Days Gone on PC

porcozaur said:

This game is boring af, though white points for the good port.

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Don't know what game you're playing. It's great. Love exploring. Love the atmosphere, and the gameplay/shooting mechanics. And even though I didn't initially, I even love the fact that I have to manage my gas constantly. It creates real emergent gameplay in that if you're in the wilderness, and can't find any gas cans you start to really think if you should head back, or maybe go foward towards a location on the map, and maybe find some gas.

This is how I found a couple of NERO stations, and also got more upgrades.

The only annoying thing is sometimes the enemy spawns. I constantly die to random wolves, or bandits. And just now I wanted to speed away from freakers, and one of them pretty much jumped at me, while at full speed, and knocked me off the bike. After trying to maneuver them, by rolling around, reloading and giving them headshots, I died. But when you're able to take out a half a dozen in that way, that are on you, it's really satisfying. The gunplay in particular is very well done. Guns feel nice and solid. Oh, speaking about guns, the local radio dude goes on a rant about gun control policy. And how if gun control wouldn't have been enforced, the zombies might've not overrun them. :lol:

Oh, forgot the other annoying thing. Besides the "return to the mission area" messages you sometimes get while on a mission, I now stumbled onto a NERO station that when I try to explore around it, since I can't find the path to it, I reach a point where it says something like "Please progress the story further to access this area". WTF. That's so lazy. They couldn't come up with a narrative reason why that area is sealed off, if it's for later in the game?

I loved this on my PS4Pro.

I don't know if I'll replay, though. Tempted, but probably not.

I more or less exhausted it in my playthrough.

That said, I don't think it's a great "open world" experience.

That is to say that I don't think the open world is really the heart of the game. The main attraction is the slow burn narrative and the excellent tone/atmosphere.

I absolutely adore the performance of Sam Witwer - and his mumbling delivery of internal monologue. I remember reading about that, and how he talked about his dislike of the usual game trope of having PCs talk out loud about their most private thoughts.

I find the compromise of mumbling lines great in terms of delivering exposition whilst keeping the plausible nature of the character.

Deacon is very much a broken human being - and it's 100% justified if you pay attention as the story unfolds.

Anyway, I envy people who get to enjoy this wonderful tale on a proper platform, with proper controls.

The more I play, the more I like it.

I wasn't impressed at first, but I'm at 20 hours now and really enjoying it. I think they did a great job with the world-building here. It's on par with Horizon Zero Dawn which I also enjoyed a lot.

There are nitpicks, but I think it's a really solid game overall. My biggest complaint would probably be the AI of the human enemies. It's really bad sometimes. Like when you're clearing an ambush camp and you get to a section of the camp where some of them are just lounging around as if they couldn't hear the gunfire from you killing their companions 30 yards away.

It gets even better as it goes on, I find.

The ending is a little underwhelming, but I won't spoil it.

I also started out somewhat bored for the first 10-15 hours - but the game just kept growing on me.

I ultimately found it one of the most plausible and human stories I've ever experienced in a game, within the context of the subject matter.

Certainly a lot more plausible when it comes to human behavior than Last of Us 2 - which is the game it reminds me of the most, for obvious reasons.

As I said, I don't think the open world aspect is the appeal - apart from it being absolutely beautiful.

I guess you might say it's a little like Witcher 3 in that way. The open world is there to get you immersed into the idea of an actual world - and not really to provide a great free-roaming experience.

Of course, it would be even better if the non-story activities and simulation aspect in Days Gone were great - but you can't have it all.

I did quite enjoy the progression, though. Most open worlds tend to fail in providing meaningful upgrades for an extended playtime - but Days Gone managed to balance that aspect surprisingly well.

I'm also enjoying it, but the only thing that is consistently troubling me is how uneven the random encounters with spawned enemies are. I constantly have my attempts at story missions, interfered with enemies on the road to there. Either sniper take me off my bike with pin-point accuracy, or the most frequent encounter I have is with wolves. They are the bane of my existence. It's come to the point that if I have a couple chasing me right near where a story mission would start, I'd drive back and forth, and just slam them with my bike. in order to not waste ammo, since they're so fast and also take quite a punishment.

Last mission I did yesterday was saving the teenage girl that was left behind, and taking her to Tucker's camp. And boy was that an adventure. I made the mistake of clearing out 2 infested freaker nests before reaching her house, so that coupled with fighting the rippers left me almost without gun/rifle ammo. I only had 2 grenades and 3 molotovs. So after getting her out of her house, I pretty much had to sneak my way back to my bike, and somehow managed to kill a few freakers without triggering the load of them.

And then comes the fight with the bear. Having no ammo to use against it, I had to resort to exploiting his AI, but luring him towards me, climbing the school bus and throwing molotovs and finally grenades. Took a very long time since after catching on fire, he always runs away. So I then have to wait for his AI to reset and come back to me.

And to top that off, I then had the encounter with the dozen or so armed bandits in the long tunnel back through the mountain. I had 1 rifle bullet, 1 pistol bullet, 1 smoke grenade and one molotov. So, not wanting to restart the whole mission over, I managed, with great difficulty, to take them all out, using that limited arsenal. Took around 10 tries i think, but in the end it worked. Again, it took quite a lot of exploiting the AI. I've had 2-3 melee fights with soldiers where I was behind cover to not get shot at by the bandits that were out of my range, would then run to one of the closer bandits, hit him 2-3 times with my dagger, and then roll back into cover, and then rinse and repeat to not allow him to shoot at me.

After a couple of those, I finally managed to get 2-3 more bullets, so I managed to headshot the rest of them using focus. Thank god I put most of those NERO points into focus, and not the other ones.

Having been given access to Lost Lake, and the new faction, I've done some exploration around the area. And I've noticed something really weird. Between Lost Lake and Iron Mike's farm, I found at least two gas stations, they also have the fuel icon on the map. But in both gas stations there are no oil canisters spawned. Is that normal? Is there a plot reason why that is? I've explored a lot around both, and there definitely is none. All other gas stations I've encountered previously had at least one canister.

Oh, and those wolves I keep complaining about, really give me no respite. They even came for me inside the gas station. Hilarious.

And another weird thing about Lost Lake, I arrived there in great sunny weather. And when I reloaded, there was snow everywhere. Weird, so snow is only available in this area of the game? I guess they have to have all their biomes on this whole map.

danutz_plusplus said:

Having been given access to Lost Lake, and the new faction, I've done some exploration around the area. And I've noticed something really weird. Between Lost Lake and Iron Mike's farm, I found at least two gas stations, they also have the fuel icon on the map. But in both gas stations there are no oil canisters spawned. Is that normal? Is there a plot reason why that is? I've explored a lot around both, and there definitely is none. All other gas stations I've encountered previously had at least one canister.

Oh, and those wolves I keep complaining about, really give me no respite. They even came for me inside the gas station. Hilarious.

And another weird thing about Lost Lake, I arrived there in great sunny weather. And when I reloaded, there was snow everywhere. Weird, so snow is only available in this area of the game? I guess they have to have all their biomes on this whole map.

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I don't know if you're aware of this, but you don't actually need the gas canisters to fuel your bike. You can just use the actual gas station.

As for the biomes, yes, they are indeed different - including weather patterns. You will be seeing a lot more snow in another area.

TheDart said:

I don't know if you're aware of this, but you don't actually need the gas canisters to fuel your bike. You can just use the actual gas station.

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Holy shit, I did not know that. I just looked over a youtube video and apparently you have to be on your bike while near a pump to use it. I've only ever used the cannisters and manually poured oil into the tank. Thanks for the tip.

https://in.ign.com/days-gone/159155/news/days-gone-pc-data-collection-policy-is-a-privacy-nightmare what a bunch of retards

porcozaur said:

https://in.ign.com/days-gone/159155/news/days-gone-pc-data-collection-policy-is-a-privacy-nightmare what a bunch of retards

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Unfortunate. But if they bring over Bloodborne and The Last of Us games, I'll gladly agree to the same privacy policy.

Apparently, that article is based on misinformation and IGN didn't do any real fact
checking before running with it. Big surprise there

Who knows, though.

Not that I personally care too much about data collection as long as it doesn't impact performance.

TheDart said:

Not that I personally care too much about data collection as long as it doesn't impact performance.

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I generally do care, but if they bring those 3 games over to PC, I'll turn a blind eye.

I'd love to see TLoU on PC. I still haven't played the second game, nor have I ever played the remastered version of the original.

I'm sure we'll get them eventually. It's essentially free money for Sony - they just need to pull themselves together.

Not that LoU2 quite lives up to the first game, but that's another story. It's so full of amazing things, though - and well worth playing.

TheDart said:

Not that LoU2 quite lives up to the first game, but that's another story. It's so full of amazing things, though - and well worth playing.

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Do you mean gameplay-wise? The plot unfortunately was completely spoiled for me during the internet backlash after it was released.

JDR13 said:

Do you mean gameplay-wise? The plot unfortunately was completely spoiled for me during the internet backlash after it was released.

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I think the gameplay is superior to the first game - but the pacing and certain story beats just don't work.

But that's also because I considered the first game nearly perfect when it comes to story and a very elegant execution.

LoU2 is all over the place - and I could certainly tell that multiple lead writers were involved.

To me, it seemed like a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.

That said, I didn't think the first game had amazing gameplay - and neither does the sequel. It's a little too repetitive for my tastes.

But the production values are through the roof, and stuff like the performances and the music is just out of this world level of quality.

Without a doubt the most impressive game I've seen on a console, on a technical level.

Of course, that's all subjective.

Regarding Last of Us, playing the remastered version is a must play imo. Did you at least play the Left Behind DLC? But even without that, 60fps is much better.

Played some more of Days Gone.

I've finished the longest mission in the game so far, by a long mile. Compared to most others. The one where you go with Rikki to the hydroplant. That really kept on going. Most others are one stage, and then back to base. One thing that's consistently standing out in this game is it's got pretty good character building. They keep layering on character's histories together, and I like it.

One thing that's getting a bit repettitive are the missions for O'Brian. I'm on my 6th I think, where I keep sneaking around the NERO scientist and squad to put together little bits. And Deacon hasn't heard anything from him about Sarah. Kinda funny.

I also like how they keep introducing facts about the Horde, like it's a natural phenomenon. But I really like that they're probably gonna try something practical against them, or at least that's what the game is hinting towards.

One thing I dislike about the Horde is missions where I ride for some time to reach the missions location, only to get there and see a horde all around the place. That's when I go "nope" and ride back to town to sleep it off, so that the Horde is gone.

Also, I just noticed how every now and then the facial animation and modeling/texturing is phenomenal, bordering on photo-realism. Every now and then the eyes are almost perfect. At least to my eyes.

EDIT: Oh forgot to mention one of the NERO stations I clearing during a blizzard, and there was a horde just 100+ m I thin away. They were actually within earshot, and were moving around, but weren't moving towards me it seemed. So I had to look for spark plugs, fuel and clear the station hearing them in the distance. And at one point, either some of them or the whole thing moved even close to the NERO station. Which is when I cleared out of there, biking between freakers that migrated at the front of the opening out of the NERO base. It's weird how I can never trust the AI, if it's just doing it's thing and detects me. Or if the game actively tries to spawn them near me, and move them towards me.

But anyway, the whole clearing of the NERO was so intense. The atmosphere was phenomenal. It was dark, snowing heavily, the snow glistening on the road, and me working around the NERO station trying to get in.

I'm glad you guys are happy with it! Having played it on console last summer and seeing the interest in it here, I wasn't sure you'd like it as much as you hoped to. In many ways, it's a very console-ish, Ubisoft marker clearing game. And personally I was a bit meh on the story. But I happen to still like a lot of Ubisoft style games, and I liked this one. I particularly thought they nailed the tension of zombies as well as any game has. I had some very cinematic improvised escapes that got the blood pumping.

JFarrell71 said:

I'm glad you guys are happy with it! Having played it on console last summer and seeing the interest in it here, I wasn't sure you'd like it as much as you hoped to. In many ways, it's a very console-ish, Ubisoft marker clearing game. And personally I was a bit meh on the story. But I happen to still like a lot of Ubisoft style games, and I liked this one. I particularly thought they nailed the tension of zombies as well as any game has. I had some very cinematic improvised escapes that got the blood pumping.

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I find that this game pulled off what I wanted the Division to pull off. To build a real singleplayer game in a post-apocalyptic setting, with fantastic visuals. But Ubisoft just wanted an live service item grinding game, instead of focusing on the narrative and world building.

One recent mission in Days Gone was a disappointment, in that it had so much potential to throw a wrench in the usual way I do things. It's the mission where you get sent to bring back Boozer's bike. I thought they would do it by making me trek all the way up there on foot, to bring the bike myself. But no, once you get on his bike, the game cuts to back in Lost Lake with his bike, and then tells you they brought your bike so you don't have to bother. It could've been a very tense trek on foot.

Once in a while I make the decision to leave my bike somewhere, and just explore something in the distance, since I'm lazy to just go back after it. And it really amplifies tension. In that I know that if I stumble onto a horde, I'm probably done for.

danutz_plusplus said:

I find that this game pulled off what I wanted the Division to pull off. To build a real singleplayer game in a post-apocalyptic setting, with fantastic visuals. But Ubisoft just wanted an live service item grinding game, instead of focusing on the narrative and world building.

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Yeah, live service, "dynamic events", all that jazz pretty much tells me the game won't be for me, however interesting its skeleton. I do think The Division has a great skeleton. The atmosphere is fantastic. Strip out that live service elements, grinding, etc and make it a proper single player game and it would have been awesome.