Bummed that it’s apparently got some big flaws. I don’t pay attention to review scores, no one should. Trends and fads come and go and personal bias and political correctness come into play and all can greatly impact an overall score despite how the reviewer actually felt about the game. I think Dying Light was pretty amazing, probably the best zombie game ever, and it’s mid 70’s on Metacritic. Dead by Daylight on Xbox is my most played game ever and it’s a 58.

That said, I really hoped for good things here, was looking forward to using my Pro again. I haven’t turned it on in months. But reading these reviews, I guess I’ll wait for $20. Bloated campaign with crappy open world mechanics, repetitive gameplay, a bad story, and technical issues including apparently bad frame drops... no thanks. I almost went and preordered yesterday. Glad I didn’t.

Tbh reading some of the reviews I’m surprised it’s even as high as 72. Some of the scores were surprising though. IIRC a 5 from Gamespot? Yikes.

There are definitely websites out there whose reviews you should be cautious about due to potential injection of sociopolitical ideologies skewing the review instead of trying to be as objectively informative as possible for consumers. That being said, a combined critical reception of low 70's really tells me that this goes beyond that. Plenty of games out there feature white male protagonists which also sometimes has content objectionable to the easily offended (objectification, implied rape, etc) that have received high scores this generation. I can think of six or seven off the top of my head that have even been Game of the Year contenders, if not winners.

How interesting. I saw 0 votes before the reviews went up and it took a while until someone actually voted that option.

Oof, that's quite low.

The one big killer feature Days Gone had were the huge hordes, but a game comes out a week prior (WWZ) and does hordes much better.

This breaks Sony's Streak of AAA hits, four years after The Order. It was a great run, I'm surprised how many consecutive hits they gave. Good job Sony.

However, I fear for the closure of Bend Studios now.

edit: In my scale, 7 is a good game. However, todays review scale only uses 5-10 as the scale, with 5 reserved for dumpster fires like Fallout 76. So their 7 effectively counts as mediocre.

The Gamespot review is.....something else. Such political and absolute subjective and awful reasons to give the game a 5....disgusting. The game won't be perfect, but i've seen hours of material and it's not a 5/10 game. If she gave the game that grade because she considers the game racist and sexist critizising freakers are all white, not liking some phrases used in the game like "ol' lady" or "promise me to ride me as you ride your bike" (a phrase that had a context in the game), and using a photo on twitter out of context of the girlfriend saying is her favorite screenshot because it looks like deacon is looking at her girlfriend ass then....wow. And in the same twiter thread is the IGN reviewer critizising the same things and she gave the game a 6'5....

I don't think it's likely. Bend has been a low 80's kind of studio for a long time and fairly consistent with it at that. Their four games prior to Days Gone were all in that scoring range and they were a solid developer for Sony's portable devices. The Syphon Filter franchise is among Sony's better known IPs and one of the more requested ones for them to reboot. Days Gone was new ground for them. Unfortunately, not every studio can pull off open world titles and if I remember correctly Bend was a lot smaller when they first started the project. They had to balloon the roster to get development moving along. I'm sure there were some pains there. They've been one of Sony's smaller studios for awhile.

I know people like to point to Cambridge and Evolution for how Sony can just axe a studio but those circumstances were different. Cambridge had long been an under-performing studio. Look back through their games they made under Sony. A lot of them were bad or mediocre at best. They didn't start getting consistent in decent critical reception until they were put under Guerrilla Games and even then RIGS and Killzone: Mercenary were sub-80 games that probably didn't sell well. Sony should have closed them 7 years earlier than they did.

Evolution? Likely a reaction to low sales of the MotorStorm sequels (I think I remember hearing they weren't that hot), the issues with Driveclub even after it was delayed a year, and the shrinking market for racing games. Sony already has a developer for racing games so they likely felt that Polyphony made Evolution redundant. Probably the same reasoning for Liverpool being closed 4 years earlier. Too many racing game studios. I'm going to guess they were also a sacrifice to free up money for newer studios like Manchester, Forwardworks, and the rumored studio being built in San Diego.

Heading into a new generation with Nintendo doing well and Microsoft majorly buffing up its first-party stable, now probably isn't a good time to close down a studio that had been consistently making good titles for you because their most recent offering didn't make critics' nipples hard. Yes, it probably costed Sony a pretty penny. However, we don't know how much of that money it will make back and apparently PS+ has lined the PlayStation department's pockets quite nicely. Could it still happen? Sure. I just don't see a good reason for them to, though. Bend isn't redundant, they've largely been consistent in what they deliver, and Sony is gonna need studios for the next round. The only good reason I can see for them closing Bend is if their closure leads to the acquisition of a better studio.

Damn I leave for like 6 months (no one gave a fuck lolz) and you still all about that

Wait, why you pre-ordering a game you had no interest in? lol

And damn if Xbox manages to get a 70 meta game (70 for Xbox is 90 for all else) that's my new go to line, "can't win em all."

How gaming has fallen when 70 or what not is considered bad.

Sounds like it will be good, just somewhat repetitive, after some bug fixes. Combat, driving, resource management/survival have mostly been praised. There's a solid core game here that needs some work.