Days Gone

Days Gone - Motor, Mope, and Murder

Kill Zombies, Rescue Survivors, and Explore the PNW on Two Wheels

One of Sony’s Best-Selling Games Comes to PC

Days Gone is an open-world survival game developed by Bend Studio, a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The action-adventure game was released on PlayStation 4 in 2019 and quickly became one of Sony’s best-selling titles. May 18, 2021, will see its long-awaited arrival on PC.

Combining Two Popular Genres

Survival games are hot right now, and zombies remain popular. Combining the two is a natural move. The result is an eerily abandoned world that’s still full of peril - a formula that has worked very well for the Fallout series. The tough bounty hunter biker is a natural protagonist - rugged, independent, and mobile.

St. John’s moping over his departed wife goes on too long and lacks impact.

Days Gone makes an admirable attempt to give emotional heft to its story, but some players have found their efforts fall a bit flat. The NPCs in the settlements tend to the bland. St. John’s moping over his departed wife goes on too long and lacks impact. His relationships with his biker buddies, however, are much livelier and provide the game’s best interactions.

Concept Rating: 4/5

Beautiful Roads, Ugly Monsters

Days Gone looks great on PlayStation 4 and is expected to be even better with the higher resolution and unlocked framerates available on the PC version. The roads, forests, and mountains are beautifully rendered. The Freakers, as this world’s zombies are called, are freaky enough to live up to their name. It gets even creepier with wolf and bear Freakers, and the enormous, writhing hordes of Freakers are a nightmarish tour de force.

Days Gone looks great on PlayStation 4 and is expected to be even better with the higher resolution and unlocked framerates available on the PC version.

The sound is, unfortunately, not quite as strong as the visuals. For the most part, it’s solid, but there are more audio glitches than a game this polished really ought to have. The radio is one area in which the comparison to Fallout will do Days Gone no favors. Instead of a memorable music soundtrack, Days Gone has only talk radio to offer, and it’s hard not to notice when the rants start repeating themselves.

Graphics & Audio Rating: 4/5

Build Better Bikes, Bats, & Bombs

Days Gone is an action-adventure survival-horror game. That means four types of play, and the game delivers quite well on all four. The missions mostly involve rescuing captives, tracking down traitors, and eliminating Freaker nests. These missions can be a little repetitive, and the stealth missions are not of the quality that you get in more stealth-focused games.

The weapons and their impacts feel real, and setting off your hand-crafted bombs is, well, a blast!

The combat is satisfying: solid, crunchy, and bloody. The weapons and their impacts feel real, and setting off your hand-crafted bombs is, well, a blast! Speaking of crafting, the survival portions of Days Gone are also fun. There are a lot of resources to be scavenged, and varied but intuitive things to do with them.

Days Gone is also a success as an exploration game, giving you a lot of beautiful, desolate landscapes to explore. Sometimes all that beautiful desolation may start to feel a little empty, but St. John’s bike is a joy to ride.

Gameplay Rating: 5/5

A Lot of Story, But Only the One Story

There’s a lot of game here - some 60 hours, by Sony’s estimate. You’ll find plenty to do, and it’s plenty entertaining. But by the time you reach the end, you may feel like you’ve seen everything that post-apocalyptic Oregon has to offer. Or maybe not. Some players will enjoy going back to build more gear, see all the sights, and fight those zombie hordes again.

Days Gone is well worth a playthrough. Whether you like gruff manly dialogue, exploring open worlds, crafting, or just wild zombie mayhem, this game offers something for almost everyone.

Replay Value Rating: 3/5

TL;DR

Days Gone is a satisfying biker-versus-zombies game that offers a satisfying action, exploration, and survival experience.