There is a lot that can be said of Days Gone, not all of it good and not all of it about the game itself. Most notably, one of the game’s directors/writers said last year that the game got bad reviews because of “woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s [bum].” Nah mate, you wrote a generic open-world post-apocalyptic zombie ’em up that just happened to have a white guy in the center. If I wanted to watch gruff White bikers looking at women, I’d go watch Sons of Anarchy. That at least has Ron Perlman, Katey Sagal, and decent writing.

I think calling Days Gone painfully generic would be a disservice to those at Oregon-based developer Bend Studio in realizing the surrounding area upon the armed zombie-biker uprising. Possibly let down by the simple fact of its environment, Days Gone was released after the charm of The Walking Dead had waned and the excitement of open worlds had been exhausted by the likes of Ubisoft and Steam’s early access. Speaking of the French publisher, when previously describing Cyberpunk 2077 and Days Gone I’ve used the name of the Assassin’s Creed developer to explain away 90% of the gameplay. Something that you don’t need a tutorial for anymore, it is the basis for which most games are now.

“The only ones that could outlast the freakers were the freaks,” with dialog this generic and hardly saying more than the line before it without being littered with needless expletives. Meanwhile, characters are bought from the bargain bin at the cheap off-brand family-owned supermarket Generic-mart. The cast runs the gambit from husband of a murdered wife to a tough no-nonsense old White woman, and the sea of beige characters runs lawless. Though gameplay similarly tries to out-bland the blandest, with one-button melee combat, Batman-vision, crafting, a rock for distracting anyone, and so on.

Why, through all of these less-than-amicable features, do I like Days Gone? It is a tried and tested gameplay loop that functions well to please the basic portions of my brain when I want something that isn’t going to challenge me too much but isn’t so simple it breaks my immersion to the world. Everything breaks like depleted uranium-infused Weetabix drowning in a zombie’s lower intestines, the fuel for your bike lasts about three feet, and in particularly hairy moments health kits were being chowed down on like a woman does on chocolate once a month. Though past all of that, there is something good: You get to beat up dead kids.

Within minutes of playing, I was sent to pick up a bit for my bike, and kids being the spritely little champs that they are, they inhabit rooftops mostly. They were exactly where I needed to go. So as any grown man should, I took out a baseball bat and started hitting kids, giving them blunt-force trauma on top of being zombified. Since every other game is afraid to let you go near kids, like you are Bill Cosby, Prince Andrew, or R Kelly, it is refreshing to not be told it is bad to shoot kids. With a paragraph like this, I’m sure I’ve now been placed on some kind of watchlist for psychopaths of great danger to children. Good.

Though for every mutilated monster of miniature measure, there is the near endless chatter early on and throughout. It is like talking to you nan: Oh deary would you kindly go kill those drifters with skulls for faces, deary would you kindly clear out those freakers, deary would you kindly wipe for me. No, stop this! Your game is going to take over 30 hours to complete on average (according to How Long to Beat), spread that out so I’m not ready to put a bullet in the amputee brother of the husband of a murdered wife. While Deacon St John (Blandicus Characterious) has more ticks than a flea-ridden dog, though I do like his John Mcclain-style mumbles, it would just be nice if everyone else wasn’t so umm-y and ahh-y too.

I don’t dislike the story because Blandicus looks at blonde Booby-Mcgee with affection, I dislike it because it isn’t doing anything. Predictable feels like a cheap way to discredit a plot but when it is a plot we’ve seen several times over and done better, it is something that bores you rather than entertains. The interpersonal relationships sparked up through dialogue aren’t as egregious, they function to at least keep you awake during cutscenes but they aren’t letting off fireworks either. If you play a lot of triple-A games or zombie survivor-horror things, Days Gone isn’t a diamond in the rough, it is another lump of coal in your stocking of dirty depressing people being beaten up.

Comparisons have been and will be made towards another open-world release of 2019, Red Dead Redemption 2, for the sake of a rough character with a hint of heart under a gruff exterior. The difference between the two is that with Arthur Morgan I’m left with a sense he has a personal desire to do and be better; Deacon Blue here focuses on himself and his brother, hanging on in scenes a little too long giving me a sense he’ll do anything as long as it benefits him. That’s fine if the character is written that way, but given choices either to the player or to the character, I and Deacon tend to lean towards helping people.

Particularly early on there is this budding rivalry between two camps: One run by a loud-mouth truther that shouts about conspiracies, the Second Amendment, Obama’s place of birth, and how being selfish and working to benefit yourself will always work in your favor. The second is a slaver camp run by someone who looks like every woman in Texas over the age of 50. Both have their positives and negatives in gameplay and story, but you are supposed to work to make both like you more and more until the third camp shows up which does both their jobs and isn’t run by a liberal’s nightmare.

I don’t feel like I’m helping people I want to be around is my point. I don’t feel like I’m around anyone that is even vaguely human half the time either, they are emotionless drones spouting tired lines of dialogue that don’t get anywhere quickly or nameless stock assets pretending to be fully fledged characters in place of some actual plot with urgency. That’s the problem here, we know where the plot is going from three miles down the road but it takes so long to get there due to every umm and ahh under the sun being employed.

What doesn’t help is some gameplay design, such as your action wheel, inventory wheel, or whatever you want to call it. Quickly switching between every bomb, throwable, distraction device, melee weapon, type of ammo, health, or stamina drug is impossible unless you give a little prayer to the god of inventory management. His name is Steve and he only works on a Tuesday, between 2:30 and 5. Days Gone isn’t supposed to be a quick game, I get that. Yet when you are expected to deal with a horde from time to time, it would be nice if you weren’t being accosted by Steve while in a blind panic.

It probably doesn’t help that it is my understanding that a single rock might be able to distract more than one zombie, Nero agent, or marauder at a time. I shouldn’t have to select the rock from the wheel of L1/LB, throw it, then have to open the wheel again and angle this second throw just right so the next in a conga line of carnivorous ghouls gets attracted this time. If they’re huddled up in a group together, I’d expect at least two of them to walk off in holy matrimony together. Probably annoying Copeland’s group given one of the first things I heard from him was about the Constitution and the old days.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a large portion of Days Gone but it is described as generic for a reason. You tag enemies like Far Cry 3, you skin animals like Red Dead, exploration is the same as we’ve seen for the last decade, and you clear out bases to get all the map markers of the local area like a Ubisoft title. Seeing the group that surrounds Days Gone online call it the best thing since crucified bread, I wonder what it is that they are or aren’t connecting with. Being on this side where I play as many games as I do, Days Gone is very disposable. It is enjoyable to a point but never shines for the right reasons.

Nothing stands out, no one captures my attention, and at the end of the day, I don’t mind leaving Days Gone when I’m done. As the kids say, the “Mid” reviews aren’t because a character looks at someone else’s body or because someone only played X number of hours, it is due to the fact Days Gone isn’t doing anything special. If you’ve ever read Save The Cat, Blake Snyder’s phrase that he keeps repeating is that people just want something “the same but different.” Days Gone is just the same simply congealed into one place.

Ultimately, Days Gone isn’t the most exciting game, but it isn’t the most boring either. Days Gone is simply a competently made collection of elements we’ve all played before in that survival horror setting of zombies coming along. Think 7 Days to Die if it was made by people who know what they are doing. Hamstrung by a story that is best described as very 2007, the highlight is every other developer’s ideas made well enough to create a tense set of systems. Trying to clear out nests while a horde attacks, taking out a camp with minimal ammo, and several other examples create almost Far Cry-like watercooler stories.

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Days Gone

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Hordes are both tense and fun.
• A solid set of systems in place to create an enjoyable game.
• A beautifully depressing realization of Oregon.

Cons

• Very 2007 game-level writing.