The Day Before Review (PC)

A gamers cycle borders between eager anticipation for new games and diving deep into their experience after they launch. Occasionally, you may dial it back down with replays when you’ve exhausted the new releases. Almost always, games meet the player’s expectations, except for minor setbacks, which patch updates sew back to perfection. But not every day do you see a game flop so badly that the developers pull it down four days after its launch.

The Day Before is one of the most-wishlisted games on Steam. But it’s also one with the most bizarre history. During its five years of development, the developers have seen plenty of curveballs that did not deter them from their one goal: – release the game to the world. Perhaps they should have taken it as a sign and maybe not launched the game since it was met with ‘overwhelmingly negative’ reviews on Steam. And it doesn’t stop there. There are plenty of hiccups in store. 

Since we give you exclusives on great games, we also give reviews of games that are on the far end of the spectrum. Here’s The Day Before review.

Not So MMO

The Day Before debuted on December 7 as an open-world survival MMO. But many users are terming it an extraction shooter, which doesn’t live up to the game’s description. Let’s break down its gameplay, shall we? The Day Before takes you through a zombie apocalyptic era where you drop into an area, shoot the brain-dead monstrosities, and collect valuable loot. Once done, you retrieve to an area with vendors, access more quests and so on. From face value, this sounds more like an extraction shooter than an MMO. It’s what you get when playing Escape from Tarkov, which draws plenty of elements from MMOs. 

But hey, don’t just take my word for it; fellow gamers are echoing the same sentiment. One Steam user straight-up said, “Not a survival game. Not an MMO. Just an incomplete extraction game.” Ouch.

In a plot twist, Fntastic claims that the game was never an MMO. An inside source spilled the beans about an internal hiccup, and apparently no one knew where the whole MMO thing came from. According to this ex-staffer, the game is a third-person shooter with a bit of coop action. No RPG stuff, no massive player numbers—servers capped at 100 people, no clans, no raids, and closed hubs. And get this: It’s been like that for over two years.

Speaking to Dualshockers, the former staff revealed disgruntled leadership in the studio, where the founders took charge of everything. They even went a notch higher to disregard team feedback and axe anyone who disliked their ideas. Consequently, the studio spent plenty of time removing and reworking ideas—not so teamwork, Fntastic!   

Not So Thrilling

Away from the MMO miscommunication, a major relief for most gamers-I’d presume, was the game’s launch. The game’s trailer really did work up an appetite, so to see it launch kept the faith of most people. But seeing how it plays out threw everything we hoped for out the window. And here’s why.

Before jumping into the game, you create your character. You choose a personality, which is the character class. You can decide between Pathfinder, Roamer, and Ghost. Each class has a unique backstory and traits, which supposedly affect your gameplay. The traits range from enhancing your firepower to healing, trading, and looting skills. Admittedly, these first few minutes had me convinced that the game was really going to live up to its hype, as the trailer depicted. But after settling on my character and his charming looks, I hop onto a server, and I’m met with “connection problems.”. Switching to a different server didn’t seem to solve it either. But after a few tries, I was finally in.

It starts with the protagonist waking up in a Survivor Colony and the doctor explaining how his survival is a miracle. Your first task is to converse with the doctor, but even this is a formidable task for the game. A misstep in the room, and you find yourself falling through the hospital’s floor to an abyss. Looking up, the hospital appears to be levitating, a clear indication of half-baked development. Surprisingly, that’s not the only frustrating feat. Controls keep lagging. Lifting a whole car seems easy compared to opening a door in the game. The repeated effort really throws you off. 

Not So Survival

The Day Before revolves around players exploring the infected regions for loot and heading over back to the base. Occasionally, you’ll run into zombies who put up a decent fight. But that’s just about it. The city appears to be well detailed at first glance, but it’s static with minimal action. Your character has a tablet, which helps in navigation, but it doesn’t justify the missing UI. Tracing your location leaves your character exposed and vulnerable to attacks. But since zombies are a scarce sight, it’s probably a non-issue. Regardless, a UI screen would make more sense, granted it’s a survival game. How am I supposed to survive when the threats are barely there?

Also, The Day Before blatantly fails as a multiplayer game. First, it’s impossible to figure out where your teammates are or whether they’re still alive. This is a large factor in missing chats. If you wish to speak to your friends, you’ll have to use Discord or Steam Chat. The game, however, does provide a chat window, but getting that to function is another frustrating task. 

And the cherry on top is that the game does quite little to explain how combat works. I had to find out that my hands and feet couldn’t protect me the hard way. So if you run out of ammo, you should count yourself dead – well, at least until you find the next loot. 

Not So Progressive

The game lacks a proper progression system. Aside from collecting loot and stacking up currency, that’s just about it. Players get a backpack to store loot. The bigger the bag, the more loot you can haul, but all this can disappear in an instant following your demise. The character deaths will feel like banging your head against a brick wall. Here, the progression system appears to be backward since you lose all your loot and remain with a few coins. After a few deaths, you’re back to nothing. 

So what do you do with a broken character that can’t purchase weapons? Loot the infected world, maybe. But wait, how do you do that when you can’t engage in combat using your limbs? You’ll end up dead in no time, hence the constant exasperating loop.

Thankfully, you can pick up another player’s backpack if they’re killed. But you can never bank on having a well-filled inventory. Most likely, you’ll be unprepared for the next encounter. 

Not So… Everything

Besides the lackluster combat engagements, the game’s environment is outright bland. Most of the action takes place outside, and there’s no weather system to spice things up a little. Oh, did I mention you get your own abode—well,  a tent? You can furnish the tent with the currency you loot, with a bit of customization here and there. 

Also, New Fortune City is bare with no activity. You’ll occasionally find a backpack or two for looting resources. But that’s it. You can walk into the stores, check around for storage, and you’re out. In one run, I defeated about four zombies but collected plenty of loot; it seemed impractical to return. 

At the time of writing, The Day Before is no longer purchasable since the devs pulled it down, but individuals still have access to purchased titles. Now that simply means you can keep playing the game with its insane amount of glitches. Some players are leveraging this to access powerful weapons that require an insane amount of currency to purchase. If you’re like me, who likes to live by the book, you’ll occasionally find yourself at a disadvantage on certain servers. 

The Good

Beneath it all, The Day Before appears to be a promising game with a solid foundation that took the wrong direction. The weapon inventory is a plus for the game, but their price tags are a menace. If only the devs had included the mobile crafting system as teased in its pre-release. Also, the game’s storyline is fairly engaging. The NPC conversations give you an idea of what transpired and your next course of action. But they overwhelmingly feel like scripted AI conversations that didn’t make it to the editor’s table.

Evidently, the developers ran into plenty of trouble when curating the game, which might have affected its outcome. But as the insider sources revealed, the directors’ direction pushed the final nail in the game’s coffin. Perhaps they took a bite off more than they could chew. Or it was all a scam. Who knows? Probably the devs. Thankfully, following its retraction, Fntastic has refunded most of the game purchases.

Verdict

The Day Before, is an utter disappointment. Fntastic’s reaction to pulling it down is a testament to this. Despite being touted as an open-world survival MMO, it ended up more like an incomplete extraction shooter, causing confusion among players. The gameplay did more than just shatter expectations.

The game’s survival aspect fell short, with a poorly detailed, static environment and minimal action. Multiplayer functionality was a mess, lacking communication features, and combat mechanics were unclear. The absence of a progression system, coupled with losing all loot upon death, is just scratching the surface of its multiple pitfalls.

Ideally, this has to be the worst game for 2023. If you didn’t get a chance to play the game, well, you dodged a bullet, buddy.