I started playing Days Gone today. The advance reviews have been poor but I’m a sucker for an open world game.

I recently started playing Far Cry: New Dawn and my first impression of Days Gone is that it is the love child of Far Cry, Horizon Zero Dawn and Left 4 Dead.

The base takedowns have the controls and feel of Far Cry but the magic bushes of Horizon Zero Dawn. The musical cues when you take on infestations remind me a lot of Left for Dead. Stealth infilitration of bases is one of the things I love about Far Cry and marking targets and systematically taking them apart is as mechnically enjoyable as ever. The fact that you’re fighting zombies makes the weird “game” aspect of the AI models that fail to notice their missing friends or who stare into space for hours feel more logical.

The bike building is very reminiscent of Mad Max so maybe this game is more like Frankenstein’s monster than a zombie. A rehash of the best bits of other games.

Deaths so far:

  • Lost a quick time event with a surprise zombie
  • Walked off a cliff (falling damage is brutal)
  • Chomped to death by riding my bike into a base instead of stopping near by and entering on foot
  • A wolf kited a bunch of zombies into my magical bush and one of them spotted me and attacked