This review contains minor spoilers about mission structure and overall story direction. There are no spoilers for major narrative moments.
Around 10 hours into Days Gone, you’re thrown into a hunting tutorial apropos of nothing. The over-the-top libertarian character takes you out with a rifle and shows you how to track a deer, although you’ve already had a tracking tutorial. You’re then tasked with getting more meat for you and your buddy because your supply is running low, something you never have to do again. You also don’t cook or eat; you can only donate meat to camps around the map to earn a negligible amount of trust and money with them. After a little while, even stopping to get meat off wolves that attacked you doesn’t seem worth it.
Like many things in Days Gone, hunting exists just to be there, an idea that is picked up and then abandoned at random. Unlike hunting, some of those ideas are even good in the moment. But most aspects of Days Gone lack purpose. Its many narrative threads flirt with being meaningful and interesting but never quite commit, with characters whose actions and motivations don’t make sense. Riding a souped-up motorcycle through the world and taking out zombie nests and hordes is satisfying in the way that completing open-world checklists often is, but by the end, you’re left to wonder what the point of it all was.
The first act of the game–about 20 hours or so–sets up quite a few narrative arcs. Two years after the initial “Freaker” outbreak, biker buddies Deacon St. John and Boozer have become drifters doing odd jobs for nearby survivor camps and keeping mostly to themselves. Deacon’s wife, Sarah, had been stabbed at the very beginning of the outbreak; Deacon put her on a government helicopter bound for a refugee camp so she could get medical attention, but when he and Boozer arrived, the camp has been overrun by Freaks, and Sarah had apparently died. Deacon is understandably not coping with it well. Boozer suggests riding north and leaving the memories behind, but Deacon’s bike breaks down and is subsequently looted for parts, so one of your main goals is to earn trust and credits at the nearby camps in order to rebuild your motorcycle.
The motorcycle is central to everything you do in Days Gone. Getting anywhere, including by fast travel, requires your bike, and if you want to save while out in the world, you better be right next to it. Getting off your bike is a matter of both your entrance and your exit; you need to stop far enough away from enemies so they don’t hear you coming, but you also need to be able to run to your bike quickly if things go south and you need to escape. And, as you’re sneaking past Freakers to loot things like bandages and ammo, you also need to be on the lookout for a gas can and some scrap metal to keep your bike in top shape–if it breaks down or runs out of gas, you’re basically screwed. That said, gas and other loot do regenerate if you leave and return to a location, so you’ll never truly run out of anything so long as you put in the time to look for it.
At the beginning, you do jobs for two camps: Copeland’s conspiracy theorist stronghold and Tucker’s hellish forced-labor camp. Copeland’s has a mechanic capable of upgrading your bike, while Tucker’s has a well-stocked weapons merchant. Your starter junk bike gets about a mile per gallon, and you can’t store a gas can on your bike or your person, so you either have to return to a camp to fuel up or constantly scrounge for gas cans out in Freaker territory. This makes wandering around and doing things in the open world frustrating at first, so you do a lot of throwaway missions for the two camps to start.
Many of these early missions consist of cookie-cutter bounty-hunting and rescue jobs in which you go to a place, track a person using your apparently psychic Survival Vision to highlight footprints and other clues, and then kill some bandits or Freakers. Some of these require you to take the target alive, which often means chasing them on your bike and shooting at their tires with your pistol. If you happen to run out of gas or ammo, or if your bike is already weak and breaks down after a couple of bumpy turns, you auto-fail these missions and have to start over. You also accelerate with R2 and shoot with R1, which, while not horrible, is clunky and awkward.
One early scene involving a drug thief kicks off a series of missions like these that, once completed, has no bearing on the rest of the game despite initial appearances; once you track down the stolen drugs you have to choose which camp to return them to, but there are no consequences either way, and then the situation is dropped entirely. The only result is getting some trust and credits with one of the camps–I chose Copeland simply because I wanted money for a better fuel tank. A lot of the story missions going forward, as you discover a third, more narratively relevant camp, follow the same structures as these earlier missions. But the focus on Tucker and Copeland specifically amounts to hours of nothing in the grand scheme of the story. Tucker’s forced labor doesn’t come back to bite anyone, and while Tucker and Copeland don’t seem to like each other, doing work for one camp doesn’t affect your relationship with the other. Once you get to the third camp, Lost Lake, Tucker and Copeland cease to matter at all, not least because Lost Lake has both a better mechanic and better weapons.
Once you upgrade your bike a bit, though, the world opens up. No longer bound by low gas mileage and a weak arsenal, you can head further out and more handily take on enemy-controlled areas around the map. You clear ambush camps by killing everyone present and eliminate Freaker infestation zones by burning all their nests. In addition to trust and credits, clearing an ambush camp nets you resources to loot, a map of the area, and a new fast travel point; destroying an infestation zone allows you to fast travel in the area. Unlocking the map and neutralizing threats is satisfying in the way that cleaning up clutter bit by bit is, and you can see your work pay off in your bike’s upgrades. However, there’s little variety between each ambush camp and infestation zone, and they get repetitive early–especially because Deacon dry-heaves and whines about the nests smelling horrible at each one.
The real motivation to do all of this is twofold. Early on in the game, Deacon’s best friend Boozer is attacked by a group of Rippers, a doomsday cult with a number of bizarre rituals. The Rippers singe a tattoo off Boozer’s arm and leave him with third-degree burns, so Deacon’s purpose in life is to keep Boozer alive and healthy. This mostly involves finding sterile bandages and the one mission where you gather meat for him. On top of that, though, Deacon sees a helicopter belonging to the government agency NERO, which had been involved in the initial relief effort, flying overhead. That gives Deacon a bit of hope that Sarah might still be alive, since he’d put her on a NERO helicopter after she was stabbed, so you start stalking the NERO soldiers and scientists to investigate further.
There are a number of flashbacks to Deacon’s relationship with Sarah before the outbreak, bolstered by his hope that she’s alive. They’re largely awkward cutscenes interspersed with short sections of walking slowly while Sarah and Deacon talk about surface-level topics, and they don’t ever provide a convincing reason why they’re together. Deacon is a biker and Sarah is a “nice girl” scientist, which is fine, but “opposites attract” isn’t enough to make their relationship compelling. It’s romantic in that Deacon hasn’t given up on Sarah, but the main takeaway from the flashbacks is that they’re physically attracted to each other and that Deacon doesn’t talk about his feelings.
The NERO arc is where things really pick up. Spying on the NERO scientists consists of insta-fail stealth missions. They can be frustrating before you unlock abilities to improve your stealth skills, but the conversations you overhear are legitimately interesting and answer questions that other zombie fiction often neglects. For example, you learn from one eavesdropping on a scientist studying Freaker scat that they eat more than just other people and each other–they also eat plants, and that means they’re not going to starve any time soon (like in 28 Days Later). Deacon quickly gets in contact with a NERO researcher who uses government resources to track down what might have happened to Sarah. Even though their relationship is confusing, it is a tempting mystery.
Abandoned Nero medical units and research sites contain more small details, including recorders that play snippets of scenes–a scientist studying a Freaker specimen, the moment a camp got overrun, or just banter between soldiers. Getting inside a unit is a matter of refueling the generator, making sure to find and disable every speaker nearby so the noise doesn’t attract Freakers. Finding each speaker can be a bit tricky at certain sites, which makes the moment you turn the power on more exciting and the realization that you’re in the clear more of a relief. And in addition to satisfying your curiosity, you’re also given the more tangible reward of an injector that improves your health, stamina, and bullet-time-like focus ability.
As you learn more about NERO and the Freakers, you’re introduced to new, more powerful types of Freaks, including a berserker and an all-female variant that screams to attract more Freaks your way. They don’t really provide new challenges so much as slow you down, and they feel like a stopgap measure to tide you over until the first horde-based mission around 40 hours into the game. That first horde mission is exhilarating–running around while using tight spaces and molotovs to keep the horde off you, eventually taking out hundreds of Freakers, is a well-earned victory. But that mission is followed very quickly by another one, and after a short break, you have two more nearly back-to-back horde missions that lead up to the end of the main story. Without any breathing room, the hordes are exhausting to deal with, and you’ll likely have to stop everything to loot and rebuild your stockpile of resources after each one just so you can progress.
Ultimately, though, Days Gone isn’t about NERO or Sarah or the Freakers. It’s about Deacon, and what he wants is what matters. Narrative threads are dropped as soon as Deacon no longer has a use for them. Copeland and Tucker only matter until Deacon gets to a camp that has better supplies. Boozer’s health is only important because it’s Deacon’s reason for living. Even the fascinating little details about the Freakers are useless to Deacon, who only cares about Sarah–but not what Sarah wants or needs, just that his “ol’ lady” might be alive somewhere. Every character is seen through this Deacon-focused lens, and as a result, they’re two-dimensional.
Deacon is selfish, and it’s simply boring that the game is uncritical of him.
Deacon does not learn anything over the course of the game, and the story is concerned with validating his actions and feelings above all else. When one character urges him not to kill anyone in cold blood, Deacon “proves” that murder is better than mercy. As Boozer nearly breaks through to Deacon about learning to let go, Deacon learns something new about NERO and clings to his hope even harder. Deacon also has a policy where he doesn’t kill unarmed women, which does not affect the story in any way and goes completely unexamined. There’s no introspection here; Deacon is selfish, and it’s simply boring that the game is uncritical of him.
I did a lot of things in Days Gone. I burned every single Freaker nest; I cleared every ambush camp; I maxed out my bike; I took out a few optional hordes just because. Like Deacon with Sarah, I kept going because I hoped to find something, to follow a thread to a possibly fascinating or satisfying or impactful conclusion. But at the end of it all, I’d only gotten scraps.
We’re not sure if you’ve noticed but Avengers: Endgame is out this week. To coincide with the launch of Marvel’s arthouse indie flick about a group of best buds taking on a radical activist, Epic Games has introduced a crossover event into its little multiplayer game Fortnite.
Over the next few days, those playing the Endgame LTM will be split into two teams. One team will be aligned with Thanos and the Chitauri, while the others will be taking on the role of the heroes. Team Thanos must find all the Infinity Stones and power up the mad titan so he can decimate the enemy forces, while the heroes can locate and equip weapons used by the Avengers to bring Thanos and his army down.
Tying into the LTM is a set of challenges which, when completed, will unlock some really cool cosmetic rewards. Arguably the most exciting is a new Glider that is modeled after the Quinjet. There are also sprays, emoticons, and banners themed after the franchise. The initial three challenges are available now, and involve using Iron Man’s repulsors to do damage, collecting three Infinity Stones, and playing seven Endgame LTM matches. More challenges will become available every two days, and you can take a look at the rewards on offer below.
Fortnite’s Avengers: Endgame Challenges
Complete any 10 challenges to earn the reward item — Avenger’s Quinjet Glider
Deal damage while hovering with Iron Man’s repulsors (100) — 500 XP
Play matches of Endgame (7) — Captain America’s shield Banner
In our Avengers: Endgame review, Michael Rougeau described the movie as “a love letter to the entire MCU–the whole thing.” He continued: “It’s messy and confusing, and there’s going to be a lot of discussion about whether the ending even makes sense … but holy hell is it an emotional, fulfilling ride. I have no doubt we’re going to spend the coming weeks picking and pulling it apart until we’ve over-analyzed every single aspect imaginable. But right now, in the aftermath, Avengers Endgame feels like a win.”
If you still have some time before you’re able to see the movie, we recommend checking out our guide for how to avoid Avengers: Endgame spoilers online. Staying unspoiled is trickier than you might think, but we’ve got some very handy tricks that will help.
Despite a tease and a livestream, James Bond’s 25th film adventure has not been revealed. Fans expected the title to be unveiled, possibly along with a trailer, but neither snippet was forthcoming at the reveal event.
Instead, we got some details regarding cast and crew. As expected, Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Lea Seydoux will all reprise their roles in what is still only known as Bond 25. Jeffrey Wright and Ben Whishaw also return.
Actors new to the series include Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Billy Magnussen (Game Night), Ana De Armas (Blade Runner 2049), David Dencik (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Lashana Lynch (Captain Marvel), and Dali Benssalah. Malek will seemingly play the film’s villain, as he stated his excitement to be a part of the film before promising to make sure “Bond does not have an easy ride.”
The only plot hints given away were that Bond is “not on active service” at the start of the film; he is instead “enjoying himself” in Jamaica. A plot synopsis continues: “His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.”
Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson confirmed the film’s script has been written by longtime Bond duo Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, along with newcomers Scott Z Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve).
Lastly, director Cary Fukunaga revealed a segment of filming has already been completed in Norway, and the crew is about to begin shooting in Jamaica. Production will then move to London and, finally, Italy.
The Bond actor himself, Daniel Craig, appeared reluctant to return for Bond 25. After wrapping Spectre, the previous film in the series, he claimed he’d rather slash his wrists than play the character again. He also said if he were to play Bond again, it would “only be for the money.” A year later, a report claimed that Craig was offered $150 million to star in the next two 007 movies, before the actor confirmed his return in August 2017.
Nintendo’s next mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, is getting a closed beta next month. The trial will be available in the US and Japan on Android devices only.
The beta, which is designed to help Nintendo fine-tune the game before its full release in summer 2019, will run from May 22 through June 4. You can apply until May 7 on the Mario Kart Tour website, though you must be using an Android phone to even see the option to apply. Also note that applying doesn’t guarantee you access: Nintendo says it will pick participants at random if there are more applicants than spaces.
In order to run the beta, your device must be running Android 4.4 or later and possess at least 1.5 GB of RAM. Android tablets are not supported in the beta, Nintendo says. One final stipulation is that your Nintendo account must be registered to a Gmail address, and not any other email provider. This is so your Nintendo account matches the Google account you’ll use to download the beta from the Google Play store.
Otherwise, Nintendo has not revealed much information about the beta, or indeed about the game itself. We don’t know what courses or characters will be playable, for example. The game was scheduled to be released before the end of March, but was then delayed until this summer.
The latest game in the racing series is Nintendo Switch’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has now sold nearly 17 million copies worldwide. For more on that title, read our Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review.
Sega is looking to join the ongoing trend of miniature consoles with its own Genesis Mini (or Mega Drive Mini, for those in Europe and Japan). As its name implies, the nostalgic console will collect some of the biggest and best 16-bit era games. Its design is based on the Model 1 Genesis and is about 55 percent smaller than the original. In addition, the Genesis Mini includes two classic three-button controllers, a USB-to-Micro-B power cable, a power adaptor, and an HDMI cable.
What makes the Sega Genesis Mini so notable is the fact that all the games included are being ported by developer M2, a studio known for its fantastic first-party production quality emulation of classic games. Aside from maybe Digital Eclipse, there are few other studios you’d want handling a task such as this.
So far, only 20 games have been confirmed of the Genesis Mini’s roster of 40 games. You can see what those games are below. Otherwise, check back often as we update this feature with the rest of the games as they get announced. It’s worth noting that Japan’s version of the console has a slightly different roster with several exclusive games only released in that country.
If you’re looking to grab a Genesis Mini, a few retailers already have listings for the console. Classic consoles have a history of selling out fast. So if you want the Sega Genesis Mini, consider pre-ordering now–lest you want to be overcharged by a scalper on eBay.
If you’re interested in playing Sega Genesis on a modern HDTV, you can always get yourself Analogue’s Mega Sg. GameSpot’s Managing Editor Peter Brown said in his Mega Sg review: “While roughly $200 is a lot to spend on a console to play Genesis games, right now, the Mega Sg is the easiest way to get them up and running on a modern TV without sacrificing audio or video quality–the support for Master System and Sega CD games is the icing on the cake.”
It’s a big week in Fortnite, which is now in Season 8, Week 9. The crossover event with Avengers: Endgame has begun and gives players the opportunity to wield iconic weapons against Thanos and his Chitauri army. On top of that, there are the regular weekly challenges, which you’ll want to complete if you want to unlock all the cosmetics for this season.
As always, there are two sets of challenges. The free selection is available to all players, while the Battle Pass challenges are exclusively for those that have spent V-Bucks on a premium Battle Pass. You should know the drill by now: Complete challenges to unlock Battle Stars, which will in turn level up your pass and give you cosmetics to customize your character with.
This week, in the free section, players will need to complete a multi-stage challenge that involves landing in multiple locations, starting with Loot Lake. On top of that, they’ll need to search seven chests at either Polar Peak or Lonely Lodge, and ride three Volcano Vents without ever landing.
For those with a paid Battle Pass, challenges involve dancing between specific landmarks, doing damage to enemies from below them, reviving a teammate using a Reboot Van, and taking out five enemies in different matches. You can see the complete list of challenges below.
Fortnite Season 8, Week 9 Challenges
Free
Stage 1 of 5: Land at Loot Lake — 1 Battle Star
Land at Lucky Landing
Land at Salty Springs
Land at Lonely Lodge
Land at Haunted Hills
Search chests at Polar Peak or Lonely Lodge (7) — 5 Battle Stars
Ride three different Volcano Vents without landing (1) — 10 Battle Stars
Battle Pass
Stage 1 of 3: Dance between three Ice Sculptures (1) — 1 Battle Star
Dance between three dinosaurs
Dance between four hot springs
Deal damage to opponents from below — 5 Battle Star
Revive a teammate at a Reboot Van (1) — 10 Battle Stars
Eliminate an opponent in different matches (5) — 10 Battle Stars
Season 8 is starting to wind down now, which means there’s not a lot of time left to complete challenges from previous weeks and get all the cosmetics in the Battle Pass. We’ve been keeping track of all the most difficult challenges and put together a comprehensive Fortnite Season 8 challenge guide. If you need to get Battle Stars fast, you can use that guide roundup to get the challenges done quickly.
The update that introduces the Avengers: Endgame crossover also makes some other tweaks and changes to the game, including how weapon swapping works. You can see everything that Epic Games has changed in its popular battle royale title in the full Fortnite update 8.50 patch notes.
Nintendo has shared its latest financial earnings results, giving us a much better look at Switch hardware and software sales during the fiscal year ended March 31. Despite being a comparatively slow year in terms of marquee game releases, causing Nintendo to fall short of its hardware sales estimates, the company’s most recent spate of exclusives have moved some impressive numbers.
As of March 31, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has sold more than 13.81 million units worldwide since launching back in December 2018, surpassing the lifetime sales of the series’ best-selling entry, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii, in a little under four months. Switch’s first proper Pokemon games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, have likewise been a huge sales success; since November, the pair have sold a combined 10.63 million copies, overtaking the series’ final 3DS installments, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which stand at 8.37 million copies.
This past fiscal year also saw a handful of new Mario games hit Switch, and these too are already off to a strong start for Nintendo. Super Mario Party has surpassed six million copies, while New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which launched this past January, has sold 3.31 million. That puts it above the standalone Wii U version New Super Luigi U and roughly two million units shy of the original New Super Mario Bros. U’s lifetime sales. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also continues to sell remarkably well; it moved an additional 7.47 million units in the previous fiscal year, bringing its lifetime Switch sales up to 16.69 million and moving it to the top of the company’s 10 best-selling Switch games.
Thanks to these strong software sales, Nintendo sold 16.95 million Switch consoles in the fiscal year, a 12.7% year-on-year increase, bringing the console up to 34.74 million units worldwide. Nintendo also says that 118.55 million software units were sold during the fiscal year (up 86.7% YoY). According to the company, “Combined with steadily-growing sales of titles released during previous fiscal years and titles released by other software publishers, the total number of million-seller titles during this fiscal year recorded 23.”
Nintendo has a number of big exclusives lined up for Switch this year, including Pokemon Sword and Shield and Super Mario Maker 2, which recently received a release date, so it’s likely the console will only continue its upward trajectory. Nintendo also reportedly has a cheaper Switch model on the way “by the end of June,” according to Bloomberg, although Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company has “no plans to announce” any new hardware at this year’s E3.
