Julius Posted October 3 Share Posted October 3 (edited) Started this up tonight as my first themed game for October after agreeing to play it alongside some friends this month a while back (one replaying the game and another also playing for the first time), and, well, yeah, what a mixed bag of a game in these opening 3-4 hours. Regardless of what I say below - and I am coming in straight up with a spicy take and will probably seem a bit harsh on the game, as I feel I always do after a first session - I will be trying my best to see this one through, as I always try to do when I start a game up. While I'm all for giving games a second chance, I feel like I can already see why PlayStation didn't give this one a sequel, because even after all these patches – it's so obviously on a completely different page to the rest of Sony's first-party that I'm honestly shocked that this saw the light of day, and I have to imagine that the reason Bend isn't closed right now is because this game sold incredibly well. I keep thinking this was a 2018 game – this released on 2019?! A year before Part II and Tsushima, and a good bit after the likes of God of War, Spider-Man and Horizon had already hit the PS4. The nicest way I can say this: it feels so much older. I also don't know who thought it was a great idea to name the blonde white female character at the centre of the main character's past in the PlayStation zombie post-ish-kinda-apocalypse game "Sarah", because how stupid can you honestly be to use the EXACT SAME NAME OF A CHARACTER WHO HAS A VERY SIMILAR PURPOSE TO THE STORY FROM THE FREAKING LAST OF US. BEND WHAT ARE YOU DOING. The game's opening was bad – oh cool, it's outbreak day! No wait are these just riots? Did he just say she got stabbed by some random kid? Oh wait no those guys are in hazmat suits I guess it is outbreak day! - and they don't really talk about the Freakers (this world's zombies), like...at all? Which is super bizarre. There was a long-ish loading screen before hitting the home screen, there are these long fade-to-blacks between cutscenes and gameplay and even cutscenes and other cutscenes, and it's all been so weirdly handled so far. I know that it's much better now than it was at launch, supposedly, but I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw so many loading screens - I've seen loading screens BETWEEN cutscenes!!! - in an SIE-published game. Maybe Bloodborne when I played it last year, that game from 2015? The story and characters feel pretty one-note so far, and very predictable, though it's cool to see a protagonist who doesn't mind carrying out some shadier deeds, and I appreciate the sarcasm – being a fan of Sam Witwer before this definitely helps. But anyways, then we have this guy who is supposed to be like a brother to us who I've spent all of 5 minutes with before he's been injured and is now just RPing as a guy from Firewatch, checking in on me while I do all the hard work and he's up in the watchtower? I've had no time to get attached at all to anyone so far. Going into this I'd already been made aware that it does run longer than some other PlayStation first-party games if you're just going through the story, and so it kills me to say this, but 3-4 hours in as I am now...I feel like I've kind of seen most, if not all, of what this game has to offer from a gameplay perspective. Like I said I will be seeing it through and maybe I'm wrong and there's this second map and all this new stuff introduced later on, but so far it is drive from point A to point B, complete mission, refuel; drive from point B to point C, complete mission, refuel; and so on. There's such a lack of variety to the main and side missions so far that it feels incredibly outdated and generic for an open world, you'll get the occasional new thing pop up in the open world to distract you - like getting shot off your bike by a sniper - and then you'll see it again 30 minutes after the first time it happened and just be like "oh, wait, so is this it?" also! Taking out the nests to clear out an area? Very time consuming and I genuinely can't see the benefit, I know it allows for fast travel routes to go through that area and revisiting the area safer, but, uh...just drive around the Freakers? Let's draw some blood from this stone and talk about what I like so far. The recordings coming through the controller is pretty cool? There's some emergent gameplay from time to time, I was getting chased by a small group of zombies and drove off on my bike to guide them towards some guy who had been chasing me for a minute or so; similarly, the wolves also hate noise, so one of the first missions when I was low on ammo I could just aggro enemies into shooting at me and the wolves would chow down on their faces, that was cool. I actually don't mind needing to refuel in and if itself? I think it's there to promote stopping by and doing side activities to get a chance to fill your tank back up, but the problem is I don't think those side activities so far have been particularly interesting. So, yeah, real mixed bag of sorts so far. What's saving this game for me right now is I came in expecting a 7 and it is absolutely swimming in the fact that it's nothing but a 7. And lastly, to put my money where my mouth is on this game being predictable as hell, my predictions: •Sarah is alive. Not as a Freaker, but alive alive, as a human alive. • She said she worked in plants research when she met Deacon for a company whose parent company is in bioengineering – so, that's NERO or some private company who works with them. She said she works with rare plants, some of which are only found in the area where the game kicks off - so either she accidentally caused this whole mess or, what would be even worse because it's even more predictable, is she's working on the cure. Against her will, probably? They have choppers still so they have a base of operations AND we keep talking about going up north, so, uh, military base up north I guess? Edited October 3 by Julius 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hero-of-Time Posted October 3 Author Share Posted October 3 Me and a mate of mine were having a conversation about this game the other week on the way to work due to the rumours of the remastered version popping up. We both didn't care for the game back when it released and we both think even less of it now. Every point you made @Julius is spot on to our own thoughts. I think the game would had been far better had it been more liner but then the comparisons to TLOU would have been made even more. Ultimately, it's a game that didn't really need to be made. Sony had their zombie/post apocalyptic game and didn't really need another in a similar setting. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julius Posted October 6 Share Posted October 6 (edited) While this game has issues - a loooooooot of issues - I'm pretty sure I've reached the last act now, and there's something intangible to it which makes it so easy to drop hour after hour into. I'm 20-something hours in at this point, and it's so far proving to be very moreish. Story has been predictable like I said before (and my previous predictions have already kind of come to pass), but there's an earnestness and honesty in how it presents some romantic relationships which I feel like you just don't really see in a lot of games. Swimming in 7s for sure right now, in much stronger waters than the weak rapids I felt I was swimming in after my first session with the game, and while I'll wait until it's wrapped up to see exactly where I land on it and if it tries to set up a sequel or leaves things a bit more open, there's an obvious enough foundation here which could have been built on very comfortably with a sequel. Right now, I honestly still maintain an opinion I had before starting the game, which I've held since news first came out that PlayStation passed on Bend doing a sequel: this should have been a TLOU spin-off, but not an obvious one. You said it before @Hero-of-Time but they already had a zombie property in TLOU, AND it was one with incredible sales and critical acclaim at that, so I think a true spin-off which dropped the name after they'd worked on a spin-off with the name in Uncharted: Golden Abyss would've been a wise step for the studio in building up their confidence. This game has so many freaks but none of them quite match up to their counterparts in TLOU, and the game is constantly hinting at their evolution, so imagine if the game's credits ended with the audio of a Clicker? There's only so much we know about the early days of the Outbreak in TLOU that something like this set closer to the start of it in a different state with its own set of characters and relationships and a totally different dynamic in the open world would make sense: these freaks are much more manageable at this point. I feel like just having it be tied to another property would demand a level of quality not on show here, but I'm not sure if Bend would have gone for it, which is a real shame. Because there's a level of hubris to this game playing through it now which is incredibly apparent to me after seeing the Days Gone creative director blow his fuse over Deacon being in Astro Bot, as a VIP Bot, which screams that Bend stupidly tried to go it entirely alone and thought they knew better – I'll try to seek out some bits and pieces on development after I complete the game but there's just that vibe to it. There are lessons from other PlayStation first-party games launched before this one which feels like they have been entirely ignored, and whereas, for instance, this game has loading screens galore, I played Ghost of Tsushima at launch on a base PS4 around a year after this dropped and the loading screens were some of the shortest I'd ever seen. I can't remember if I've ever played a first-party PlayStation game with a story emphasis whose cutscenes, and thus story, felt so disconnected and disjointed because of the loading screens and fade-to-blacks which run long, hell I had a fade-to-black yesterday which was so long I thought the game had crashed. Still a mixed bag, but so far it's a fun yet ultimately forgettable mixed bag. If I don't finish this up today I'll probably do so tomorrow Edited October 6 by Julius 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julius Posted October 6 Share Posted October 6 (edited) These goddamn crows By far the most annoying enemies in the game and not even joking Edited October 6 by Julius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julius Posted October 6 Share Posted October 6 (edited) Cutscene: "THERE'S A HORDE COMING, GET OUT OF THERE!" me: runs away Game: YOU ARE LEAVING THE MISSION AREA me: "oh maybe I went the wrong way, let's try following the waypoint marker again" Game: leads me into the middle of the horde JUST SAY YOU WANT ME TO FIGHT THEM COME ONNNN Edited October 6 by Julius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrowingJoe79 Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago Sequel > remaster - that is all. 🏍 😎 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts