8DAYS is a strange game to review. It’s really fun, but it is so damn hard. I question if it’s good or bad that it’s this hard. Some audiences really dig hard games like Dark Souls while others may tend to avoid those games like the plague. I wouldn’t put 8DAYS on the same level of difficulty as a Dark Souls game, but it’s very difficult and most of the time, it isn’t a player error. It almost feels unpreventable.
Before we break down the difficulty and gameplay, let’s talk about what exactly 8DAYS is. 8DAYS is a hard game akin to a game like Hotline Miami where it’s an action-packed, stylized, top-down twin-stick shooter. You’re a merc who breaks out of prison and you must shoot your way out and fight for your life.
Since the game is pretty hard (three bullets and you’re dead), you’re encouraged to take small little paths away from the view of your enemies so you can avoid combat but there will be times where you must charge head on at your foes.
When given a combat situation, it can get very frustrating. Although it rarely throws tons of enemies at you, more than just one can feel overwhelming due to the AI’s pinpoint accuracy and ability to kill you so fast. Add on the fact that they usually come at you from multiple angles, it’s hard to dodge multiple speeding bullets. There were times where I spent dozens of minutes on sections, doing the same thing over and over again because it didn’t offer many different solutions to the problem. The only thing I could do most of the time was just zig zag while firing rounds, hoping for the best.
It seemed like the map layout wasn’t well thought out where there was cover placed to give the player a chance to take cover from enemy fire or pop out at and shoot them. There were times where there was cover for that, but it wasn’t always there when needed. Everything seems random and disorganized.
Summary
Although it’s difficult, the core gameplay is very fun and satisfying. Each weapon has one magazine of bullets and you have to be very conservative with your bullets or you may run out and be left with nothing but your melee weapon. It keeps you on edge and you’re constantly swapping out weapons in order to have a decent amount of bullets.
When you do finally clear a section of enemies, you feel a sense of completion and satisfaction but I still feel the difficulty should be toned down or the level design should be more thought out. As previously mentioned, the game can probably find an audience of players who enjoy difficult titles, but for your average player, they may find the game too frustrating and annoying to actually enjoy. 8DAYS isn’t accessible and that might be its biggest problem.
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.