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[GenericUser]

No, the game was just boring.

 

[Represent.]

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Literally every complaint is from either a white man or a white woman.

 

[SlimySnake]

Also I'm going to say it again, the entire swarm gimmick was barely there in the stock version. It took over a year of updates, rebalancing and fixes for it to hit this stride the the current Days Gone lovers are guessing over.

The fact he couldn't stand in his own shit and locked his Twitter down dishes volumes. I may not have agreed with the guy who directed Kingdom Come but he didn't back down or go into hiding, this guy said a cringe response and locked it the fuck down when there's WAY more to why Days Gone got it's initial reception than just some "woke reviewers"

Wtf are you talking about? There are literally 20 hordes in the base game. There is even a trophy for it. We are just making up shit now?

And the game was no more buggy than any other Ubisoft open world game at launch. What he’s talking about is the version that went out to reviewers. By the time the game actually came out, the game had most of its issues resolved. I bought it Day one and aside from the streaming issues that occur in the last area of the game due to the speed upgrades of the bike, the game barely had any bugs. I’ve seen worse bugs in so called polished games like ratchet and tlou. Both him and the game director are on record talking about the version that was sent to the reviewers. It was exceptionally buggy and nothing like what shipped to gamers.

This nonsense narrative that the game took a year to get good is simply false. There was more free content added but the base game had 50 hours of fantastic open world gameplay.

 

[Vick]

No, the game was just boring.

If Days Gone, of all the fucking open world games ever released, with its constantly tense and unpredictable map exploration, tight controls, completely unique and super fun, adrenaline filled mechanics never seen prior nor after, huge and yet masterfully crafted/designed map down the the most intimate details, etc. etc. got hatred reviews because it was "just boring", I'd like to see you trying to make sense of something like RDR2 sitting at a 97 Metacritic.

 

[semiconscious]

if nothing else, this thread's convinced me to do a new game+ run (well, up to iron mike's camp, anyway), so thanks, folks!...

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

I didn't find it to be particularly good. I heard it got better after patches, but I never cared to check it out again.

 

[DryvBy]

‘Woke’ is a term that originally referred to those aware of social injustices such as racism, sexism and all other forms of discrimination. In recent times, however, it’s been adopted as a catch-all term by right-leaning people to refer to those who favour progressive political ideas.

I love this suggestive definition lol. The ironic thing is how they equate poor innocent wokes to be against racism when these types were the ones pushing racism by complaining of a boring white guy. Idiotic writing from the author.

Anyway, I don't think that's what hurt the game though. It was the bugs and it takes a minute to get into. I didn't care much for it until a friend played 5+ hours and told me his experiences.

 

[daninthemix]

The bad reviews were almost entirely because of bugs, and the game failing to have the level of polish expected from Sony first party releases. It got a lot better in the months and years following.

 

[hussar16]

The game is honestly mediocre so his point is very mute. And I for one would have liked if it had more Merica and outlaw biker gang stuff instead of generic zombie romp.like instead of a home base we had a gang hideout /bar we could customize along with the biker gang we could customize.ik honestly suprised nobody else has every though of a game liek this.open world biker gang game

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Go anti-woke go broke!

The game is a 7/10. Run of the mill stuff. Horrible story, the last cutscene was the most interesting. That being said. I got the game after all the bugs were fixed.

 

[GymWolf]

My favourite zombie game. Sony or not.

How about dying light 1?

 

[MidGenRefresh]

How about dying light 1?

I didn't like the setting and focus on melee combat.

 

[GymWolf]

My review:


1) Boring quest, only a few were interesting
2) Awful pacing
3) Dumb AI (horde walking through human enemies and they ignore each other)
4) Awful random encounters, especially the hostage rescue (hostage has the same NPC model)
5) Protag mumbling way too much
6) Buildings seems to be empty all the time without human or zombie enemies in it, i find it very weird.
7) Fuck the wolves and bears chases. Chase, pew pew pew, chase ,pew pew pew repeat. Very annoying as well.
8) Lack of enemy variety

I completed the main except the post game quest, game its on my shelf quite sometime now, maybe i will go back to complete it in the future.

Lol not true, i made hordes follows me to free enemy camps a lot of times in my 2 runs with the game.

And when you have aggressive animals, freaks and humans they all fight each other, there are even some nice touches like if you bring an horde into a camp of the crazy bald people who adore the freaks, they just let the freaks eat them.

It was one of the best aspects of the open world.

 

[GymWolf]

I didn't like the setting and focus on melee combat.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Great album. I have it on vinyl, love listening to this shit.

 

[scydrex]

I liked the game. Finished on ps5 this year. I give it a solid 8. It should have a sequel.

 

[sncvsrtoip]

Their future couldn't be any dimmer in my books. They're making a live service.

Was there any info about it ? Imo they could be responsible for new Uncharted reboot.

 

[Markio128]

It’s simply a mediocre game and the lead character is as dull as dishwater. I’ve tried to play it a couple of times, the latest being on PS5, but I just can’t give my time to the game when there are much better games to be getting on with.

 

[RJMacready73]

The game was pretty good, but the writing and narrative drive had issues. After spending many hours tracking down his wife's whereabouts and uncovering their detailed backstory, (minor mid-game spoilers) Deacon and his wife finally reunite. But she doesn't care at all that he's alive. They then put Deacon through endless demeaning encounters with her while she berates him and he acts like a doormat. He continues chasing her and sacrifices everything at every turn to try to get her to pay attention to him again.

No doubt this is how interpersonal relationships work for people in the gaming industry, but it didn't exactly fit for this tough as nails post-apocalyptic biker.

It was reminiscent of AC: Origins, where Bayek acts more like his wife's OnlyFans subscriber than her husband.

I took it more that she had assumed him dead and thus moved on with her life and her work trying to find a cure was priority no.1 not her old husband who suddenly turned up, plus the fact that she couldn’t show any feelings towards him due to the fact that she was essentially working for a lunatic and wanted to protect both her and him, the endless tasks and treating him like a doormat was simply down to a: gamey fetch shit and b: she had a pretence to keep up in front of the other soldiers in that he was just a random biker.

Personally i loved the game, sure the story was generic game shite but it did its job, it was the incredible open world, the bike riding mechanics, the adrenaline inducing massive zombie horde fights and the point to point gameplay that did it for me, it all felt really polished and enjoyable zipping about, killing zombies and fetching shit, then again i played it on Pro/PS5 and not at release so it was well polished and ran like a dream, gutted to hear there would be no sequel as man PS5 Hordes would be a sight to see

 

[ANDS]

Hilarious. If a zombie game comes out and it's panned for being "another zombie game" we don't blink an eye. But make a game with a character literally named "Deacon St. John" with the gaming press largely rolling their eyes at another gruff, morally ambiguous "rebel without a cause. . .or melatonin" and it's "Ugh, enough with the 'woke' criticisms!"

Deacon is, at least in the beginning, a largely generic character - even if I didn't mind him overall (haven't finished the game because Jesus. H. Christ is it slow going). The whole biker wedding bit was definitely overblown by the usual suspects, but that isn't really where people's patience with the game broke and he could have made a better point without trying to call out reviewers on this particular issue.

. . .bad Tweet that from a creative still too close to their "darling."

 

[OZ9000]

Literally every complaint is from either a white man or a white woman.

We live in such a soft and bitchy society honestly. Everyone is offended about anything remotely resembling what would be considered normal 20 years ago.

 

[The Skull]

Never played it but I do remember journos having a complete mental breakdown over the ride me like your bike line at the wedding and being so upset it featured a heterosexual couple.

 

[ikbalCO]

He is not wrong.

Spoiler

but days gone was bland as fuck

 

[Buggy Loop]

It’s got a very positive review score on steam. So at least it seem they didn’t fumble with bugs on PC release. It’s on my wish list but even if there’s deals on it lately, I’m under a mountain of games to play..

 

[lh032]

Lol not true, i made hordes follows me to free enemy camps a lot of times in my 2 runs with the game.

And when you have aggressive animals, freaks and humans they all fight each other, there are even some nice touches like if you bring an horde into a camp of the crazy bald people who adore the freaks, they just let the freaks eat them.

It was one of the best aspects of the open world.

i wish i could show you proof, perhaps the AI just fuck up on that moment for me.

 

[GenericUser]

If Days Gone, of all the fucking open world games ever released, with its constantly tense and unpredictable map exploration, tight controls, completely unique and super fun, adrenaline filled mechanics never seen prior nor after, huge and yet masterfully crafted/designed map down the the most intimate details, etc. etc. got hatred reviews because it was "just boring", I'd like to see you trying to make sense of something like RDR2 sitting at a 97 Metacritic.

Tl;dr

 

[A Most Virtuous Cat]

Ah yes, the semantics coming from people like you.

Stop being so insecure, maybe travel? go to other countries? You don't have to be so fragile.

Nothing is "woke" about uncharted, it only is if you're dumb enough to make it up in your own head. She is a paramilitary soldier with a ton of money going against an untrained orphan, i'd like to see you face a UFC fighter.

As someone from a non-western culture, I can also clearly see the wokeness in UC4 as he mentioned. Same in TLOU2. Honestly, if you could just travel more and go to other countries you can see how much people dislike this jarring and stupid woke/ "The Message" crap; just about every non-western culture is abhorred by it. I see this as an extension of the colonial project of forcing the "enlightened western values" upon everyone else.

 

[MALpractice311]

Here's the thing, he's not wrong about many journalists crapping on it for featuring a straight white married couple as the main characters. But the game was just okay otherwise and I think the typical 7 or 8 out of 10 from the normal gaming outlets seemed appropriate. It was a third person open world zombie game with a story as predictable as you would expect. There wasn't really anything unique about it, so it appropriately didn't set the world on fire. It was also plagued by horrible performance when it was first released, which didn't help things. That being said, after all the patches and updates, it seemed like it found an audience.

At this point though, it just seems like sour grapes from the developers. Every 6 months, someone pops up blaming woke reviewers. Move on to your next project.

 

[Hypereides]

thank god this fellow left bend

but then the game isnt....great,its passable.
There is some serious pacing issue in the game.

And random encounter in the open world is almost non-existent.

FWIW, dude was responsible for the narrative throughout the Syphon Filter series which was more or less pretty consistent. He's been there since the beginning.

I believe the dude has either a Masters or P.hd in English literature which honestly makes/made him invaluable imo. I'd rather hear his stories than most fresh of the boat wannabe writers trying to make their squeeze into the American video games industry as we speak.

If anything he's a net loss to the studio and Sony's PS workforce as a whole.

 

[ReBurn]

I played it when it came to the PS Plus collection. I liked it well enough

 

[Markio128]

Uncharted 4 also happened to have a married couple in, what was most importantly, a great game.

 

[RIPN2022]

Agree with how the game was unjustly attacked for having a white male protagonist and a biker wedding scene (without doing any research on that topic and realizing it's "real"). Some reviewers were blind to the fact that the game also featured stuff like diverse characters (including minority female bikers) and just went in with the pitchforks.

As for the bugs and poor performance, the game should've definitely been released in better state. You can only do a good first impression once and not many people cared that the state of the game has greatly improved (on the PS4).

Yeah they could have delayed the game for a few months to improve performance. It launched in April 2019, it could have easily launched in Summer 2019

 

[GymWolf]

i wish i could show you proof, perhaps the AI just fuck up on that moment for me.

Sure, the ia can glitch and fuck up in any game.

 

[Famipan]

For those who didn't think the random encounters were good enough:

Zombies, Wolves, Giant zombie and a bear:


Wolves saving me from other enemies:


Fun bugs:

 

[Roman Empire]

I think the giant wave of Wokeism hurt the game somewhat but it wasn't the only factor. It's an 80-85 Metacritic game and the killer to that score was the poor performance at launch and some strange pacing issues and directing. The game was FAR from being the turd some claim it to be, it had its problem but sales tell that it had some good reception and potential for a brand new IP under a studio's first AAA game. Too bad it didn't get a sequel.

 

[Hydroxy]

I liked it better than HZD if that's worth anything.

 

[Fake]

Lol not true, i made hordes follows me to free enemy camps a lot of times in my 2 runs with the game.

And when you have aggressive animals, freaks and humans they all fight each other, there are even some nice touches like if you bring an horde into a camp of the crazy bald people who adore the freaks, they just let the freaks eat them.

It was one of the best aspects of the open world.

I guess the game got praised for not being scripted.


I remember making the 'track someone', and as soon as you check the clue, the suspect show up in their motobike and you need to pursuit.
But wild animals, freakers, hordes and even another random encounter can insta K.O the target and the pursuit get done. I find this super cool.


I would 100% onboard on a sequel using Unreal Engine 5.

 

[DeepEnigma]

This is the zombie game, right? After we had over a decade of zombie games? It didn't look good, it didn't look interesting, but go ahead and blame it on whatever "woke" comments it received. FIts in right with the narratives in over half of the threads here.

Yet they still make zombie games, and that criticism seemed to disappear into the ether.

TLoU Part 1 Remake comes to mind. No gruff straight biker talking about asses, just lesbian tweens.

Literally every complaint is from either a white man or a white woman.

Indoctrination is real.

Go anti-woke go broke!

The game is a 7/10. Run of the mill stuff. Horrible story, the last cutscene was the most interesting. That being said. I got the game after all the bugs were fixed.

The game was not anti-woke, at all. Was very progressive, especially for the typical biker stereotype.

It also sold over 9 million copies and Sony gave them the choice to do a sequel. It did not go broke.

FWIW, dude was responsible for the narrative throughout the Syphon Filter series which was more or less pretty consistent. He's been there since the beginning.

I believe the dude has either a Masters or P.hd in English literature which honestly makes/made him invaluable imo. I'd rather hear his stories than most fresh of the boat wannabe writers trying to make their squeeze into the American video games industry as we speak.

If anything he's a net loss to the studio and Sony's PS workforce as a whole.

Agreed. Especially seeing the inconsistent writing in Ragnarok which stood out like a sore thumb compared to the more cohesive parts of the game, when unironically some of the writing choices were hired for Ragnarok. Especially compared to how consistent the 2018's writing was without those new additions.

 

[CatsGamesWhatever]

The main problem for me with Days Gone is the main character wouldn't shut the fuck up. He's always talking to himself and the writing sucks so it just compounds the problem.

 

[Jack Videogames]

Yep.

 

[Lunarorbit]

Gavins saying people were woke and that's why it didn't do well?

Huh? No idea what he's talking about. The plot, as anyone who's played it can attest, was pretty fucking bad with some hilariously cringe dialogue BTW deacon and his wife specifically.

They released the game buggy. Reviewers got pissed cause the hoards don't come in til you play the game a bit and they were a major talking point. I could see some reviewers not bothering to give it a fair shake.

I played it a month after it came out on a base ps4 and I didn't have many bugs at all. Thought the game play was excellent.

 

[FeastYoEyes]

Game was boring as hell. That's probably why.

 

[Famipan]

The main problem for me with Days Gone is the main character wouldn't shut the fuck up. He's always talking to himself and the writing sucks so it just compounds the problem.

It’s because he may have ADHD. When you have it your mind won’t shut the fuck up unfortunately. I think that was great not too cumbersome detail if you come from the experience of Dragons Dogma

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The main problem for me with Days Gone is the main character wouldn't shut the fuck up. He's always talking to himself and the writing sucks so it just compounds the problem.

It’s because he may have ADHD. When you have it your mind won’t shut the fuck up unfortunately. I think that was great not too cumbersome detail if you come from the experience of Dragons Dogma

The lead characters for DG and Hellblade seem like a match made in heaven. Just imagine being in the same room with those two.

Sony and MS can even team up and make a fighting game based on them. One on one. The character who talks the most wins.

 

[ANDS]

Gavins saying people were woke and that's why it didn't do well?

The guy is full of shit which is likely why the tweet no longer exists. Days Gone isn't a terrible game, but it isn't the victim of some "woke campaign." There are nearly 200 reviews of DG on OpenCritic, yet the infographic of "woke reviewer tweets" is maybe a handful, some of whom go out of their way to articulate why they didn't like the game (and it had nothing to do the so-called "woke scourge").

Were there a few reviewers who couldn't get beyond their own ideologies to give the game a fair shot? Of course. That's any game. The idea though that it was anything meaningful amongst the HOST of issues people had with the game at launch is laughable. Look at the review for the PC version versus the console edition; it is - unquestionably - a better reviewed product among reviewers and fans (going by Metacritic). Given that NONE of the content has changed, one can only assume it was something else that lead to the increase in overall reception.

. . ."Being woke" is an easy target though, so can't hate the guy for reaching for it.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The guy is full of shit which is likely why the tweet no longer exists. Days Gone isn't a terrible game, but it isn't the victim of some "woke campaign." There are nearly 200 reviews of DG on OpenCritic, yet the infographic of "woke reviewer tweets" is maybe a handful, some of whom go out of their way to articulate why they didn't like the game (and it had nothing to do the so-called "woke scourge").

Were there a few reviewers who couldn't get beyond their own ideologies to give the game a fair shot? Of course. That's any game. The idea though that it was anything meaningful amongst the HOST of issues people had with the game at launch is laughable. Look at the review for the PC version versus the console edition; it is - unquestionably - a better reviewed product among reviewers and fans (going by Metacritic). Given that NONE of the content has changed, one can only assume it was something else that lead to the increase in overall reception.

. . ."Being woke" is an easy target though, so can't hate the guy for reaching for it.

I dont remember much about reviews back then, but aside from some people bringing up some dumb dialogue between him and his fiance or whatever, the key things I remember it being a meh game was that it was clunky to play, not that exciting and you're spending time riding around finding gas for his motorcycle.

All which is 100% opposite of the trailers which were all action packed mob busting zombie scenes.

I didnt know this until I recently googled more about DG as people have been briefly talking zombie mob locations, but that giant sawmill scene which they kept stressing turns out to be the biggest zombie horde location in the entire game. Turns out most of the mob locations have small zombie counts. of about 25 or 50.

The trailers made it seem like it's a fast paced game with massive zombie mobs. The videos I'd skim watching people play on YT showed the complete opposite.

 

[FoxMcChief]

My review:

Pros
1) World design is good
2) Visual is good

Cons
1) Boring quest, only a few were interesting
2) Awful pacing
3) Dumb AI (horde walking through human enemies and they ignore each other)
4) Awful random encounters, especially the hostage rescue (hostage has the same NPC model)
5) Protag mumbling way too much
6) Buildings seems to be empty all the time without human or zombie enemies in it, i find it very weird.
7) Fuck the wolves and bears chases. Chase, pew pew pew, chase ,pew pew pew repeat. Very annoying as well.
8) Lack of enemy variety

I completed the main except the post game quest, game its on my shelf quite sometime now, maybe i will go back to complete it in the future.

Woke reviewer over here!

 

[Rendered Tangent]

Nope, sat through it for an hour. It's everything wrong with current Sony games rolled up in one really shit package. I wouldn't buy it for a dollar. Just a shit game.

To be fair, the first hour is quite ponderous.

Have you considered going back and trying to get past that first but?

It's very much a slow burn of a game and takes many hours to really get going.

 

[Lunarorbit]

The guy is full of shit which is likely why the tweet no longer exists. Days Gone isn't a terrible game, but it isn't the victim of some "woke campaign." There are nearly 200 reviews of DG on OpenCritic, yet the infographic of "woke reviewer tweets" is maybe a handful, some of whom go out of their way to articulate why they didn't like the game (and it had nothing to do the so-called "woke scourge").

Were there a few reviewers who couldn't get beyond their own ideologies to give the game a fair shot? Of course. That's any game. The idea though that it was anything meaningful amongst the HOST of issues people had with the game at launch is laughable. Look at the review for the PC version versus the console edition; it is - unquestionably - a better reviewed product among reviewers and fans (going by Metacritic). Given that NONE of the content has changed, one can only assume it was something else that lead to the increase in overall reception.

. . ."Being woke" is an easy target though, so can't hate the guy for reaching for it.

I dont remember much about reviews back then, but aside from some people bringing up some dumb dialogue between him and his fiance or whatever, the key things I remember it being a meh game was that it was clunky to play, not that exciting and you're spending time riding around finding gas for his motorcycle.

All which is 100% opposite of the trailers which were all action packed mob busting zombie scenes.

I didnt know this until I recently googled more about DG as people have been briefly talking zombie mob locations, but that giant sawmill scene which they kept stressing turns out to be the biggest zombie horde location in the entire game. Turns out most of the mob locations have small zombie counts. of about 25 or 50.

The trailers made it seem like it's a fast paced game with massive zombie mobs. The videos I'd skim watching people play on YT showed the complete opposite.

From my memory days gone was another Playstation exclusive that Sony kinda just released. And I mean that specifically; they just released it without a ton of fanfare and then they just let it get the shit kicked out of it during reviews.

There wasn't a lot of advertising. They showed the hoards and that seemed to be the main focus. When all the reviews came out I was confused cause my play experience was so different (and better) than what was indicated.

Maybe Gavin and Sony just didn't like each other? I've heard so many conflicting things with this game. Was there going to be a sequel? (seems like it story wise). Why did Sony just let the game languish?

The support for Ghost, Spiderman, ratchet, tlou2 which all came out the same time was great. Sonys strategy for this game was way different and helped stifle the games success

 

[A.Romero]

While the woke stuff is BS (that screen with the reviewers ganging up on what they think is wrong with the game), don't think it really had an impact on the game's success. The brigade has tried to do the same with many other games and they do well still. I can remember the press going after Witcher 3 because it didn't have inclusiveness or because the succubi seemed to be black. They also tried to go after Cyberpunk for an objectification of trans people... The games still did well.

I waited a while to get Days Gone because I was waiting for it to come to PC. I tried it and found it slow. Found the transversal a bit annoying (having to worry about gas, etc). Ended up dropping it to favour other games. Apparently the game gets better further along and I will come back to it at some point.

IMO the game did as well as deserved based on how it plays. I don't think what those reviewers think really have an impact on sales.

I can tell people at the studio were really passionate. It's the second high profile dev that kind of cries because the game didn't do as well as expected, right?