To celebrate the release of Horizon 2 on PC, I started Days Gone.
And.... yeah. I don't care one bit about the biker aesthetics, but I think it doesn't detract, and it's less commonly seen. Same thing for being postapo, but just two years after the fact, so the world is not completely gone yet and people are making do with what is left.
No, my issue is more of game design in general... now it might be open world, but it doesn't feel like one, since it's all mission based, even the side content. There's no real exploration, you just follow the few mission markers (technically there are ? "random encounters", but they get you... nothing?)... and that's where it hurts, because the average mission is just flat and boring. Melee feels bad, shooting is not much better, and even bike chases with the admittedly really nice feeling bike? I couldn't shake off that... GTA3 chase scenes were better and more varied. Which is a bit sad!
And progression as usual with those SonyWarnerBisoft games is terrible.
Woohoo, choose +25 in one stat with the bandit zombie camp chest reward. Gain XP and unlock basic bitch skills like get twice as many sticks and animal meats! Aren't you glad we have RPG systems in those? Eurgh.
But I think Days Gone specifically fails hard at it with the bike upgrades, that's supposed to be suuuper relevant and... you grind a literal MMO reputation to get more shop options in camps (by picking up near literal bear asses and mushrooms), which is already terrible, only to unlock... gas tank 1 with a sliver more fuel on the stat bar. And then gas tank 2 to get even a little more.
They couldn't even add names? Are we stuck in 1991?
In the same way that the UI is maybe the worst I've seen in a AAA, barely usable tabs that you somehow still have to scroll through... horizontally, and everywhere you go, you see tiny square icons in black and white for items, loot, hell any interaction.
Can't we have SOME amount of flourishes for things? Hey it's a biker game, so what about skulls, leather, tattoos, anything more than clinical icons that feel like it's still in alpha?
It's just so disappointing to see such a creatively bankrupt game design in general, because it feels like it could have been much more interesting with more focus and less "modern" additions that either don't work or make it worse. It just stinks like exec meddling and AAA "needs" getting in the way.
And it's such a fantastically optimized game too, what a waste...