After “Horizon: Zero Dawn”, another game on Sony’s PS4, “Days of Future Past”, has also recently arrived on the PC platform. Compared to the console version, the PC version of “Days of Future Past” lifted the frame rate limit, further enhanced the visual effects of the screen, and adapted to the mouse and handle devices other than the DS4.
This work is developed by Bend Studio. Although backed by Sony has strong development funds and technical support, the early PSV “Mysterious Seas: Golden Abyss” also has a good reputation, but look at Bend Studio’s resume in recent years did not have the experience of developing a masterpiece, this is also considered the largest volume of their production games.
The devastated Oregon
Days of Future No More” tells the story of Deacon, a biker who rides a motorcycle and carries a stick and gun to find the truth about his wife’s death, and kills his enemies in a world full of mutants. Doomsday survival games can be said to be a popular title in the previous two years. However, in the shaping of the open world, “Days of Future No More” is not exempt from the formulaic design. Large and small camp strongholds, mountains of material resources, collectibles everywhere, the set of “random” events, these have long been commonplace content constitute the “Days of Future Past” the entire open world exploration stage.
The good thing is that the game’s graphics are excellent, and thanks to the strong technical strength, “Days of Future Past” presents players with a fairly realistic post-apocalyptic world. The story takes place in the Oregon region of the United States, and as the area changes, from forests and snowy mountains to mountain roads and crater lakes, the game shows a richer scene and very much in line with the features of the real world landscape.
Just by looking at the surface, the whole game reveals an atmosphere from nature. Due to the outbreak of infection, human areas have been full of devastation, houses and buildings in disrepair become the nest of mutants, highways and roads are piled up with abandoned cars, survivors can only leave the concrete city jungle, and return to the more primitive camp mode of survival, which compared with the natural environment formed a strong sense of contrast, impressive.
The realistic and detailed scene modeling, open field of view and the vast and complex terrain make players have a strong desire to explore after entering the game for the first time. Destroy bandits and bandits in the wild strongholds, collect resources in the decaying towns, burn down mutant lairs, and solve some random events based on clues. The above content is not new, but for most players is easy to get started, without a lot of effort to learn to learn the tutorial can easily master. However, in the later stages of these formulaic mode of play design or easy to make people feel repetitive.
The battle system of infiltration and assassination and fast grass cutting
The combat mode of this work is basically the same as the survival action games on the market, melee combat to wield a variety of sticks, machetes to slash, long-range is more standard third-person over-the-shoulder shooting, players can also be supplemented with various types of throwing props, traps to kill the enemy.
The combat experience of “Days of Future Past” has more obvious differences in the early and late stages. In the early stages, players’ skills and equipment have not yet become a system, and the variety of props is not rich enough to face a large number of enemies at the same time. So infiltration and assassination became the main mode of combat. With the level of advancement, skills and weapons gradually unlocked, the player’s combat power will be greatly enhanced, then even in the face of the tide of corpses also have a battle.
At the beginning of the game, the player is often not too much of a bargain against the enemy. This stage must be more use of junk cars, walls, grass, etc. as cover, waiting for the enemy does not check from behind to give a fatal blow. The good thing is that most of the enemies encountered during this period do not have strong perception, so it is not very difficult to kill them one by one.
Scavenging around for resources, planning infiltration routes, and using limited supplies to kill more enemies, the game is still very much a survival game experience at the beginning.
And with the unlocking of powerful melee skills, the player’s mode of play will also change. The brute ram, home run, clearing these skills can let the player leisurely cut to kill the stragglers, do not need to sneak sneak attack from behind. So the game in the later stages of the combat difficulty and play point is mainly reflected in the fight against the huge tide of corpses, the field and the town of stragglers is not a threat to players.
The game’s skill level is not much, the pre-requisite is also relatively simple, so whether it is close combat or far into the system to learn some advanced skills does not require too high a cost, the correct planning of skill points can make the game quickly drop in difficulty, which is far from the early step by step combat ideas.
In addition, the game whether it is assassination or frontal slashing are very power sense and full of blood, the use of spikes bat, fire axe, machete like chopping and killing mutants or very sensational.
As for long-range weapons, there are machine guns used to deal with a large number of corpses, sniper rifles for long-range penetration, crossbows for infiltration, small pistols to wear and rifles and submachine guns for regular combat, etc. There is no difference in the use of these weapons and regular shooting games, and players basically choose depending on the situation and their own preferences, the overall moderate, but due to the number of bullets carried But due to the constraints of the number of bullets carried, the firearms in this work can not be used with impunity like some other shooting games.
The role of throwing props is naturally the same as most shooter games, like incendiary bombs, in addition to burning mutant lair, the biggest role is to cooperate with machine guns and other weapons to kill the huge number of corpses. The game’s corpse tide when the scene is extremely spectacular, the first encounter can only drive away, but with the improvement of the player’s fighting ability, the use of terrain, the scene of the gasoline cans, with petrol bombs, grenades, machine guns and other ranged weapons to destroy the corpse tide is not a nightmare, this is also the most challenging content of the game, of course, do their best to destroy the corpse tide brings a sense of achievement is also incomparable.
Against the sawmill corpse tide personal opinion is the most exciting battle in the game. The sawmill terrain is complex, uneven, indoor and outdoor can be moved, and there are more interactive elements, which not only makes the player’s fighting ideas become more rich, while the four-way road, so players are easy to turn the corner to meet the ghost, enhance the sense of urgency of the battle, seems more tense and exciting.
The “speedy” exploration mode
In “Days of Future Past”, motorcycles are the most important “partners” for players to explore. Players need to modify the motorcycles to improve the speed, durability, fuel, ammunition storage and other performance of the vehicles, in addition to the appearance of the motorcycles can also be modified. The depth of the tuning system in the game is naturally not comparable to some professional racing games, but it is intuitive and easy to understand.
In “Days of Future Past”, motorcycles also need to be refueled and repaired, and the game runs out of fuel very quickly in the early stages without modifying the fuel tank capacity, which leads to players often having to search for fuel during exploration. This is the same as the horse maintenance in “Wilderness Outlaws 2”, a system that seems incredibly realistic and sometimes may not give players a good experience, and the frequent search for gasoline cans to refuel is inevitably tiresome. In addition, the game’s motorcycles are also responsible for field archiving and fast teleportation, the role and status of motorcycles in the daily game is basically irreplaceable, which further highlights the problem of cumbersome refueling settings.
All in all, the feeling of riding a motorcycle in the wilderness is certainly enjoyable, but due to the durability and fuel settings, players are often not able to truly ride in the wind and gallop at will.
The last thing I’d like to mention is the plot line system. The main line of this game is different from other games in that there are several tasks to be completed in a single plot line, and these tasks are often staggered. This is a break from the more linear flow pattern of the general game, but due to the lack of plot explanation and articulation, making the game’s entire plot experience seems fragmented and lacking in coherence.
Review Summary
With powerful graphics, “Days of Future Past” has shaped a more realistic post-apocalyptic world, and the game’s audio-visual experience is no less than that of the previous Sony exclusives. But the game’s open-world gameplay seems too formulaic, into the game a look at resources, strongholds, trust and other content, the player can basically figure out the entire game’s formula gameplay, the lack of a bright place to see. As for the combat part, although the contrast between the rhythm of the game before and after the game is large, seems a bit contradictory, but the overall is still very smooth and fast, especially the part against the tide of corpses, is one of the highlights of the game worthy of praise.
Performance test
In this “Days of Future No More” game review, we used MSI (MSI) Aegis Ti5 water-cooled gaming gaming console, the hardware configuration for the Intel Core i9 10900K, MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Wan Tu Shi 10G, MSI Z490 M-ATX special custom models, test results are as follows for your reference.