[Review] Days Gone

[#DEXTER]

There are many games that speak of the end of the world and the spread of a zombie, but few are proving to be in the midst of the momentum of the games spread, Days Gone from a third personal perspective and an open world, chaotic and full of dangers, which threaten the principles are supposed not to die even if civilization died, The game is exclusive to PS4 and the development of studio Bend Studio, which is famous for developing the game Syphon Filter on PS1 devices

Since its debut at E3 years ago, it has raised questions from players about the merits of the game, whether it is similar to its predecessor from exclusive PS4 games, or whether it will offer a new experience.

In this wide and varied world, you can ride a motorcycle. It is a very enjoyable addition to the game. It is part of the Daceon character. It is the only way to travel and explore the world. It is the companion of the road and you have to take care of it by repairing and maintaining it periodically and adding improvements to it and knowing that it may run out of fuel. For the fuel indicator or when you pass the fuel station because this may lead to roaming on your feet and looking for fuel over long distances.

Days Gone is characterized by extreme weather changes with high-precision details from warm, sunny weather to rain and snow, variety of places from forests and pastures to snowy plains, desert, daytime and nighttime play, all of which are used to simulate realism and dynamic changes that make you blend into the atmosphere.

The first half of the game is not enthusiastic enough, but the pace starts at the beginning of the second half where you can go into the way you see fit to finish the missions, from infiltration or attack.

The game is based on many methods to eliminate enemies where there is a lot of diversity in the weapons, but the problem is the lack of ammunition and lack of availability in abundance, and this requires you to research and explore the surrounding environment such as buildings and abandoned cars, and you can create things that support the resources you gathered and in moments you must fight manual Close to using a baseball bat which when used frequently becomes worthless or breaks, but the method of manual fighting was not ideal because you will feel a lack when implemented.

As for the enemies, they are different and their designs are suspicious. For example, Freakers are always present in groups in one place and in huge numbers as one of the positive points the game has. This reminds us of World War Z very much and at the start of the confrontation you follow in a cinematic way in one regiment and can not catch up with you In a straight line, but from all sides to cut all ways to survive, and you can change your strategy that you see appropriate to eliminate them from the development of pumps and the explosion of gasoline tanks or you can escape them and face them later.

Darkness plays an important role in the game as it becomes your toughest enemy because of the massive numbers of Freakers and infected predators at night, while in the morning their numbers drop and the bandits appear human.

There are camps and camps protected from the rest of isolated people, and play an important role where Daceon is the link between these survivors and the outside world, and the more tasks you are assigned and the more help you have been appreciated, the more trust you have received the better services and obtained the finest elements, Contribute to the development of the bike and new weapons, and strengthen your combat capabilities and activate the instinct of survival.

Gameplay

Days Gone is an action-adventure survival horror game set in a post-apocalyptic open world, played from a third-person perspective. The player controls Deacon St. John (Sam Witwer), a former outlaw-turned-drifter and bounty hunter who prefers life on the road to wilderness encampments. The game takes place two years after a global pandemic occurred which killed almost all of humanity, and transformed millions of others into "Freakers", mindless nocturnal zombie-like creatures that are quickly evolving. In the E3 2016 stage demo, two types of "Freakers" were revealed, Newts and Hordes. In the E3 2017 stage demo, infected animals such as bears and wolves were revealed to also comprise the "Freakers", and human enemies are revealed to be featured in the game as well.

The player can complete objectives in multiple ways, such as by using stealth or long and short ranged weapons. A dynamic weather system and day-night cycle will also feature, making "Freakers" weak and slow by day but fast and strong by night. Deacon's main transportation vehicle is a motorcycle that can be modified with parts to enhance its speed, durability or maneuverability, among other parameters. The player is able to craft new items to improve combat efficiency.

GameStory

When a virus causes a large portion of humanity to become uncontrollably violent, Deacon, his wife Sarah, and his friend Boozer attempt to flee for safety. However, Sarah is stabbed and critically wounded, forcing Deacon to evacuate her on a National Emergency Restoration Organization (NERO) helicopter. However, since the helicopter does not have enough room carry all three of them, Deacon decides to stay behind with Boozer while promising Sarah he will reunite with her later.

Two years later, civilization has collapsed and large hordes of the infected, now called "freakers", roam the landscape and are a persistent threat to surviving humans. Deacon and Boozer now work as freelance bounty hunters in what's left of Oregon, with Deacon believing Sarah is dead after finding out the NERO refugee camp she was evacuated to was overrun by freakers. Deacon and Boozer plan to head further north to find better opportunities, but Boozer has his arm badly burned by a gang of cultists called Rippers, forcing him to stay at their safehouse to recuperate and delaying their trip north. He also learns the Rippers have apparently put a price on his and Boozer's heads for unknown reasons. In addition, Deacon catches sight of NERO helicopters carrying a NERO research team several times, leading him to believe there is a chance Sarah may be alive. He manages to track down and confront one of the NERO researchers, O'Brian, who was the man who evacuated Sarah. He reveals that his helicopter was diverted to a different camp mid-flight, further suggesting Sarah may still be alive.

However, Boozer's health begins to decline rapidly from his burn wounds, forcing Deacon to take him to the Lost Lake camp for medical treatment. Unfortunately, Boozer's arm turns out to be infected, forcing the doctor to amputate it. O'Brian then contacts Deacon, requesting his help in investigating what NERO is researching in return for helping him track down Sarah. However, Deacon is disheartened to learn that even though Sarah survived her stab wound, the refugee camp she was taken to was also overrun, meaning she is still likely dead. Meanwhile, Lost Lake has an uneasy nonaggression treaty with the Rippers, held up only by Lost Lake's leader Iron Mike while his lieutenant Skizzo is skeptical of Rippers' willingness to honor the treaty. Instead, Skizzo makes a separate deal with the Rippers and turns Deacon over to them, where it is revealed that the leader of the Rippers is Jessie, an old enemy of Deacon and Boozer from before the outbreak. Deacon escapes custody and together with Boozer, drowns the Rippers by destroying the dam above their camp and kills Jessie. Skizzo is exiled from Lost Lake for his betrayal.

Later, Deacon remembers that Sarah worked a government lab and would have had federal security clearance, meaning she would have been a priority to evacuate from the camp. O'Brian confirms that Sarah was evacuated to a military outpost at Crater Lake, but the area is now under the control of the Deschutes County Militia. O'Brian also warns Deacon that NERO's research has shown that the freakers are evolving, meaning their threat will only increase as time passes. He meets the leader of the Militia, Colonel Garret, under the guise of wanting to join up. At the Militia's main stronghold, Deacon is able to reunite with Sarah, who is working with the Militia to create a bioweapon that can destroy the freakers once and for all and won't leave until it is complete. Deacon reluctantly stays with the Militia in order to help her. Deacon and Sarah decide to head to the Cloverdale lab she used to work at in order to obtain a DNA sequencer. However, upon arriving at the lab, Sarah realizes that Cloverdale used her research to develop the virus that created the freakers.

Upon returning to Sarah's lab, she reveals that she is not actually working on a bioweapon to kill the freakers, but a cure to save them. Deacon suggests that they desert the Militia and complete the cure at the Cloverdale lab, but the plan is complicated when an increasingly paranoid Colonel Garret puts Sarah under protective custody. Deacon attempts to extract Sarah, but the plan is foiled by Skizzo, who lies about Deacon's criminal past to Colonel Garret. Deacon is arrested but is freed by a sympathetic officer. He returns to Lost Lake, which has managed to repel an assault from the Militia but Iron Mike is mortally wounded. Deacon warns Lost Lake that the Militia will return in greater numbers to exterminate them all, and decides to perform a preemptive strike by destroying their headquarters with a truck bomb. Deacon then kills Skizzo and Colonel Garret, rescuing Sarah and ending the threat of the Militia for good.

Afterwards, Deacon becomes the new leader of Lost Lake, living there with Sarah, Boozer, and his friends. He is then contacted by O'Brian again, who reveals that NERO had known about the virus' mutagenic effects all along and that he himself is infected with a strain of the virus that makes him an intelligent freaker. He warns Deacon that NERO is coming and that there is nothing they can do to stop them.

Deacon, a cyclist with a tough and determined character, pays no attention to anyone but his loyal friend Boozer, who are trying to survive and roam in this unthinkable world. Deacon has become a hunter of rewards, helping the rest of mankind and performing some tasks, Looking for hope after a great deal of suffering because of the loss of someone dear to his heart and his wife during the disaster.

The world of the game begins two years after the disaster and the collapse of humanity. The virus spreads more and more and shows wild monsters like zombies called Freakers. The infected people are not only human, but the infection extends to the animals. The human and the animal become more aggressive beings. There are religious groups and bandits that destroy you. In any way, the world of the game has created a struggle to have the resources to survive and stand up to the challenges ahead; to survive, to remain the most powerful among the wild wildlife in which people kill each other.

The game shows that the sequence of events like any other open world games, it is not fast enough but at the same time make you want to know what will happen when you progress in the game, and the most disadvantageous are the long loading periods when moving between the scenes of movies is disturbing and does not keep pace with development Which happened to the rest of the games, which spoils the fun of the game experience in general.

Development

Days Gone went into full production in January 2015. The game uses Unreal Engine 4. John Garvin is the creative director and writer of the game, and Jeff Ross is the game director. The game was scheduled to be released on February 22, 2019, but was delayed to April 26, 2019, to allow the development team to polish the game. Announced via Twitter, development studio Bend confirmed Days Gone's gold status in a celebratory tweet and accompanying photo.

The problems of the technology are numerous, such as the game of an open world of overlapping things with each other, entering barriers, incomplete appearance of the camp from surfaces and buildings, the fall of enemies with unconvincing movements and a decrease in the number of tires in some areas. Sony's exclusive games that often use its own development engine and these problems can be fixed with future talk.

There are many different subtasks, from attacking the bandit camp to getting rid of them and getting their property to limit the attack on you again, and also to get rid of the freakers' nest scattered around the map of the world by burning them .. And with the pursuit of some people on a motorcycle after doing terrible deeds You must stop them and arrest them, as well as medical research stations that you have to edit, and finally the main camps that provide you with some different tasks.

Side Assignments The game gives great value to fans of aggregation and exploration to get all the different abilities and get all the tools and open the fast travel and others, but the side missions at the beginning of the fun but it is mostly bored and repeated later because they were created to prolong the life of the game.

The game was characterized by a lot of music and some melodies while driving the motorcycle in the roads, as well as the sounds of monsters that raise some tension and anxiety when confronted with many groups of enemies.

The level of sounds varies from the sounds of nature such as the movement of trees with the wind and the sounds of rainfall and the flow of rivers and lightning thunder and action of shots and explosions, this game presents itself distinctly at the level of acoustics, which is one of the strongest points.

To come to the point that provoked controversy among the fans of the game as it supports the Arabic dubbing in the Egyptian dialect only, which is not connected to the real feelings of the original performer in English, while the dialogues and lists remain in English and this is the game is more than useful ... The fact that this is not appropriate, A certain category of players excludes much of the same regional region.

Days Gone (PS4)
Developer: SIE Bend Studio
Publisher: Sony
Released: April 26, 2019
MSRP: $59.99