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The Shanghai Job

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The Shanghai Job

Known as S.M.A.R.T Chase in the Chinese market, The Shanghai Job is a British-Chinese co-produced thriller that sees Orlando Bloom shirk off the shackles of popular franchises – see Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of The Rings – in order to reshape himself as bonafide action hero.

Bloom stars as grizzled security agent, Danny Stratton, who has been living at the bottom of a bottle in Shanghai since his last job, a year ago, saw him lose a valuable painting to a gang of professional thieves. For reasons unknown, Danny and his team are given one last chance to redeem their reputation by escorting a valuable artefact from one destination to another. Wouldn’t you Adam and Eve though? The same gang turn up to relieve him of said item, leaving Danny to work quickly to save what’s left of his expiring reputation.

Largely known for his TV work, director Charles Martin (Skins, Being Human) has put together a solid if somewhat silly action piece that sees Bloom charging around barking at people like Jason Statham whilst sporting the bleached hair of a Buffy-era James Marsters. He’s joined in his sprint across the city by a team of fellow security agents, including Full Contact’s Simon Yam. Riffing off the relationships within the Fast and Furious franchise, each member brings their one personality trait to the table that manages to both compliment and aggravate the others in the group. A quick shout out to the dubious Ding Dong (Leo Wu) who spends a large part of the film following a girl using his drone; his cutesy puppy eyes failing to cover the slightly creepy invasion of privacy.

Moving on… Whilst The Shanghai Job is nowhere near to being of the same quality as later instalments of the aforementioned franchise, it does give an indication of the direction the series could be taken should the higher ups wish to pursue it. The acting is definitely a mixed bag, but Bloom seems to be relishing the opportunity to do his own stunts and get his teeth into something a bit grittier.

Perhaps The Shanghai Job’s biggest issue is pacing and an over-reliance on the cliched. Seemingly realising that the S.M.A.R.T. team are running out of breath, screenwriter Kevin Bernhardt (John Rambo) throws in a damsel in distress into the third act which also sees a literal game of catch added to the mix. Presumably because everyone got tired of punching each other.

Derivative of a number of recent actioners, including John Wick, The Shanghai Job is certain to find its niche with a select few. And if all involved are willing to return and embrace the hyper-realistic absurdity of it all, there’s potential for more fun ahead in future installments.

 
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The Sinking City

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The Sinking City

The legacy of Howard Phillips Lovecraft looms large over incalculably huge swaths of popular culture. Books, movies, comics, video games, inexplicably cute toys for kids – HP has had a clammy-palmed influence on it all – which is impressive for a bloke who died in 1937. The latest video game to attempt to capture the uneasy horror and sense of dread from Lovecraft’s writing is The Sinking City from developer Frogwares, and while it’s a valiant effort, it also has some serious problems.

The Sinking City takes place in the isolated fishing town of Oakmont, Massachusetts, in the 1920s and is one of the more evocative video game locations in recent memory. You play as Charles Reed, a war veteran turned private investigator who is attempting to find the source of the vivid nightmares that assail him with terrifying regularity. As generic as the player character is, the town skews much more interesting. There are old families, racial tensions with the Innsmouthers, mysteries abound, unexplained murders and madness creeping into everyday life. It’s some classic Lovecraft gear and while the more prolific dialogue is let down by sporadically shonky voice acting, HP enthusiasts will be delighted by the various deep dives (literal and figurative) into the old master’s lore.

All good so far. Unfortunately, where The Sinking City runs into trouble (over and over again) is with the technical aspects of the game. Walking around the city in third person is adequate but combat is an unresponsive mess. The graphics look decent when nothing’s going on, but move that camera even an inch and get ready to see a bonanza of screen tearing, which is to say nothing of the clipping, pop in and slow down that will occur often and enthusiastically. No one of these elements is enough to completely ruin the atmosphere, but when they all start happening together the spell is broken.

It’s a pity too, because there are so solid ideas with the investigation aspects of the game, a Hannibal-esque “mind palace” is a great way to explore the various clues you’ve picked up, but it’s not enough to get past all the irritations that show their ugly little faces all too often.

Ultimately, The Sinking City is a conceptually strong title that suffers far too much at the hands of execution. All the bugs in the world won’t ruin the experience for the truly obsessive Lovecraft fan, but for the rest of us this eldritch horror needed a little more time being developed by The Old Ones.

 
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Trading Paint

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Trading Paint

In a parallel universe, where all the movies that could have been reside, there lies Quentin Tarantino’s The Vega Brothers. A prequel to both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the movie would have seen John Travolta and Michael Madsen as brothers in crime, Vincent and Vic Vega. Although that project fell by the wayside, Madsen and Travolta do finally share the screen in this is southern deep-fried drama from director, Karzan Kader.

Tapping into the same working-class vein as his previous film Life on the Line, Travolta plays Sam Munroe, a retired dirt car racer who has been shaping his son, Cam (Game of Thrones’ Toby Sebastian) to be the next big thing. Frustrated with a series of losses, Cam bails on his father to join forces with Sam’s nemesis, Linsky (Madsen). Sam disowns his son and decides to get back in the driver’s seat to prove he’s still got it.

Trading Paint is an extremely brisk movie and like Sam’s car, barrels towards the finishing line with a distinct lack of finesse. This can be felt throughout the film due to a number of unusual choices by the director and the screenwriters, Gary Gerani and Craig R. Welch.

Sam and Cam’s fallout and the latter’s betrayal literally happens within the first five minutes of the film, leaving us with whiplash and no real understanding of why Linsky is such a bad guy. There’s probably something there around his wealth and panache for cowboy hats that really gets Sam’s goat, but it’s never explored. We’re told they hate each other and that’s it.

Elsewhere, a flashback informs the audience that due to some reckless driving, Sam got his wife killed in a car accident. However, any remorse he had before the film is quickly dismissed after a picnic with new flame, Becca, played by country music superstar Shania Twain.

Twain, it should be noted, is one of the film’s strengths; managing to do something with the limited character development she’s given.

The most egregious part of the film’s narrative can be found in the race commentators whose sole job is to fill in the gaps or remind the audience of what’s going on. It’s perhaps one of the most flagrant dismissals of Chekhov’s ‘show, don’t tell’ rule seen in a while.

To end on a more positive note, if you’re a petrol head, there’s a chance you’ll get some traction from the race scenes which, whilst hardly Days of Thunder, add some well needed adrenalin to the proceedings.

 
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Warhammer: Chaosbane

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Warhammer: Chaosbane

In the world of ARPGs (Action Role Playing Games), the king of the hill is, arguably, Diablo III. Blizzard’s staggeringly popular demon-hunting jamboree has managed to conquer PCs and consoles since 2012-2013 respectively; although there have been plenty of contenders to the throne. The latest example is Warhammer: Chaosbane, and while it lacks Blizzard’s honed slickness, it’s not without its charms.

Warhammer: Chaosbane is set in the dizzyingly massive Warhammer universe – the fantasy branch, not the sci-fi ‘big men in armour go shooty-shooty’ one – and tells the tale of a group of adventurers and their quest to battle a great evil and save the world of men. Players can take on this daunting task as an Imperial Soldier, High-Elf Mage, Slayer or Wood-Elf Scout. Three of these classes are a lot of fun, with the Mage in particular pulling some funky moves, but the Imperial Soldier is a bit dull, to be honest. So either by yourself, or teamed up with friends or online randoms, you’ll battle through towns, dungeons, castles and swamps on a lengthy quest for victory and a new hat with better stats.

Chaosbane doesn’t exactly break new ground in the ARPG mode, in fact if you squint really hard it can look and feel like you’re playing Diablo III, but in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay it can be a lot of fun. The controls are snappy and responsive, the combat colourful and splattery and with a group of mates it can be a blast. Problems do occur when it comes to longer term involvement, however, as the enemy types and environments do a lot of recycling. You’ll lose count of the number of times you run through the same cobbled courtyard, the same dungeon hallway, and at the time of writing there’s not a huge end-game to keep you coming back for more.

The story, also, is a whiff, with occasionally hilariously bad voice acting and an overall journey that will have you shrugging with either boredom or bewilderment. Still, it’s early days for Chaosbane – and apparently big plans are afoot for further content – so these negatives may be irrelevant in future months.

Ultimately, Warhammer: Chaosbane is an above average ARPG with oodles of future potential. If some of the rough edges, and lack of variety, can be polished over time it could be truly grand, however right now it’s stuck firmly in the kingdom of “Pretty Good”.

 
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The Kleptocrats

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The Kleptocrats

Did you know The Wolf of Wall Street was funded by Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund? The Kleptocrats wants to make sure you never forget. This documentary on the ongoing, messy saga of 1MDB, the scheme that brought down Malaysia’s government and was so corrupt it could have made Hun Sen blush, is cleverly structured like a heist: the yellow titles even mimic Wolf of Wall Street.

The film is the product of years of investigative reporting by a motley crew of journalists, US Department of Justice lawsuits and persistent discontent from the Malaysian population. It must be the first film to lasso together the seemingly disparate worlds of the Hollywood entertainment industry and Southeast Asian crony politics. On the style front, it’s tremendously entertaining, flitting between the Cannes Film Festival and million-dollar Vegas parties (“I thought he was like Malaysian royalty, whatever that means,” drawls one entertainment promoter), and dominated by giddy overhead shots of New York and Kuala Lumpur.

A glance at the careers of directors Sam Hobkinson and Havana Marking reveals much of their previous work has been on documenting white-collar crime, from jewellery theft to art fraud. The Kleptocrats glimmers on a surface level of personalities and intertextuality: it doesn’t have a lot of depth or thoroughness on a forensic level. An obvious drawback of that approach is that it privileges the voices of the investigative reporters who pursued and broke the story. The Malaysia material is touristy, with a few talking heads around the edges; virtually the only non-political voice comes from a student driven towards activism, and her presence is so fleeting as to feel like an afterthought. And who is Malaysia’s disgraced former Prime Minister, Najib Razak, and what drove him? The film doesn’t offer any answers, even though it scores an interview with his brother, who you’d expect to be able to provide at least a few pointers.

Still, this is a story amply worthy of cinematic treatment, the outrageousness of the conspiracy outdone only by the clichéd way in which it was perpetrated.

 
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Team Sonic Racing

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Team Sonic Racing

Dear reader, there was a time in our video game history, in that halcyon decade known as the ‘90s, when nary a console gaming system was connected to the internet. Mainly because the internet, at least how we understand it today, didn’t exist. Therefore, if you wanted to enjoy a multiplayer experience in your own loungeroom you’d have to physically bring people into your home and play the damn thing in person, with split screen. Twas a simpler time. The undisputed king of the loungeroom was Mario Kart 64, a game where you could play as various Nintendo characters and hoon around bright, cartoony tracks and hit each other with shells. Over the years that followed, kart games have come and gone, and video game experiences have skewed ever more online, but even without the warm haze of nostalgia, it has to be said that the loungeroom kart experience has been missed.

Enter Team Sonic Racing, the newest kart kid on the block, who would really prefer you ignore the various iterations of Mario’s vroom vroom fun times and focus on the bright blue fella. Team Sonic Racing, as the name suggests, takes characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog IP and throws you and your mates into an array of colourful tracks where you kart about, picking up power ups and questing to best your opponents, human and AI alike. In terms of new gameplay mechanics, it offers some intriguing team-based additions, like faster speeds when you follow your teammates closely and supers that are more powerful if you launch them simultaneously. These are actually smart additions, making the gameplay less mindless than your usual kart gear, and it’s an undisputedly fun time.

On the negative side, and this is a little subjective, but Sonic and friends have always been a bit… dull as characters. Honestly, the most impact that Sonic has ever made was with his nightmarish (and soon to be amended) movie trailer appearance. With the dead eyes and the teeth… those weird, human-like teeth. Point is, without much in the way of personality, it’s hard for the Sonic agnostic among us to get particularly worked up over the hero character’s antics.

Ultimately, however, the entire reason for Team Sonic Racing’s existence can be boiled down to a single question: do you want a kart game you can play with your mates? Because Team Sonic Racing is available on PS4, XBOX, Nintendo Switch and PC, unlike the (admittedly superior) Mario Kart 8 which is Switch only. So, if you have a group of likeminded chums who seek to return to those barely remembered days on the couch – or if you’re so young you’d like to have that experience for the first time – Team Sonic Racing offers an engaging, if unspectacular, reason for a group hoon with some sparkly animal friends. Freaky teeth not included.

 
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Rage 2

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Rage 2

The original RAGE, released in 2010, was an engaging enough shooter that suffered from a poorly told story, unremarkable characters and ultimately not enough content to justify the purchase. Additionally, it also couldn’t help but seem the poorer offering when compared to the similarly-themed Borderlands which had come out the year before. Despite some entertaining moments, and slick shooting courtesy of developers id Software, the title was considered a disappointment.

Cut to 2019 and Rage 2 is here, and while it may be a sequel no one was particularly asking for, it certainly improves on aspects of the original, although misses the mark in others.

Rage 2 tells the tale of Walker, a male or female avatar (dealer’s choice) who needs to battle through an apocalyptic wasteland to defeat a race of evil cyborgs who are intent on ending what’s left of humanity. The broader idea of the premise, while a bit hacky, has potential but unfortunately the writing once again saps the story of any sense of urgency. That said, the shooting here is diabolically good. Like, it’s insane, some of the best gunplay currently around. Every weapon feels unique, every upgrade has meaning and when you launch into Overdrive – a state where damage and health are buffed ludicrously – it’s a glorious explosion of bloodsoaked mayhem that will likely have your jaw plummeting to the floor.

The problem is that Rage 2 feels like a fantastic linear shooter that has been transplanted onto the body of a not particularly exciting open world game. The moment to moment gameplay is fine, but then you’ll be forced to hop into your not very good vehicle and pissfart about on the huge map looking for the next bit of fun. It’s a good idea to have peaks and flows in action, but in Rage 2 it just feels like the best parts are too few and far between. And although the game exceeds its predecessor in almost every way, it suffers from the same problems of pacing, writing, characters and repetition.

So, ultimately, Rage 2 feels like a fantastic shooter with too much open world busywork. It’s certainly better than the much-maligned original but one can’t help but feel that this could have been so much more. Still, it’s a noisy, bloody, silly and sporadically fun time that offers the video game equivalent of above average, cheesy pizza and sometimes that’s just what you’re in the mood for.

 
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Mortal Kombat 11

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Mortal Kombat 11

I can still remember when Mortal Kombat hit the pinny parlours in early ’90s Australia. Rat-faced teenagers with bad skin and violent minds flocked en masse to attempt to beat the crap out of their mates, finishing the battles with gory fatalities and screeching happily at the carnage. Mortal Kombat seemed hardcore, dangerous even, at a time when video games were generally pretty safe, family friendly affairs.

Smash cut to 2019 and video games are all over the shop in terms of content. Just this year we’ve had the staggeringly violent Resident Evil 2 remake, which puts the earlier Kombats to shame. So where does a game like Mortal Kombat 11 fit and how do developers make it stand out? The answer, bafflingly, seems to be by turning the damn thing into a Saturday morning cartoon. Even more baffling? It bloody well works!

Mortal Kombat 11’s story campaign is a ten or so hour long romp through the multiverse, featuring time travel, alternate realities and elder gods. It’s gleefully stupid nonsense, that feels like something 13-year-olds would adore, and comes equipped with the series’ notorious – although defo not dangerous – graphic violence. Heads explode, guts are ripped out, spines shattered and whole bodies cleft in twain. It’s mayhem, although these days it feels more like splattery slapstick than anything that could conceivably offend any but the most pearl-clutchy of folks.

The game comes equipped with multiple modes, the best of which are the versus matches (both online and off) and the various Towers you can play through to grind for better loot and character customisation options. Honestly, the grind won’t be for everyone, but the obsessives out there will find a lot of value for their dollar in this title.

Ultimately, Mortal Kombat 11 is the best pure fighting destination you’re likely to come across this year. A wonderfully stupid story, multiple off and online modes and all of it dripping with handfuls of graphic gore. If that sounds like your jam, get ready to unleash your inner rat faced teenager and yorp with glee as the bodies hit the floor.

 
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Game of Thrones, Season 8 Episode 6: The Iron Throne

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Game of Thrones, Season 8 Episode 6: The Iron Throne

[SPOILER WARNING: Please don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode. I mean, come on, you know how this works]

Saying goodbye is hard. It’s a trial both in real life and pop culture, and the difficulty level spikes even higher when it comes to saying goodbye to the most successful television show of all time, say. That’s the unenviable task that David Benioff and D. B. Weiss – showrunners of Game of Thrones and writer/directors of the final episode – have set themselves with “The Iron Throne”.

So, how’d they do? Well, naturally opinions will vary. Hell, after last week’s divisive episode “The Bells”, some one million (!) pissed off fans have signed an online petition for season eight to be remade “with competent writers”. And while that’s a bit funny in a slightly sad sort of way, it also demonstrates the range of passionate reactions floating around out there. That said, “The Iron Throne”, while flawed in the same ways seasons 6-8 have been, does a pretty solid job of putting a fork in this fantasy opus. But let’s recap, one final time.

The episode opens with Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) wandering through the smoking ruins of King’s Landing. It’s a rough stroll, filled with weeping survivors, shell shocked wounded and many, many crispy skin corpses. He is joined by Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington), but the wee man isn’t in the mood for chatter. Jon wanders on and finds Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) about to slit the throats of some Lannister soldiers. Wormy reckons he’s doing it on the queen’s orders, but Jon disagrees that it is necessary. The pair almost come to blows, but Davos manages to calm them down, and Grey Worm starts killing the prisoners in bold defiance of whatever the Westeros equivalent of the Geneva Convention is.

Tyrion goes digging through the rubble and finds the corpses of Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). Their underwhelming, silly deaths from last episode are rendered even more underwhelming and silly by the fact that the rest of the room appears relatively intact and they could have easily survived. Tyrion, nonetheless, is moved by the sight of his dead siblings and cries, showcasing yet again how wonderful Peter Dinklage has been in this role.

Outside Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) wanders about looking lost, when she spies Jon ascending the stairs, moving past the massed Dothraki Riders and Unsullied. Drogon arrives with Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and she hops off and gives a rousing speech, in which she talks about “freeing” the people of Westeros, just like she “freed” the people (aka piles of ash) of King’s Landing. Grey Worm gets a promotion, Jon looks pensive and Tyrion tells Dany he quits, which leads to his immediate arrest. Tyrion is going home in the back of a divvy van!

Jon visits Tyrion in his cell and over a rather bittersweet sequence, Tyrion talks about how he has been so very wrong and how it would be pretty great if Jon killed Dany. Jon looks pensive.

Jon heads over to visit Dany, whereupon he meets a snow-covered Drogon who gives him a quick once over but deems him okay to enter. Jon visits Dany who is dreamily fondling the Iron Throne. Sure, she’s massacred thousands of people, but she genuinely believes she’s doing the right thing. She’s not a full Mad Queen, but rather something more insidious, Dany is a true believer who genuinely thinks she can do only good. We understand this from a cracking little interaction between Dany and Jon, and the pair are both acting their little hearts out.

“Be with me, build the new world with me. This is our reason,” Dany says, “we do it together, we break the wheel together.”

“You are my queen,” Jon whispers, “now and always.”

The pair pash on like their pingers are kicking in but Jon takes the moment to slide his dagger into Dany’s heart. She’s too surprised to be angry and dies, her mouth leaking blood and her eyes wide in disbelief. Jon cries at what he’s done, and then Drogon pops in for a visit. It looks for all the world as if Drogon is going to fire Jonno, but instead the scaly champion turns his burning attentions to the Iron Throne itself, melting it down to a puddle of boiling slag. The concept of the throne being a symbol rather than a literal source of power is apparently lost on Drogon. Stupid dragon. Drogon then grabs Dany’s corpse and pisses off into the sky, to places unknown.

Some weeks later, Grey Worm grabs Tyrion from his cell and takes him to a staff meeting of pretty much everyone who is still alive. The important players are Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), Brandon Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright), Arya, Davos, Ser Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan) and Samwell Tarly (John Bradley). The question of what to do with Tyrion and Jon is raised, with Grey Worm falling very much on the side of Team Decapitate. The point is, a leader needs to be chosen and though Sam gamely tries to raise the idea of democracy (to much laughter and disdain) it is ultimately Bran who everyone wants. Wait, what?! Fucken BRAN?! Captain Uncomfortable Stare? Good lord. Everyone seems pretty down with the idea, except Sansa who wants the North to be an independent state. Bran accepts the role but insists that Tyrion be his hand, and will make up for his mistakes for the rest of his life. So begins the reign of “Bran the broken”. Which, guys, awkward name, hey?

Tyrion goes to tell Jon the good news. Said news being “you won’t be killed, but you’re back off to the Night’s Watch again”. Jon takes the news pensively.

Jon walks along in a fancy fur coat, with his fellow men of the Night’s Watch, and farewells his family. Sansa is going to be Queen in the North, Arya is going to explore the lands “west of Westeros” and Bran the Broken (ugh) will rule the Seven Kingdoms. Meanwhile, Brienne fills in Jaime Lannister’s Wikipedia entry, and manages to make him sound like not a complete fuckwit, which is pretty big of her, to be honest.

Next, we have the first meeting with the new king, with Tyrion, Davos, Samwell and Bronn (Jerome Flynn)! Yes, in a lovely moment for a character much ignored in this final season, Bronn gets a somewhat happy ending as the new “Master of Coin”. Tyrion is nonplussed to be left out of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, a rather meta tome that has the appealing feature of ACTUALLY BEING FINISHED, EH GEORGE? Bran enters, does very little, and buggers back off with Ser Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) and the adults are left to talk about the best way to rebuild. It’s not a perfect system but it works.

A gorgeously directed final sequence shows where our Starks have ended up. Jon joins Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju) and Ghost (WHO FINALLY GETS THAT PAT) and heads North of the Wall with the Wildlings. Sansa gets the crown and becomes Queen of the North. Arya commands a ship heading out to lands unknown and we can only wonder what happens next, because that’s all she wrote, ladies and gentleman, Game of Thrones – at least in this incarnation – has ended.

There are endings great and terrible in television. Of the former, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Shield are notable examples. Of the latter, Dexter, Lost and How I Met Your Mother wear the shame crown. So, where does Game of Thrones sit? Look, it’s subjective but in terms of these last three seasons, it’s pretty good. Dany’s execution isn’t particularly exciting, or tense, but the genuine emotion of the moment lands. And the episode actually improves in the second half, with a brief-but-tantalising look at what will happen next in Westeros.

Of course, “a brief look” is likely the biggest problem here, with these last two seasons being needlessly truncated. Two ten episode seasons would have served this narrative better, and yet what we got, while imperfect, still managed to feel emotionally resonant and satisfying on a level that admittedly has to ignore a lot of dangling plot threads, missing characters and various prophecies that were, apparently, just wrong.

Current internet punching bags, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss direct this series finale with a kind of somber style, bringing a solid conclusion to an increasingly inconsistent saga. And whether you loved, hated or were simply bemused by how it all wrapped up, let’s take a moment to appreciate the mammoth undertaking this entire series represents. This is an epic fantasy told over many hours, brimming with love and death, monsters and gore, characters and locations. There may be shows that equal, or even surpass, it in the future but this was the first one to sing the song of ice and fire.

The major missing piece was, of course, Ser Pounce’s paw bursting through the ashes and clawing its way to victory, but they probably just ran out of money before they could shoot that one. Thanks for reading, everyone, see you at the next wildly entertaining, if controversial, cultural landmark!

 
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Days Gone

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Days Gone

When talking about Days Gone, it’s probably wise to address what the PS4 exclusive title isn’t, as much as discussing what it is. Days Gone isn’t another masterpiece from Sony, following in the staggeringly good run of Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man. This is a title with numerous problems and shortcomings, both technical and conceptual, and is destined to be treated like the red-headed stepchild of the PS4. All that being said, Days Gone is still pretty damn fine, if you’re willing to dig a little deeper into its somewhat rough charms.

Days Gone takes place in an open world largely destroyed by a fast zombie (or “freaker”) apocalypse that began a couple of years earlier. In that bitey beano, outlaw biker Deacon St. John lost his missus and now does odd jobs for various communities in Oregon. Deacon and his bestie, Boozer, keep talking about heading “up north” and Deek keeps trying to find out more about his wife’s demise, all the while fighting freakers and crazy humans. It’s an elegant premise, and a pretty convincing world, that you inhabit. After an initial bit of business Deek’s bike is trashed and he’s forced to use a gas-guzzling hunk of junk that you’ll do your best to improve as you engage in missions, main and side, plus other generic open world activities.

What Days Gone does best is its main story. The characters are well realised, if not always terribly original, and the freakers are legitimately scary, particularly when they form enormous, 200+ strong hordes. Moving from camp to camp, chatting with the leaders of each one, and finding out the philosophies that exist in a post-collapse America is engaging and interesting, and once you get used to the clunky controls, there’s fun to be had just tootling around getting into trouble. Less successful is the more time-wasting side content like bounties, which often aren’t worth the fuel you’ll waste – because, damn, you’ll be spending a lot of time refilling your crappy bike.

On the very downside, Days Gone is still – after a bunch of patches – beset by bugs of the visual, audio and frame rate variety. It never attains Fallout 76 levels of wretchedness, but it’s strange to see in a big budget AAA game, and for some folks that will be a hard pass.

However, if you rather like exploring the bones of a dying civilisation, and if you’re still engaged by zombies and apocalyptic cultists, then Days Gone is at least worth a squiz. It’s no masterpiece, and could have used some judicious editing, but Days Gone is, at many times, a diamond in the (very) rough.