashes or bugs but then I'm very early in. Only just cleared the first nero checkpoint so we shall see. The dialogue audio is a bit too low in the mix an optional conversations are hard to make out. Would have thought they'd tweak that by now.

Gameplay kind of reminds me of Far Cry. Stealth is serviceable, I like that footsteps and weather actually matter. Open combat though, not so much. Shooting is clunky when having to aim so you can bet I got the 'focus' skill as soon as I could. Freakers do a bit too much damage for normal difficulty, even the newts meanwhile my inventory is constantly maxed out despite making a lot of use of it.

I can already tell the stamina bar and the bike management system is going to annoy me. The bike is a bit all over the place and it does not help that bike riding in Cyberpunk 2077 feels really good. I hope upgrading it really makes a world of difference. I've also decided to prioritise stamina over health. Is that a good idea?

It's not as scary as The Last of Us Part II, thank goodness, however, as this is an open world I do hope to see a reasonable amount of NPCs. The desolate environments are tolerable in Naughty Dog games because they're linear. This is a post apocalyptic survival game but an open world still needs to feel alive even if most people in it are, eh, not.

Speaking of people, the lead character isn't as bad as people made out so far? So far he's loyal, keeps his word and risks his life for the people he cares about...he mumbles to himself unnecessarily from time to time but that's it. Also, the weird fade to black before cut scenes is really jarring especially because games like TLOU and GOW do in-game to cut scene transitioning so seamlessly.

Lastly, how does the activating of story lines work? Does the game choose which ones for you? I'm seeing several story lines under one category with their percentages but it's only allowing one of them to be active, the rest seem to have no option to select. The other category is the one about the freakers' nest which I'm not going to do yet as I've heard that's end game stuff.

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Yupp, Bike upgrade makes a huge difference, speed, handling and durability get a much needed boost and it becomes a dream to drive. Not as fluid as the bikes in Cyberpunk mind but they are from the future Definitely prioritise stamina over health at the NERO stations. Nothing worse than running from freakers and running out of stamina.

I'm not sure what you mean by "fluidity" as that's quite vague. When I say Cyberpunk bikes handle better I mean turning a corner doesn't spin out all over the place like it does in Days Gone. I don't think we can apply the logic of "Cyberpunk bikes are from the future" seeing as CDPR clearly did not apply that logic to their game. The bikes in Cyberpunk feel more or less the same as non futuristic open world games like GTA or Watch Dogs, that's why the one in Days Gone feels off.

As for the Freakers nests, do absolutely ASAP. When Deacon mutters to himself about nests, make it a priority to find all in that area and burn them out. They stop fast travel through the area they're in and you'll get to a point when you've been down a certain road umpteen times and have the fuel to fast travel but can't because nests are active. Always save molotovs for nests. If you don't have any, look for the ingredients in that area or just head off and make a mental note to save molotovs for next time you are there. Then, throw a molotov into one and leg it to the next, no need to fight what comes out. Just run and throw to all of them and back on your bike to get out of there. Map will tell you how many in that area but you'll have to run around a bit to get their location to show on map.

OK, cheers for the tip. I did this and the first time I died because when I went to heal it selected binoculars lol. Not the first time it's done that either but could be my controller as it's knackered. Second time was a success.

With the hordes at the nero checkpoints, I'm assuming it is entirely possible to avoid alerting them if you break all the speakers beforehand? They won't just magically know where you are if you do this?


Put a few hours in today and I conclude that the structure of the story lines is a mess. Sorry. I'm puzzled as to why they've chosen to present it this way. It almost feels like it's trying to create an illusion of multiple quest lines when the truth is there is only one seeing as you cannot progress as much as you want to in any single quest line until you've done a story mission in another. You can't just bang out the Leon quest line, for instance.

Also, some points about stealth:
I encountered my first bug where an enemy just spawned in front of me alerting the whole camp. I survived but what a waste of ammo. I hope this is not a common occurrence. I'm also not sure why when an enemy is looking for you you can't do a silent takedown? If I get the drop on an enemy while he's searching for me it should be an instant kill. Why do I have to wait for them to stop searching when their backs are clearly turned and they have no idea I'm behind them? Is this upgradeable?

Also, "I don't kill women unless I have to."
lol oh F off please. :rolleyes:

gimli2112 wrote: »

yeah you should always follow the powerlines from the generator and disable any speakers beforehand. Zombie survival 101.

Ammo was never a problem. Early on upgrade melee weapons so you can mend them with scrap, which is pretty plentiful. It's more fun shooting stuff but melee will get you a long way too.

Stealth on the whole works well but if it goes wrong you can usually handle it. Ammo is quite plentiful, cop cars, baddie camps there's some always lying about and you can always buy it in a pinch. You can kill stealthily using supressors or the cross bow.You can do stelath kills, it's how I killed a lot of hoarde stragglers without alerting the others.

I was referring to CQC, not ranged. I prefer CQC just in case I miss and my point was that it does not allow you to do CQC if the enemy is searching for you even when they have no idea where you are like most stealth games. I mean fair enough you can use silent ranged weapons in that situation but I'd rather have the choice not to. Regarding the ammo, it was more the fact that I was alerted due to a bug when I would have preferred to have kept the ammo I had rather than have to waste time looting the camp for more.


Think I'm gonna put this down for a while. I usually have way more patience with games like these before deciding to take a break or just dropping it but there's too many irritating things. I can't get over how weird the quest structure is and I'm already sick of babysitting my bike with fuel, especially when there are other games that do this so much better like Mad Max. Also, I just cleared out a nest but the nests were so far spread out and nowhere near where the map marker said it was that I was honestly angry that the game wasted my time like that.

I'm interested to see where the story goes but honestly I don't have the patience to get through the moment to moment gameplay which just isn't fun. In fact, it's kind of boring, and dated too - there was a tailing mission where you had to eavesdrop on a conversation while not getting caught. Assassin's Creed was doing that back in 2012/13.
Too many exciting games in my backlog, I just don't have time for this right now but glad others managed to get some enjoyment out of it.