The Days Gone review embargo was a divisive moment in the video game world. While some sites, like our own, gave Days Gone praise and positive scores, others couldn?t get past some of the technical issues that the game had. Review copies were sent out about two weeks ahead of that embargo. By release day, update 1.03 was already live which fixed many of those issues, but by that time it would be too late. Reviews were already in the can, sent off to editors, and ready to go live, meaning that a good majority of those day one reviews were played using update 1.02 or lower. Reviewers didn?t go back to see if 1.03 (and we?re up to something like 1.07 now, I think") resolved issues that they brought up.
Now our own review took these updates into account. In fact, Sony was aware of the issues and noted that performance problems?specifically on the base PS4 model?would be fixed by launch day. Unfortunately reviewers had a good week and a half of muddy textures, performance issues, and crashes to sour their experience, with the 1.03 update not releasing until just two days before embargo. By this time, most of these reviewers had completed their journey with Deacon (or not, we?ll get to that in a moment), and their impressions were set in stone. They weren?t about to pull a Jack from Lost situation here. They were done and moving on.
via GIPHY
Truth is, we as reviewers, journalists, and people who do this daily don?t really have the time to go back. There?s a reason we don?...