The Day Before Early Access Video Review

before we get started a quick note from the editor here just 4 days after its Early Access release the day before was removed from sale on Steam and the developer announced it was shutting down the servers remain up for now for anyone who bought it but since our reviewer went to the trouble of playing it it seems only right that you get to see what he thought while it lasted now on with the review can you hear five long years that's how long the now defunct developer fantastic supposedly spent assembling the day before this wholly disappointing online Zombie Survival shooter contains essentially nothing of what was originally promised over the years leading up to its disastrous Early Access release not only is it not an MMO but it hardly passes as a survival shooter at all during the handful of hours I managed to spend with it before it went Belly Up I ran into such severe performance issues on my GeForce RTX 47 DTI and ryzen 3900 X equipped PC that it felt like it would have been a waste of time to continue anyway that is even if the running around the day before is questionably designed City collecting loot was any fun to begin [Music] with you wake up in the ramshackle Survivor Camp of a New York inspired Metropolis filled with questionable decals that look precariously similar to real world businesses it's unclear where the zombies are coming from or why you should care and the whole thing might be forgivable if it was framed as a parody but unfortunately the generic survivors of this unimaginative world seem to take its zombie outbreak seriously when the aggressive infected individuals took to the streets it only took a couple of weeks for new Fortune City to completely fall after after a decently paced tutorial the day before comes up short on even the most basic features one would expect in a survival game gone are the dynamic environments and tight firefights shown off at its now mysteriously absent trailers instead you'll mostly spend your time running around a static cityscape that looks pretty at first glance but offers absolutely no depth you might find a zombie or two while Scavenging for loot but they rarely pose any threat what shocked me the most about the day before was the notable absence of like almost any UI sure there's a touchscreen display for your quests but you can only track one at a time there's also a clunky makeshift map but you're a Sitting Duck while looking at it the inventory screen is also Bare Bones and even if you manage to find yourself in the same Squad with other players it's almost impossible to figure out where they are or even if they're still on your team not only is there no multiplayer menu there is no voice chat either you can communicate with your party in a rudimentary in-game chat window but even getting that to work is a pain I'd have a more enjoyable time actually hiding under a dumpster surrounded by zombies like Glenn from The Walking Dead than waiting for the day before his multiplayer to work right since there isn't much guidance at all I had to find out the hard way that the day before wasn't simply not telling me how to do certain things like melee combat or setting up camp in the alleged open world it literally doesn't have those features at all that's right if you find yourself running around without a gun for some reason good luck out running all these absolutely brainless zombies because your hands and feet are [Music] useless the day before is not an MMO or even an open world despite claims from its developer that it would be both of those things instead it's fundamentally an extraction shooter with only one goal sluggishly run around the mostly empty City grab some Loot and get to one of the extraction points before you die the only things you carry over between runs are any gear you manage to take with you as well as any currency you save up by selling the scraps of loot back to base if you somehow die before making it home which is the norm thanks to an unrestricted free-for-all PVP system you lose everything you had on your body meaning you'll often progress backward as your currency dwindles that currency can be spent on new items at the main Outpost Woodberry which serves as a headquarters for your daily operations there are Merchants a few NPCs that spout Bland set dressing dialogue and a storage area for your Loose Gear and money how are you doing put your things in here it's cool that it's also populated by other players between loot runs and it's great that you can team up with anyone while you're in this Hub it's significantly less cool however that the Hub area's NPCs the only NPCs in the day before mind you are so dry written and unenthusiastically voice acted that they sound sound like they could be the poor result of a generative AI for example if you frequently carry a heavy backpack over time you'll be able to carry even more items it's difficult to forgive that on its own but it's even harder still when you realize there's genuinely no story content after the first 30 or so minutes it takes to complete the tutorial there's also no clear reason to do any of its procedurally generated quests which have you Looting random items for an NPC back at Camp other than to earn a meager amount of extra currency which makes it suck even more that you can only take on one at a time the day before takes place almost entirely Outdoors during the day and there are no unique weather effects to shake things up the landscape of new Fortune City is a largely static Zone with limited space where the most exciting thing you'll find is an occasional container with one or two pieces of junk loot despite that the frame rate still struggle to remain stable on my mid-end gaming PC and the constant bugs and stuttering made it downright into annoying to play it at all there are essentially no unique zombie encounters or bosses either and very little in the way of landmarks or special areas containing different types of loot the few there are that seem like they should house unique gear aren't very good at it spots like a police station Armory for example are generally empty and usually only serve to make excellent traps for other more coordinated bands of players to gank you for all of your hard-earned scrap surviving all the way to extraction is frustratingly difficult on higher population servers even with a squad by your side thanks to a limited number of extraction points on the map all of which are situated next to choke points constantly abused by more powerful groups of players not only is this unfair and unfun on its own there's currently an unfixed currency duplication glitch which means you can bet most of those other players are cheating to get high-powered armor and weapons now that fantastic is no more the hopes of that ever getting fixed are slim toone but hey the sliver of good news here is at least there's a surprisingly decent variety of weapons these range from handguns to scoped sniper rifles in all there are probably about 14 or so options available at the weapon dealer in town but the catch is that you'll struggle to afford anything packing a real punch weapons also handle reasonably well though they're cheap and underwhelming sound design leaves a lot to be desired the bigger your backpack the more loot you can carry but just like everything else in your inventory you'll lose your backpack as soon as you die this sucks because backpacks are relatively expensive to replace and you essentially need one in order to haul anything worthwhile back from a run if you're lucky you might be able to find one on another player's corpse but it's more likely you'll be un prepared to fight anyone if you're low on cash the day before is easily one of the worst games I ever played to the point where I'm afraid to continue running it on my PC sure you could say there are the bones of something coherent here but even those bones feel splintered and brittle its map is lifeless its enemies are idiotic its PVP is an exploitable mess its story is pointless and its progression is downright in furiating while the now defunct developer fantastic said it wasn't done certain Baseline standards have been established in the years since early access became a thing and this game met none of them the many mysterious questions around the day before his development will likely go unanswered now that the curtain has fallen leaving the player base defend for itself until the servers are inevitably shut down for good and if you didn't manage to try it firsthand You Can Count yourself as one of the lucky ones no the score graphic did get stuck that's a one out of 10 folks for more of 2023 is worst games check out our reviews of The Walking Dead Destinies or flashback 2 and for everything else stick with IGN keep your senses sharp react swiftly aim accurately and you'll return here with a full backpack many times

Channel: IGN

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Keywords: Action, Fntastic, Mytona, Online, Online Co-Op Multiplayer, Open-World, PC, Persistent Online, PlayStation 5, Survival, The Day Before, Third-Person, Unreal Engine 5, Xbox Series X|S, ign game reviews, ign review, the day before review, the day before review ign

Id: kzQon38yg5w

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023