In some ways I feel like the last console generation can be summed up by the games that weren’t a success, so spoilt for choice were we that some really credible titles simply failed to launch to the reception they almost certainly deserved. One of the most notable of these was Sony in-house developer Bend Studio’s Days Gone, or as I like to call it “Daryl From The Walking Dead Simulator 2019.”
Now, it’s perhaps a sign of how completely under-served we are this generation that Days Gone has risen from the grave with a cosmetic bump in the form of a PS5 remaster, and let me tell you I’ve had a total blast playing back through it five years later.
Launching, as I recall, to mixed but mainly positive reviews, Days Gone resolutely failed to meet the sales expectations of a Sony first party title, despite being one of the better showcases (along with Horizon: Zero Dawn) of the slightly enhanced graphical grunt of the PS4 Pro. Nonetheless it garnered something of a cult following over the following couple of years, and it was later in 2020 that I picked it up on the PS Store as a digital download for something like… I don’t know, two shillings? If like me you grabbed it cheap first time round then the £10 upgrade option for owners of the PS4 version makes this one of the bargains of the current generation.
Ostensibly a cross between Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead and a melodramatic daytime soap from the mid-nineties, the game centres around Deacon St. John (no, really), a biker/drifter/macho loner roaming post-apocalyptic Oregon in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. Learning that his wife may not be dead as he previously thought (schoolboy error, but surely we’ve all been there?) Deacon sets about trying to locate her, a task naturally best accomplished by staving in the heads of the undead with a variety of melee weapons, upgrading one’s firepower to mow them down with increasingly unlikely assault weaponry, and angrily slinging Dual Sense controllers across the lounge when yet another sniper in a tree half a mile away shoots you off your bike with utterly suspect precision. Okay, maybe that last one is just me.
If it sounds a bit familiar then yes, very little about the mechanics of Days Gone is particularly groundbreaking. Light RPG elements apply to upgrading the spec of your bike, while weapons come in varying degrees of repair and efficacy from poor to “Mil-spec.” A lot of the game’s rep was staked on it’s “horde” tech, which sees literal zombie armies numbering in the hundreds roaming the landscape. It’s the foreboding of these swarms that provides the real sense of dread; at first avoidable or at least outrun-able, there’s a gradually ratcheting inevitability to the notion that at some point you’re going to have to confront one head on to progress the story.
The thing is, Days Gone may be a well-worn story and familiar mechanics dressed up in leather and riding a cool bike, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun. By mid-game you’ll have overcome initial challenges around your bike’s lack of range and some pretty mediocre weaponry, and you’ll be traversing the world with a bit more confidence; last Friday night I leapt the chasm of a broken bridge, landed neatly into a corner-drifting manoeuvre, coming out of my power slide to one-handedly blow a zombie’s head off with a sawn-off shotgun, and I did it all while sipping rum and Coke through a straw back here in the real world. In these moments Days Gone sits right up there with Red Dead Redemption II for sheer open-world thrill.
In terms of what’s offered by the remaster upgrade, it’s actually not as impressive as you might hope, and if you’re considering buying the standalone PS5 version for £45 I might suggest you wait to next pick up the base game for a tenner and apply the upgrade. Having said that you get a smooth 60 frames per second (albeit at a lower base resolution than the PS4 Pro’s 4K checkerboard solution), some upscaled textures, enhanced foliage density and draw distance, and a few welcome tweaks to the lighting engine, particularly during the night cycle.
Aside from the frame rate boost, perhaps the most value comes from the addition of some new game modes, including a dedicated horde mode (lots of fun) and a speedrun option. Honestly though, for a tenner I was happy just to have the excuse to play back through the campaign, and as cheesy and overwrought as some of the dramatic elements may prove I kinda enjoyed it even more this time round. Something I also appreciated, having already played through to completion once, was the option to reset the hordes, checkpoints and enemy encampments that scatter the world, meaning you can carry on cruising and bruising with your endgame arsenal and bike intact, and without the need to start a New Game Plus playthrough. Schweet!
Don’t go in expecting Days Gone to change the world, and I’m confident you’ll come out thinking you’ve played one of the more satisfying games of this generation. It’s interesting that Sony have chosen to resurrect this title now, having previously nixed hopes of a sequel. Perhaps they’re testing the waters ahead of a u-turn? The cynic in me thinks it’s more likely Sony saw an opportunity to claw back some relatively easy cash, but regardless of motivation I was very happy to spend another couple of days cruising round the plague-ravaged Oregon wilderness.
Author: Ewan, Chester Store.
