played Days Gone and were a little disappointed

News from the past

In the world of Days Gone, a zombie invasion has occurred. Mother Biker Deacon has managed to survive, even if he did not succeed without losses: the hero no longer has a wife. For the past two years, he has been riding with motorbikes in Oregon, and with his friend Bukhara (apparently, the biker's taste, but we are not sure) is trying to survive in new realities. A measured goal replaces a measured life, which pushes Dick to new challenges: he learns that a spouse can be alive. Clinging to weak arguments, the hero begins to search for the missing woman.

Days Gone is all at once: stealth, action, a little detective in the form of looking for clues in The Witcher 3, and also an attempt to live an open world with a simulation. And the overall problem of the game is that none of these aspects really works as intended by the creators.

The very open world is surprisingly boring. When traveling from one point to another, almost nothing happens to us. Maximum – we face an ambush or opponents wandering on the road, or we will meet the survivor that we must save zombies. Exploring the location in this situation is not particularly interesting, but the developers have proposed an ingenious method for the player to spend a lot of time "on the field".

Each gas station is yours.

In the world, we move either on our feet or on our motorcycle: no other means of transport is available. You have to give the physics of the vehicle what it deserves: driving, even if you have to get used to it, but it's perfectly regulated – the behavior is different on asphalt, gravel road and in the mud, there is even controlled drifts. The bike can be improved in any way, both externally and technically. But what remains the same is the fuel consumption BelAZ level. The volume of the initial tank, according to the navigator, lasts about two kilometers. Given the size of the map and the distance between the tasks, we can often drive without refueling in one direction, which is sufficient. The installation of a larger tank partly solves the problem, but you should always refuel very often.

We refuel at gas stations or in cans – they are still in abandoned tow trucks. But when the hero finds himself in a deep forest filled with zombies and the nearest colony is about a kilometer, it becomes sad: not only must you go to the cartridge, but you must also return to your bike. As a result, you must stop at each gas station, even if the tank is almost full. According to the law of pettiness, it can not miss enough 10 to 15% of gasoline. At least it's free here: no price increase for one penny per week of play.

Around the finger

Local Oregon is designed as other open world gaming venues. There are safe settlement areas where you can walk, do a task, attach a new motorcycle spare part, buy ammunition, etc. The rest of the territory teems with zombies and gangsters who live by their own laws and only see Deacon as a source of supply. Fights with opponents are relatively interesting, but artificial intelligence spoils raspberries.

Often, enemies do not notice Dick a few steps away, and this applies to both people and zombies. These are in general difficulty and the problem is particularly well exposed during the destruction of nests, where creatures live. We arrived, for example, in a large warehouse, we must burn about five dens. You can burn them one by one – the zombies will hardly react to such an invasion, and it is only if they notice the hero that they will be given a hunt in sight, of course. where it is easy to separate.

Playing Days Days as a clean action will fail because of the frequent shortage of ammo. The stealth is pretty primitive, but for such a thank you: you can, without attracting attention, cross the enemies, hide in the bushes and trash cans, quickly kill your opponents from the back or shoot with a crossbow and even throw stones to distract you. In case of detection, we use the standard arsenal for shooters – guns, machine guns, shotguns, explosives – or we run away. Periodically saves melee. It consists of a hit and a dodge, but works effectively: it's easier than ever to manage four or five zombies.

We are going to spend a lot of time in abandoned houses, where there are precious reserves. Without crafts, it will be difficult: first aid kits and explosives, although they end up in a finite form, but rarely. As a result, we collect glbad bottles, kerosene, salad dressings and other items to create Molotov badtails and bandages. We must also search cars: police cars will most likely have ammunition and, in civilian transport, we handle parts to repair the bike. It often breaks down during high jumps, collisions with obstacles and zombie races.

In addition, you can take care of the hunt, but the work in progress is far from Far Cry. They hunted down deer, killed them, wounded prey fled away, but quickly fell due to blood loss. They stripped the carcbad – and … no, we do not fry the juicy meat on the fire, but we bring everything to the camp for sale. The hero pays exceptionally much attention to settlements and civilians, although he appears to be an independent rider who attaches great importance to freedom and maneuvering on a deserted road.

Go and do, you are a man

Most of the minor tasks are related to resolving civilians issues: you need to get supplies, you have to deal with the gangsters who are watching the camp, and you have to save the survivor and deliver him to a safe place. The last point, however, is doubtful: a former prison guard who runs the same colony runs the same camp – people work under the surveillance of security guards (who strike the workers for lack of enthusiasm) and receive in return a protection against zombies. And here, the hero will once bring a teenager who has been living in the parents' house for two years since the disaster and who has resisted the zombies quite well. Doubtful service, in general.

Ignore minor unprofitable quests. For the execution of orders, we increase our level of trust in the eyes of the camp. As a reward, sellers are opening Deacon's access to new guns and improvements for a bike, without which it's hard to survive in Days Gone.

The battles promised against crowds of zombies failed. The opponents are very numerous and shooting them will not work. It is necessary to think about the tactics: where to attract them, where to place traps, where to throw reptiles with explosives. In such moments, Days Gone begins to look like Dead Rising, but is adjusted to a completely different balance: the hero dies quickly.

The game could draw the story, but with all this is ambiguous. On the one hand, if you do not heed the used theme of the zombie invasion, the plot is quite fascinating. On the other – everything spoils the disgusting story. It's just the backtracking, where we're shown exactly the same movie we've seen at the beginning. Is it to remind the events? So, in fact, it only took a few hours.

Or another memory of a hero of "life before": Dick met only his wife, they drive a motorcycle and chat. This episode is not interactive: we are just watching what happens in a third person, just like watching a taxi in the fourth and fifth parts of GTA IV.

Or terrible transitions between the reels and the game with the decrease of the brightness of the screen. After all, there is a shining example of unseen loading places for the player: God of War from last year, which looks like it's a double. Here everything is old fashioned, and the developers have not even tried to think of anything.

Overall, the technical performance is exceptionally low for a PlayStation exclusive. The long downloads, the textures in the scrolls are drawn directly, the ends of the enemies fall into the walls, there is a noticeable slump of the frame rate per second … Well, this is not the case in the game released by Sony. At the same time, there is a complete order with graphics: the mist cut by the lighthouse in the valley looks great, the heroes have natural clothes and faces with natural facial expressions, the explosions are quite tolerable.

Apparently, the main reason for all these flaws is the small experience of the SIE Bend Studio team. The developers had already participated in the furtive series Sphon Filter (another exclusive Sony, but apparently dead), before moving to the portable console PlayStation Portable and Vita. Then companies entrusted a huge game in the open world, and that did not succeed. The original data of Days Gone is very good and technical moments are going well with the patches: in total, the game has already been updated to more than 18 gigabytes. But the study of the world and the direction of the updates is not correct. So we're waiting for Days Gone 2 – if Sony believes developers again, of course.

Publishers thank the Gamepark.by store for the game provided for review.

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