Days Gone – PAX East Preview

Days Gone is finally here and, though it was a long time coming, we’re finally starting to get an idea of what this game is shaping up to be.

The demo we played showed off a lot of the game’s mechanics in a short amount of time. Though unclear at first what to do or where to go, the demo at PAX East opens with Deacon on top of a hill. A truck, some supplies, and a look at his trusty motorcycle. One look at the ground below you and you’ll see a heard of Freakers standing around stagnate. It doesn’t take much to awaken them in a powerful way. After a couple of brutal deaths at the hands of the Freakers, one thing is clear – you must kill every one of them in order to survive. How you choose to carry out this action is up to you, but you better try more than just spraying bullets at them because ammo is hard to come by and you just can’t shoot them fast enough.

You’re going to have to plan out each battle before you go in guns blazing. What we found worked for us involved setting traps in both ends of the trench that held them, taking at as many as possible while you escape to a safer location. Hopefully the trap causes a nearby oil drum to explode and take out even more, leaving just a few (dozen) enemies chasing you like a pack of rabid wolves.

Now it’s just like shooting fish in a barrel, right? Wrong. There is no place safe from the onslaught of Freakers headed your way. From there it was time to use your guns, switching between shotgun and automatic weapons to take out the rest before they take get you.

They let us know as we triumphantly left the booth – this was only a small group of Freakers leaving us to wonder how in the hell are we going to take out a larger group!

Another less defined aspect of our demo involved your method of transportation across this grim world, your motorcycle.

Before heading down the hill to nightmare below, we took a ride around on the bike to see what all was involved with that part of the game. The bike handled well but turning was a little touchy and you’ll need to take it slow in areas with obstacles in your path. Jumping the bike off a cliff is doable if you land correctly with your wheels on the ground, but will cause ground damage to your bike. Each time you bump into anything your bike will receive some damage. Damage which you will have to repair if you hope to continue to have a ride. Taking a joy ride through a group of Freakers won’t end well for you either.

Days Gone releases in just about one month on April 26^th, 2019 exclusively on the PlayStation 4. Between the story trailer we recently saw and everything they revealed in this demo, we couldn’t be more excited to get our hands on the final product.

Ben Smith

Philip is better at buying video games than he is at playing them. He was once told “it must suck to love something so much and be so terrible at it.” As a boy he would write terrible poems about himself and Ross Perot. He enjoys the best and worst of all forms of media, but nothing in the middle. Puyo Puyo Tetris has almost caused unreconcilable differences between him and his wife. He’s never had a hangover, but not from lack of trying.