YMMV / Days Gone

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Deacon and Sarah's rather strange wedding, with Deacon in his normal biker outfit while she's in a wedding dress and the tongue-in-cheek line "promise to ride me as much as you ride your bike", is actually accurate to weddings in biker culture.
  • It is revealed one of the factors to the Marauders' degraded minds is taking Bath Salts, which is a true drug that causes people to act like zombies.
• Critical Dissonance: While mainstream critics have agreed the game is So Okay, It's Average, most of the general playerbase have a much more positive opinion, with the Metacritic user score being an 8/10. The main theory is that Days Gone is thematically similar to The Last of Us, mechanically similar to Red Dead Redemption II and a general sense of "Zombie Fatigue". The game's main weakness being a narrative that isn't as strong as the other two games, which regular players were more willing to forgive that weakness than the critics were.
• Critic-Proof: The game sold very well in spite of it's middling reviews from critics. It sold over 9 million copies on Playstation and Steam in the first 18 months of release. The game even outsold Mortal Kombat X in the UK.
• Demonic Spiders: Wolves. They come in packs of three, frequently attack out of nowhere, their attacks are extremely fast and untelegraphed, do a lot of damage, and can soak up a surprising amount of firepower before going down. Their zombie counterparts, Runners, are even worse, as they can actually keep up with you on your motorcycle.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Deacon seems to have some by the time you get to play him. He's jumpy, is constantly clenching his right fist to control a twitch in his trigger finger, tends to mutter to himself and has trouble finishing sentences, which only becomes more pronounced when he learns NERO is still around. It's implied that the apocalypse is constantly triggering his PTSD from the war.
• Friendly Fandoms: Being a first-party triple-A title by Sony, Days Gone quickly formed friendly bonds with the company's other premier games.
  • Of particular note, it formed one with Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, and Death Stranding. Especially with Death Stranding due to both titles being 2019 PS4 exclusives that are set in a post-apocalyptic America and being notable for receiving a divisive reception from press and gamers alike. It helps that both SIE Bend and Kojima Productions are on friendly terms, with the former helped working on Death Stranding, Days Gone releasing free content based on the game, and both games in general enjoying a warmer reception post-launch than at release.
  • Also with Red Dead Redemption II, with many noticing Days Gone taking cues from Rockstar Games titles in terms of mechanics and structure.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Criers are infected ravens that are difficult to shoot, move quickly, do a startling amount of damage, and actively attempt to blindside you. Fortunately, burning the local nest seems to get rid of all of them in a given area.
  • Bear traps and snares. It's probable that, when attempting to fight a group of enemies, you’ll come across one that you won't notice until you’re caught in it, which could lead to death depending on how much health you have and how many enemies are around.
• Good Bad Bug: Hordes will only chase you a certain distances away from where they spawn and up to that point will give up and head back even when you still attack them. If you are able to find this point taking on hordes can be a breeze.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • One of the most common criticisms of this game is that zombie survival has become an overplayed genre in video games and that, while beautiful, this game doesn't seem to do enough to innovate in that regard.
  • Also in terms of its premise and aesthetics, as it was the third big Sony-published game to be a post-apocalyptic adventure after The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn, and mostly merges the zombie apocalypse of the former to the Wide-Open Sandbox format of the latter.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The term "Freakers" used for the zombie-equivalents due to how silly it sounds.
  • People claiming that the game is a sequel to Ride to Hell: Retribution, particularly after the 2016 E3 trailer, since Deacon is a biker with a similar appearance to Jake Conway.
• Narm:
  • The name "Freakers" for the Technically-Living Zombie equivalent in the game. With a name like that, it's probably better to just call them zombies.
  • Deacon and Sarah's wedding has this uncomfortable line said by the latter; "Promise to ride me as much as you ride your bike." This was instantly made fun of on social media outlets. Though the line is Truth in Television, as a tongue-in-cheek saying used at biker weddings.
  • The way that the shirtless Freakers swarm over their pray in a circular pattern, it's hard not to see the resemblance to a mosh pit.
• Narm Charm: The fact that said wedding has Sarah wearing a traditional wedding dress while Deacon is dressed in his standard biker outfit (i.e. jeans, leather vest and backwards baseball cap). The line is an actual part of biker culture and a typical vow made in biker wedding ceremonies, as a tongue-in-cheek line.
• Scrappy Mechanic: You can only add guns to your gun locker if you purchased them, so any and all guns that you pick up while out exploring the open world can't be stashed for later retrieval.
• Tough Act to Follow: Even before its release, there was doubt that Days Gone could live up to the quality and acclaim set by the releases of Sony's previous big-budget games such as God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man and Horizon Zero Dawn, the last one also being a post-apocalyptic Wide-Open Sandbox. As noted on Critical Dissonance, this is ultimately Downplayed, as while Days Gone failed to receive critical acclaim among publications and was deemed So Okay, It's Average, it was still positively received by the gaming community and even managed to win a variety of awards after its release.
• She Panned It, Now She Sucks!:
  • Kallie Plagge of GameSpot was harassed on social media for her 5/10 review of the game, with her main complaints being about the story, in addition to being very similar to other recent games. Much of the harassment was instigated by a Youtuber (who had not played the game) lying that she hated the protagonist for being a white male, despite the review text making no such statement.
  • Like, Girlfriend Reviews also received harassing comments for dismissing the game as So Okay, It's Average.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: One of the main complaints of the game is that the game's story only really picks up at the last 3rd of the game.
• So Okay, It's Average: With a Metacritic score of 71, this has been the general critical reaction. Many critics argued that the game, while mostly enjoyable and well put-together, doesn't do anything too remarkable to make it stand out in the over-saturated genre of open world zombie and/or survival games, as well as negatively comparing it to previous Sony-published games. Coming off the heels of the surprisingly remarkable World War Z (2019) didn't help either.
• Strawman Has a Point: Most of the camp leaders have their faults when it comes to running their respective factions, but they all have understandable justifications:
  • Copeland is an unabashed conspiracy theorist and doomsday prepper who constantly airs heavily anti-government propaganda throughout the entire valley, but it's his refusal to be reliant on government assistance and him making full use of his Second Amendment rights to own firearms that contributed to him and his followers surviving the Freaker apocalypse.
  • Tucker is essentially no better than a slaveholder by running her settlement as a labor camp, where her followers are forced to work against their will. However, Tucker makes the point that resources are scarce and everybody has to chip in to make sure the whole camp doesn't starve. They simply do not have the luxury to let anybody freeload.
  • Iron Mike's idealism about appealing to humanity's good side makes him seem naïve and weak, especially in the face of the obviously evil Rippers. However, Iron Mike has already seen other survivor groups wipe each other out over their stubborn inability to coexist or make peace, and doesn't want to repeat the same mistake.
  • The Colonel is incredibly strict and rigid, commanding his followers like an army rather than a survivor group. However, he's the only faction leader who actually has long term goals in mind, like finding a way to permanently end the threat of the Freakers and preserving what's left of human civilization for future generations.
  • All four leaders also prioritize the survival of their groups, and are not out for personal gain or power. Even Garret's genocidal agenda in the end is in a misguided attempt at purging the world from all 'dangerous' people.
• Vindicated by History: Combined with its status as a Sleeper Hit, this appears to be the case for Days Gone. In the months after its release and by the time for its first-year anniversary, reception became much warmer thanks to SIE Bend working on patches to rectify glitches and other mistakes in the game, as well as constantly updating the game with free content and challenges. It's PC release was also extremely well done, using the high power of modern graphics cards to make the game shine with high framerates, graphics quality & resolutions.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Wade Taylor. After he murders Dr. Jiminez and steals the camps' supply of narcotics, when Deacon catches up to him he's blubbering on the floor about how he didn't mean to do it and how much he doesn't want to be hanged for murder. The game's narrative takes pity on him and Deacon gives him an overdose. Some players felt that, considering he murdered the camp doctor in cold blood, hanging was the least he deserved.

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