If you're able to, could you give me a quick summation of what you do in the game? I'm thinking of getting the game at 40 dollars but the mediocre reviews have scared me off a bit.
Yep! So it's fairly standard open world fare. Ignoring the narrative which I won't spoil, you roam the land on your motorbike carrying out jobs for various survivor encampments. You have story jobs, bounty hunting jobs, fetch quest stuff etc; you have to scavenge for items to craft weapons, you have a skill tree to upgrade your abilities.
On paper, it's all stuff you've done plenty of times before if you've played any open world games in the last few years. What elevates the entire experience for me was the following;
1 - The world. It's a fabulous achievement. It looks amazing graphically and Bend absolutely nailed the look and feel of a post apocalyptic landscape, the death and decay and remnants of panicked escapes from freakers as the civilised world crumbled. It's pure zombie fiction but writ large and beautiful in the visuals and the locations. There is very little recycling of assets, locations feel interesting and emotive to explore. It's one reason I never quite got the repetition complaints; yes you're mechanically doing the same stuff over and over again (as in all games?) but the places you do them all feel different and there are a multitude of strategies available to how you approach an objective. Stealth, agressive, a mixture, lure a horde to the area etc. You also have the day/night cycle which switches up enemies and how they react.
2 - The systems. You've got Deacon, various types of freakers, wolves, infected wolves, bears, infected bears, deer, cougars, various bad guy factions etc etc all interacting and it makes for some really interesting moments, especially when you stumble across something entirely unscripted. You can use some of this to your advantage or it can lead to some mad moments as you scramble away from a bear then a load of freakers, then a strong freaker variant gets involved etc.
3 - The hordes. I love 'em, they're just brilliant. It's not something I've ever seen in the the AAA space and they truly are something to behold; hundreds of individual freakers pouring over the landscape relentlessly chasing you down. It looks amazing, it sounds amazing and taking on a horde is great fun, requiring a bit of strategy, setting your traps, deciding your route then adapting on the fly as it all inevitably goes awry. Or those moments when you stumble into a horde just freeroaming, or your doing something entirely unrelated and attract the attentions of a nearby horde. They never got old for me, they're a technological achievement and I really engaged with them mechanically and narratively.
It has its flaws. I'd say it's maybe a tiiiiny bit too long, some of the missions and cutscenes aren't that great and I think they could have done a bit more with the hordes as they're the star of the show; but overall it hangs together really really well. The characters are great, the voice acting is stellar, the story is interesting and the themes really got me hooked. Traversal is really good, the bike is lovely (hence why I never fast travelled) and on PS4 Pro at least performance isn't as egregious as some people are claiming. A few areas stutter and drop but it's playable and for the vast majority of the game it all ran smoothly. I didn't have a single crash. The odd bug but nothing game breaking.
I thought a lot of the complaints were odd to be honest. That Eurogamer review for example was a bizarre mess by someone who clearly didn't want to be playing the game and went into it with a bad attitude apparently looking for things to nitpick.
Honestly, very often it feels like an open world Last of Us and frankly I can't think of higher praise. Very interested to see what any sequels give us on PS5.
