Bravely, I ventured into the post-apocalyptic world of “The Day Before”, hoping for an engaging survival experience. The announcements and trailers had raised my expectations high, despite the prior issues. Unfortunately, my excitement was quickly met by harsh reality. Because the game is currently not really good even in Early Access.
Like many others, I was very interested after the first trailer of the new survival shooter “The Day Before”. It immediately landed on my wishlist on Steam, as the environments and the setting suggested it had the potential for a promising game and could be exciting as an open-world MMO in the long term.
In my mind, I was already dreaming of a worthy Division successor, combining the setting of Ubisoft’s cover shooter with challenging survival aspects.
- I wanted to explore New Fortune City and loot massive skyscrapers, business centers, shopping malls, stadiums, and much more, just like Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead.
- In addition, survival aspects that force me to pay attention to my character and his surroundings. After all, I could be overrun at any moment by a horde of infected, zombie-like enemies.
- The construction of my own base and the repair of vehicles were also mentioned, which quite reminded me of the detail-loving gameplay of SCUM, which I was never averse to.
After what felt like an eternity, due to delays and trademark issues, the big day of truth had come. I could play “The Day Before” for the first time and lost my hope again.
“The Day Before” was supposed to be the new Division, but the trailers promise too much:
“The Day Before” was supposed to be the new The Division
On December 7, 2023, at 7:00 PM, the game was released for installation on Steam. So it did exist, and I immediately started the download.
I knew that the survival shooter would first appear in Early Access. A few bugs had never stopped me from trying a game, and it was running quite well until the character menu. But during the server selection came the first sobering moment.
As often happens with “Early Access” launches, developers tend to underestimate the situation that thousands of players want to test the game immediately in the first hours. And so I found myself in front of a server list, where there were no capacities available for me to join for an eternity.
Unfortunately, there is also no queue system in “The Day Before”. I had to scroll and hope with constant reloads to find a spot on a not-so-full server.
If you manage to get in, you wake up in the social hub of Woodberry and are sent to Chris after a short sequence with the doctor.
By the way, Chris is the sharp-looking guy from the striking teaser image of “The Day Before”. However, the quality in the game is less good:
- The animations and the design of the characters and the environment in “The Day Before” cannot convince me even at maximum graphics settings.
- The voice of leader Chris also reminds me of the armory trader from SCUM, just like the system of having to constantly improve his character for looting.
Nevertheless, the small refuge of Woodberry feels quite nice. There are various merchants, including a stockpiler, a bartender, or the weapons manager. Of course, there must also be a workbench to upgrade and improve my firearms.
I also immediately receive my own property by the lake and can already make myself comfortable there. But I wanted to finally see the “beautiful and detailed” New Fortune City and experience corresponding action.
An endless list of technical problems
However, instead of infected and loot, I was again greeted by a chaotic collection of bugs. Objects only appeared after I looked away once. Moreover, “The Day Before” crashed several times while I was completing tasks in build mode on my property. After logging back in, I was again in Woodberry, but still trapped in the building menu. Only creating a new character could help.
In short: The technical issues on the launch night were virtually endless. Not just for me, but also for my friends, who also wanted to take their first rounds in the game. Occasionally, my character had no head, then a huge head, as large as a tetherball. Sometimes I was half-naked or slid across the ground like a crumpled mop.
Since the game is still in Early Access, I won’t raise these difficulties as a critique point, even if they went beyond “a few bugs”.
“The Day Before” sounded too good to be true
Finally in the “big” city: The next day, I managed to explore the city. But I quickly found myself longing to be locked up in the social hub again.
Yes, New Fortune City definitely has Division vibes. But nothing more. The developers promised an open world that could be explored. But what I experienced was hardly exciting or interesting, and the zombies were probably on vacation.
- The city feels too empty, there are too few NPC enemies. You only occasionally hear the grunting of an infected person who probably still has to gather his buddies for the upcoming zombie apocalypse. You can also just run away from them; they rarely follow.
- When you finally encounter an infected person, it feels like luck. This goes for the game world as well as for the poor handling with the different weapons.
- Hits are registered too late by the game and completely at the wrong spot. Real players are the bigger threat because there is no radar.
- When I run out of ammunition, I am completely defenseless. There is no melee combat.
- After just a few runs, you grasp almost everything of this surprisingly small and monotonous world. It’s currently just limited terrain with little depth.
- Furthermore, there is the confusing sound location. There are much too loud and shrill alarm sounds that seem to follow me for miles. Shots and footsteps from players are also hard to locate.
Even looting, which is supposed to be the heart of the game, turned out to be disappointing. Instead of meaningful resource utilization and strategic planning, I found myself in an endless chase for seemingly random items that make little sense for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. In refrigerators, you find lipstick; in delicate women’s handbags, car batteries.
Returning to Woodberry takes place via the extraction points. However, you rarely manage to get out with the loot. At the points, you are taken out by other players, so you quickly lose weapons and loot, except for the things in the protective bag. And purchasing equipment again is expensive – just like cars.
At least you have enough time during the extremely long loading screens to realize that this game, advertised as an open-world survival MMO, is unfortunately just light survival combined with an extraction shooter.
My dream of “The Day Before” as an eye-opening experience has thus popped. What remains is a simple extraction shooter without soul and with boring collect quests, from which probably no exciting open-world survival and certainly no MMO will arise.
Let’s hope that future updates will not only resolve the technical problems but also steer the gaming experience in a better direction, making the extraction gameplay at least more compelling. However, at this point, I would not recommend the game.
By the way, the hyped game has already been torn apart by fans on Steam: The Day Before: Controversial survival game is No. 2 on Twitch, but gets torn apart on Steam
