Rating - Solid 8.5/10

TL:DR review -
--------------
Super fun open world zombie survival game with brilliant gameplay mechanics and zombie hordes(like hundreds of them. And they sprint at you).
Decent story, excellent audio. Beautiful open world with lots of things to do and places to explore. Must play.

Long review:-
---------------
Remember when AMC's walking dead TV show came out in 2010 and it was so good and fresh because it was something people hadn't seen before. Following that, every
year there have been countless zombie based movies and games. Some good, some bad and some very very generic. But only a handful of these captured the magic of the
original AMC's TV show(the 1st season atleast). Days Gone manages to do that beautifully.

The opening 3-4 hours of this game is nothing short of exceptional and is an excellent hook. Towards the middle of the game, there is a bit of a slowdown because you get
some search and rescue type missions/clear camp missions which might put some people off. But then it picks up again and there is a slowdown again before the final act of the game.
This is quite a long game(took me around 55 hours to complete) and I love doing most of the side missions and stuff in games like these so I did most of it. Skipped some stupid questlines like\
clear out 42 zombie bird nests(like...no,thank you).

Pros:-
--------
1.) Opening act - The opening 5-ish hours of the game is just a brilliant experience and is a great hook for you to completely immerse yourself in this world.
2.) Audio - Excellent audio design. Intense music which raises your pulse while fighting hordes, suspenseful music while exploration, upbeat music in combat. The only place where audio was a bit meh, was where there was a speech cutscene and you could hear the background character's chatter over the lead person giving the speech. Minor mixing issue.
3.) Open world - The open world they have crafted here looks amazing and it feels even more thrilling exploring this world with its abandoned complexes, tunnels,caves,jungles. The environmental design is quite honestly phenomenal. Brilliantly captures the post apocalyptic vibe with immobilized vehicles, destroyed barricades, abandoned rescue camps, derailed trains etc. Its really enjoyable to explore and I loved
every minute of it.
4.) Environmental Design - Brilliant. As good as environment design in Last of Us.
5.) Hordes - This is one of the most exhilarating experiences in any zombie game ever made. Imagine a pack of 50-500 zombies running at you full sprint and you having to outrun, shoot, manage stamina, use the environment to guide them into choke points, blow them up while not getting cornered or pincered by the pack. Think Dying Light 1's night zombie chases but on steroids. It is absolutely insane fighting hordes in this game.
And there are some hordes which you cannot tackle early game at all simply because you don't have the resources to do so. Yes, you can cheese some of them through youtube video techniques but that cheapens the experience imo.
Anyway, hordes in this game -> Insanely fun experience. Fun, Tough and gets your blood flowing.
6.) Enemy Variety - Wolves, Infected Wolves, Infected crows, Bears, Infected bears, humans(unarmored enemies in early-mid game to armored enemies late game), normal zombies, tougher normal zombies, screamers(calls other zombies to your location),newts(kid zombies annoying af), brute zombies, runner zombies etc. Good enemy variety. Did not have any complaints with this.
7.) Characters - The protagonist is basically a dude being shoved into leadership positions when he clearly isn't a leader. And that is fine, there are people in the world like this and its okay for a game to have a character who isn't an uber macho perfect born leader leaking testosterone out of his eyes. But yes, there are quirks to his character and he does grow somewhat throughout the game(though not as much as I would have liked). The side characters are good too.
While they too aren't perfect, they are extremely believable characters. You have the idealist camp leader dude, the conspiracy theorist camp leader dude, the slave labourer camp leader lady, the sleazy scumbag
"bro" character who lies while smiling and shaking your hand, you have the bisexual badass chick who is interested in you, the religious nutjob, a militant with a gob complex etc etc. Very nice, believable characters.
The world isn't perfect and neither are the people in them.
8.) Gameplay - As Tuco Salamanca said.. " Tight! Tight! Tight!". No seriously, inventory wheel, weapons, gunplay, character movement felt fine and well done. Would have preferred a bit more variety with melee but thats okay.
9.) The Bike - While this is also technically, gameplay, I'm making a separate point for this because with the amount of effort and maintenance you put into the bike it is basically a character in its own right.You start off with a real broken down mess of a gas guzzling fragile vehicle which you upgrade throughout the course of the game and end up with some really nice wheels(for an apocalyptic world) by the end. It serves as your mobile quicksave station, your limited ammo refill station(if you have bought saddlebags for the bike). The bike can run out of fuel and you can get stranded at someplace with no fuel pump or fuel can nearby. Very nice mechanic with the bike and how the devs have integrated the vehicle in the gameplay.
10.) Goes to some difficult places - There are some missions which tackle really difficult societal and philosophical topics like drug abuse, loss, sparing someone through death etc. That was a nice touch.

Cons:-
1.) Deacon's Code - The protagonist, Deacon St.John lives by a code which is reinforced again and again through the game that he doesn't like people who "kill unarmed women". Though it is never explained exactly why he has this very specific code especially as he kills probably hundreds of female goons over the course of the game(most of them are armed but hey some of them he sneaks up on). This feels like a character just having a code to live by for the sake of having a code to live by as a protagonist because thats the cool thing to do. This felt jarring and out of place to be honest.
2.) Some specific missions - There are a few missions where you have to go check up/talk to certain characters and they just say one line like "I'm fine. I have to go."/"Get outta here. I have work to do." and the mission just ends. This felt incredibly annoying and ridiculous but thankfully there are only like 3 or 4 of these missions in the whole game.
3.) Pacing issue - Before midgame and post midgame the game is bogged a bit by some pacing issues mostly due to camp clearing missions etc.
4.) Irrelevant choices and No choices - There are some choices you make early game which result in basically...nothing. And some choices you make early game seem like they would be available again later in the game but you never get that option again in the game in similar scenarios. Fairly linear game in terms of story progression which is completely fine but then why have us making choices in the first place? Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity here. Mid-late game choices basically boils down to you rescuing survivors and deciding which camp they go to based on which camp you are trying to max out or need reputation/money in. They could have done so much more with the camps.

Overall, a very very fun and engaging experience and a must play.

Rating - Solid 8.5/10 TL:DR review - -------------- Super fun open world zombie survival game with brilliant gameplay mechanics and zombie hordes(like hundreds of them. And they sprint at you). Decent story, excellent audio. Beautiful open world with lots of things to do and places to explore. Must play. Long review:- --------------- Remember when AMC's walking dead TV show came out in 2010 and it was so good and fresh because it was something people hadn't seen before. Following that, every year there have been countless zombie based movies and games. Some good, some bad and some very very generic. But only a handful of these captured the magic of the original AMC's TV show(the 1st season atleast). Days Gone manages to do that beautifully. The opening 3-4 hours of this game is nothing short of exceptional and is an excellent hook. Towards the middle of the game, there is a bit of a slowdown because you get some search and rescue type missions/clear camp missions which might put some people off. But then it picks up again and there is a slowdown again before the final act of the game. This is quite a long game(took me around 55 hours to complete) and I love doing most of the side missions and stuff in games like these so I did most of it. Skipped some stupid questlines like\ clear out 42 zombie bird nests(like...no,thank you). Pros:- -------- 1.) Opening act - The opening 5-ish hours of the game is just a brilliant experience and is a great hook for you to completely immerse yourself in this world. 2.) Audio - Excellent audio design. Intense music which raises your pulse while fighting hordes, suspenseful music while exploration, upbeat music in combat. The only place where audio was a bit meh, was where there was a speech cutscene and you could hear the background character's chatter over the lead person giving the speech. Minor mixing issue. 3.) Open world - The open world they have crafted here looks amazing and it feels even more thrilling exploring this world with its abandoned complexes, tunnels,caves,jungles. The environmental design is quite honestly phenomenal. Brilliantly captures the post apocalyptic vibe with immobilized vehicles, destroyed barricades, abandoned rescue camps, derailed trains etc. Its really enjoyable to explore and I loved every minute of it. 4.) Environmental Design - Brilliant. As good as environment design in Last of Us. 5.) Hordes - This is one of the most exhilarating experiences in any zombie game ever made. Imagine a pack of 50-500 zombies running at you full sprint and you having to outrun, shoot, manage stamina, use the environment to guide them into choke points, blow them up while not getting cornered or pincered by the pack. Think Dying Light 1's night zombie chases but on steroids. It is absolutely insane fighting hordes in this game. And there are some hordes which you cannot tackle early game at all simply because you don't have the resources to do so. Yes, you can cheese some of them through youtube video techniques but that cheapens the experience imo. Anyway, hordes in this game -> Insanely fun experience. Fun, Tough and gets your blood flowing. 6.) Enemy Variety - Wolves, Infected Wolves, Infected crows, Bears, Infected bears, humans(unarmored enemies in early-mid game to armored enemies late game), normal zombies, tougher normal zombies, screamers(calls other zombies to your location),newts(kid zombies annoying af), brute zombies, runner zombies etc. Good enemy variety. Did not have any complaints with this. 7.) Characters - The protagonist is basically a dude being shoved into leadership positions when he clearly isn't a leader. And that is fine, there are people in the world like this and its okay for a game to have a character who isn't an uber macho perfect born leader leaking testosterone out of his eyes. But yes, there are quirks to his character and he does grow somewhat throughout the game(though not as much as I would have liked). The side characters are good too. While they too aren't perfect, they are extremely believable characters. You have the idealist camp leader dude, the conspiracy theorist camp leader dude, the slave labourer camp leader lady, the sleazy scumbag "bro" character who lies while smiling and shaking your hand, you have the bisexual badass chick who is interested in you, the religious nutjob, a militant with a gob complex etc etc. Very nice, believable characters. The world isn't perfect and neither are the people in them. 8.) Gameplay - As Tuco Salamanca said.. " Tight! Tight! Tight!". No seriously, inventory wheel, weapons, gunplay, character movement felt fine and well done. Would have preferred a bit more variety with melee but thats okay. 9.) The Bike - While this is also technically, gameplay, I'm making a separate point for this because with the amount of effort and maintenance you put into the bike it is basically a character in its own right.You start off with a real broken down mess of a gas guzzling fragile vehicle which you upgrade throughout the course of the game and end up with some really nice wheels(for an apocalyptic world) by the end. It serves as your mobile quicksave station, your limited ammo refill station(if you have bought saddlebags for the bike). The bike can run out of fuel and you can get stranded at someplace with no fuel pump or fuel can nearby. Very nice mechanic with the bike and how the devs have integrated the vehicle in the gameplay. 10.) Goes to some difficult places - There are some missions which tackle really difficult societal and philosophical topics like drug abuse, loss, sparing someone through death etc. That was a nice touch. Cons:- 1.) Deacon's Code - The protagonist, Deacon St.John lives by a code which is reinforced again and again through the game that he doesn't like people who "kill unarmed women". Though it is never explained exactly why he has this very specific code especially as he kills probably hundreds of female goons over the course of the game(most of them are armed but hey some of them he sneaks up on). This feels like a character just having a code to live by for the sake of having a code to live by as a protagonist because thats the cool thing to do. This felt jarring and out of place to be honest. 2.) Some specific missions - There are a few missions where you have to go check up/talk to certain characters and they just say one line like "I'm fine. I have to go."/"Get outta here. I have work to do." and the mission just ends. This felt incredibly annoying and ridiculous but thankfully there are only like 3 or 4 of these missions in the whole game. 3.) Pacing issue - Before midgame and post midgame the game is bogged a bit by some pacing issues mostly due to camp clearing missions etc. 4.) Irrelevant choices and No choices - There are some choices you make early game which result in basically...nothing. And some choices you make early game seem like they would be available again later in the game but you never get that option again in the game in similar scenarios. Fairly linear game in terms of story progression which is completely fine but then why have us making choices in the first place? Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity here. Mid-late game choices basically boils down to you rescuing survivors and deciding which camp they go to based on which camp you are trying to max out or need reputation/money in. They could have done so much more with the camps. Overall, a very very fun and engaging experience and a must play.