Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

Days Gone launched two years ago on PS4. It was Sony's rare first-party game that didn't receive universal praise. Personally, I always found it to be unfair, and the game became my favorite of 2019. Over time, it became one of my favorite genre games ever made.

Over the next two years, Days Gone earned something akin to cult status among console gamers – as far as a game can be shown on an E3 stage, anyway – and now Days Gone has a second chance with the general public as the latest. a growing list of Sony games launched on PC.



But for Days Gone to receive bigger accolades this time around, the PC port would have to be impressive, something previous Sony games have struggled with at times. Thankfully, Sony Bend's "Broken Road" delivers a gorgeous port, giving a whole new player base access to one of the best post-apocalyptic games in the world.

Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

The premise of Days Gone is pretty straightforward, as the team previously admitted to Game Informer during the magazine's cover trip to Oregon. It's The Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy. As one of the few survivors of the post-viral outbreak, Deacon St. John rides through central Oregon's jagged forests and snow-capped mountains on his motorcycle and often alongside his best friend and former member. of the club, Boozer.

While the pair are still wearing their colors, their biker gang is practically dismantled. They traverse a world where most people have been turned into Freakers, crazed albino-like zombies who rip and tear at the flesh of the living when not traveling in massive hordes or cowering in their offensive-smelling nests.



Days Gone is the personification of the adage “write what you know”. Set in the region where Sony Bend operates, the setting is rich and well traveled. Actual views like Crater Lake are complemented by authentic small-town gas stations, general stores, churches, and homes. What were once quiet mountain towns are now overrun with dirt and decay from more than two years of societal collapse.

In their place, several colonies have sprung up, each with its own leaders and group dynamics. Some survive on slave labor, others are havens for the region's right-wing conspiracy theorists (now feeling vindicated for spending their pre-virus years building prep hideouts). Others are still fledgling, often struggling democracies, where good-natured people try to hold their heads up high in a world where most have abandoned those pretensions once the pharmacies emptied and the wolves started to chase people.

Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

The world of Days Gone is heavily inspired by its undead predecessors, which tend to portray similar disarray, but in the game's long-running story mode it ultimately succeeds despite - and sometimes because of - its tropes. The full game unfolds like a season-long zombie epic, and each new Deacon community feels like the start of a new season, like Rick Grimes' group moving from the CDC building to the prison in Alexandria and so on. right now.

As past stories continue to reverberate in the present, Deacon's North Star is still his presumed dead wife, whom he lost on the first night the world went to hell. Deacon's story isn't always as clever as she seems to believe. Some story beats can be seen a mile away, but it's certainly interesting enough to make this 40-hour adventure worth exploring.



All of this makes for a familiar yet engrossing story that gives context to Deacon's open world working better than some other games in the genre. It clears freaker nests to allow fast travel, which provides more dynamic recurring content than climbing towers in Ubisoft games. He can unlock safe houses and improve his passive skills by securing abandoned evacuation zones, which nearly troll players with their invisible alarms ready to go off if Deacon acts too quickly.

In the game's best moments, Deacon can take on huge hordes of Freakers, who move like violent schools of fish through the backwoods of Oregon, intimidating to watch and even harder to take down. With dozens of map icons to get to grips with, Days Gone doesn't often turn the rules of the open-world action-adventure, but it fulfills the zombie fantasy better than virtually any other comer to a crowded genre.

And on PC, it's still beautiful.

Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

I was worried that Days Gone would come to PC in a troubled state after PlayStation previously ran into an issue with setting Horizon up on the platform, but that's just not the case here. I haven't had a problem for dozens of hours. It really is that simple.

Offering an uncapped frame rate, Days Gone far outperforms its PS4 version and can even outperform the PS5 enhanced version currently available in the PS Plus collection, provided your hardware can carry it beyond 60fps. For those who enjoy gaming on ultrawide monitors, Days Gone makes excellent use of the presentation mode, where sprawling wilderness and massive hordes fill your stretched screen. This is especially useful when going up against Freakers, as they like to flank Deacon quite smartly, which gives the feature a function in addition to its fashion.



Along with the standard PC port features like keyboard and mouse support and better visual customization options, my favorite part of Days Gone on PC is Photo Mode, which was present in previous versions of the game. but now looks better than ever on PC.

Seeing every stitch and tear in Deacon's hat, every stain on his bike, and every wrinkle in the Freakers skin in crystal clear quality is remarkable at first glance – I instantly set a photo of myself as my desktop background . For virtual photographers, Days Gone has been a fan favorite thanks to its detailed environments and realistic character models. Now that niche feels pretty spoiled with the PC port.

Like Avalanche's Mad Max, Days Gone transfers affection for its horse (Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead Redemption) to a mechanical beast instead. For Deacon, it's his bike, and Sony Bend does a great job of making players always aware of his condition and location.

With the bike, players can travel fast and save fast, while for Deacon he can evade hordes, mow down enemies, and race down hills from point of interest to point of interest, all while saving gas and improving it regularly, both functionally and cosmetically. . Deacon's bike is an extension of his own being, and therefore that of the player.

You'll never walk into a location without knowing exactly where you left it, and no matter how far you'll see its icon on your minimap. In the surest sign that this is a brutal world, you'll quickly learn to park it ready for a quick getaway. Days Gone offers great moments that are both scripted and, more importantly, organic. Leading a horde through a camp of enemies or watching a few Freakers run into an aggressive bear are the kind of zombie fiction dioramas I crave in my constant consumption of the genre, and Days Gone delivers them in droves.

Days Gone PC Review – The Bottom Line

Days Gone PC Review: Road to Greatness

Benefits

  • A gripping mix of scripted and organic moments
  • Beautiful open world intimately inspired by real-world locations
  • Enemy hordes provide recurring chaotic fun
  • The story is delivered satisfyingly as a one-season saga
  • Great mix of survival horror resource management and RPG-lite upgrades.

The inconvenients

  • Some typical open world pitfalls

The common thread of Days Gone is hope lost and hope attached. For Deacon, it's his often reckless search for his wife. For others, even the lower parts of Maslow's pyramid are crumbling, giving way to utter despair. Whether it's when you're hiding in the grass as a horde passes just yards away, or when Deacon desperately hunts down every false lead he thinks will lead him to his partner, there's just a glimmer of light. hope things will go well. .

And as fun as decadence is in itself, when that silver lining pays off, Days Gone shines.

If you're still PS5-less and haven't had access to Days Gone before, know that this isn't a game that breaks the mold of the massive sandboxes we've seen so many times before. But what Days Gone does well is that it gives players a world where nothing comes easy. Dozens of hours into my multiple playthroughs, I still even just avoid a small group of Freakers if I can.

But overcoming those struggles and making something of the new world is still a cornerstone of great zombie fiction, and although Sony Bend gives its monsters a different name, Days Gone is one of the best genre video games ever produced. .

[Note: Sony provided the copy of Days Gone on PC used for this review.]

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