Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
I just started playing Days Gone on PS5 due to the recent Sony Bend leaks. I wanted to see first hand what "working off the systems of Days Gone" meant.
Roughly an hour into my experience playing a game, like the Norway Warning System, my brain identifies a critical failure of game design.
Deacon rides a Vespa with a gas tank the size of a premature babies bladder. The thing tops out at 13 mph, and has to be refueled every 200ft. Fine whatever, they want you upgrading this thing over the course of the 40 hour game. That's silly but I can accept it.
That leads you to having to find gas tanks in the open world every two minutes. THAT means you're getting off your Vespa, running/sneaking up to a gas tank, and getting seen by zombies that are everywhere.
Once you're seen by a zombie you instantly have two choices. You can spend the next 3 minutes of your life running towards tall grass/a dumpster/inside a house and sneaking your way back to the gas can....OR...or you can just let the zombies kill you and respawn 15 seconds back with the newfound knowledge of zombie locations.
THE GAME ENCOURAGES YOU TO LET THE ZOMBIES KILL YOU.
This is the Ford Pinto of game design.
I can stomach the dialogue, the poor encounter design, the lack of meaningful choice etc...I can not suffer the buffoonery of zombies acting as speed icons in the game world. Now I didn't pay attention to much of the discourse when this game launched in 2019, but was this a frequent point of criticism? I feel like all I ever heard about was the "Ride me like you ride your bike" line. How does this broken design get past any stage in the development process? This is bad and John Garvin and Jeff Ross and anyone wishing for a Days Gone 2 should feel bad. Burn this thing with fire, for the love of God.
Roughly an hour into my experience playing a game, like the Norway Warning System, my brain identifies a critical failure of game design.
Deacon rides a Vespa with a gas tank the size of a premature babies bladder. The thing tops out at 13 mph, and has to be refueled every 200ft. Fine whatever, they want you upgrading this thing over the course of the 40 hour game. That's silly but I can accept it.
That leads you to having to find gas tanks in the open world every two minutes. THAT means you're getting off your Vespa, running/sneaking up to a gas tank, and getting seen by zombies that are everywhere.
Once you're seen by a zombie you instantly have two choices. You can spend the next 3 minutes of your life running towards tall grass/a dumpster/inside a house and sneaking your way back to the gas can....OR...or you can just let the zombies kill you and respawn 15 seconds back with the newfound knowledge of zombie locations.
THE GAME ENCOURAGES YOU TO LET THE ZOMBIES KILL YOU.
This is the Ford Pinto of game design.
I can stomach the dialogue, the poor encounter design, the lack of meaningful choice etc...I can not suffer the buffoonery of zombies acting as speed icons in the game world. Now I didn't pay attention to much of the discourse when this game launched in 2019, but was this a frequent point of criticism? I feel like all I ever heard about was the "Ride me like you ride your bike" line. How does this broken design get past any stage in the development process? This is bad and John Garvin and Jeff Ross and anyone wishing for a Days Gone 2 should feel bad. Burn this thing with fire, for the love of God.
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