Sometimes when you review games, you can miss big releases because you’re swamped with other things, also, because better reviewers are reviewing the material. Anyhoo, this time around, I caught a game in its second go-around, and I have some unbiased thoughts, which are hard to come by when you’re discussing Days Gone.
Days Gone Remastered, from developer Sony Bend, has brought back one of the bigger hits from the PlayStation 4 era to the PlayStation 5. The remastered version promised better graphics, more immersive-ness, and full support for haptic feedback on the PS5 controller. While some egame elements haven’t improved, including some hiccups here and there, severe lack of character development, and somewhat lengthy load times, it’s still a huge adventure that has some charm in a sea of big action games.
Before we get started, while I’m new to this game, I’m not ignorant of its journey. The original was divisive among the PS fanbase. Some called the original a masterpiece, while others considered it a lost opportunity because of its imbalanced story, its loss of focus at times, and technical glitches, which have mostly been cleaned up since its launch. Regardless of which side of this coin gamers hedge their bets on, there is no denying that the game has become more popular since its launch, even to the point where it has become a cult classic.
So, shine up that motorcycle, make sure you have plenty of ammo and gas, and let’s get this review started.
Narrative disconnect
The story of Days Gone Remastered is akin to The Walking Dead. You’ve got a group of rough and tough characters living within a decimated world. You play as Deacon St. John, a drifter with a taste for bounties and survival, and Deacon must find a way to survive in a world that delivers no comfort or reassurance that everything is ultimately going to be okay.
The story in Days Gone Remastered seems to be meant to spark some interest in the world, but it does not truly carry a cohesive or engaging narrative. While the story does push the characters far enough to get the player attached to them, how they are used in the story and presented is more about giving the world more legitimacy than telling a balanced and consistent story. It’s weird. For example, the game begins with Deacon and his partner Boozer surviving a sudden attack on their city. It also introduces Sarah, a presumed important character to Deacon, and someone who is severely hurt at the get-go, whom we don’t know much about. The game’s story doesn’t go deep enough to care about Sarah’s condition for a good chunk of act one. By the time you run into her storyline again, you have forgotten who she was and why she was important. Instead of a steady, pointed linear path, Sarah’s storyline is just thrown in about 5-7 hours into the game. It was so disconnected that there was no emotion reaching out to her character or what happened to her. Again, it was weird.
Much like that continuation of Sarah’s story, the game just seems uninterested in keeping the players on track with the characters and story. Now, the game does work without the characters being the focus, but it might have been far more impactful had they been developed and given more context through its narrative. A developer like Naughty Dog got this right with The Last of Us, which brought characters we cared for in the mix in the first fifteen minutes and then let the gamer take control of a broken and empty Joel. Once the gamer becomes Joel, post-daughter, the game pretty much lets you do what you want, but because of that initial impactful introduction and the meaningful establishment of the characters, we care about them and what happens to them, so we go seek the narrative, even between the narrative gaps.
For Days Gone Remastered, that connection never fully gets established at the beginning. While you do have flashes of connections, such as when Copeland is introduced, and when you find other survivor camps, you never fully get hooked on the narrative. In a way, this reminds me of my first go-around with Fallout 3. While the characters were there, and the world established, the story just didn’t care enough about them to create a ‘go and seek’ push for more of the narrative. I played 200 hours of that game and still haven’t finished that story.
Anyway, this might be the weakest part of Days Gone Remastered for me. I just didn’t connect with the story at all due to how the characters were built into the story in such an imbalanced way.
Gameplay driven by motorcycles and monsters
Story aside, there are some amazing parts of this game. There were some ‘wow’ moments as I played through it that made me whisper, “I get why people adore this game”. Those were enough to make the experience so much more than expected. Let’s talk about those wows.
World Building
Typically, good characters and great storytelling help to make a game’s world so much better and sharper. Oddly enough, the game does a good job of establishing the world through additional quests and random encounters. For example, as Deacon continues his trek through the world, he’ll work side quests that introduce a variety of personalities. These include an older woman who runs a failing survivor camp, groups of outlanders that are trying to kill him and survive, and other people who help to bring home the notion that this world is on the cusp of losing it. This is world-building at its finest, and the world that Deacon lives within is incredibly and methodically defined in Days Gone Remastered. I could see and feel the desperation of the dying world and reminders around every corner that everything could fall apart at any given moment.
The attention to detail also helps with world-building. The environments in this game are huge, sprawling, and insurmountable at times. Amid all the death and reminders of destruction this world endured, lie beautiful mountains, wild landscapes, roaming nature, and a perfect feeling of the Northwest at every step. The visuals make this game feel like this exact world might exist.
Overall, I love the world-building in Days Gone Remastered. It feels like a broken world from A to Z.
Controlling a situation
The actual gameplay of Days Gone Remastered feels perfected in its controls and execution. Even with The Last of Us, which is a phenomenal game for so many reasons, controlling and getting comfortable with Joel and Ellie took some getting used to, even in my most recent review of the second one. The controls and gameplay have always felt slippery to me for that series, which is probably a ‘me’ issue more than anything else.
Anyway, Days Gone Remastered didn’t take any time whatsoever to understand how the controls work during action sequences, how to ride a motorcycle without hitting every tree in Oregon when traveling or needing a quick getaway out of a bad situation, and how the world works so that nothing gets in the way of its interactivity.
Continuing with controls, the game felt tight from the get-go, as it was easy to stealth around baddies, work with different weapons to take down groups of uglies and camps, and just get right into the action without controls getting in the way. I can’t stress enough how good aiming and executing were in a firefight. It was so good that I actively looked for trouble in the game, which is probably the wrong idea for a survival-based game. All this said, the controls were amazing and unobtrusive to the experience. I will take those types of controls any day of the week.
On the motorcycle side of the equation, I adored this portion of Days Gone Remastered. I liked riding around with the motorcycle, running straight into bad guys and right out of bad situations, and I enjoyed pressing the experience to see what I could access using the bike. The leaps were fun as well. None of these experiences felt slippery, especially when you get into your first motorcycle chase trying to resolve a bounty. That was fun as hell. Much like the gunplay and character movement, the motorcycle controls felt tight and were accentuated by the haptic feedback added to the gameplay. By the way, it’s about time devs went back to the DualSense controller and found ways to use it in games. For Days Gone Remastered, that haptic feedback helped tighten and loosen trigger buttons during motorcycle rides to give more emphasis on that experience. This was one well-placed feature during the motorcycle portion of the game.
Anyway, the controls for both character and motorcycle were easy-peasy to pick up on and use.
Related to the controls is the forward-facing menu system. While the design of quick access to meds, weapon changes, and crafting wheels is slick, the number of systems you can access can be overwhelming and complicated to the point of creating confusion. While I think it was useful and nice to access bandages using the directional pad, the crafting wheel was clunky and, at least at the beginning, a mystery for me.
Very early in the game, you’ll be introduced to nests where enemies are born and leak out of, and you’ll be required to gather ingredients from the world to create a Molotov cocktail to take down such nests. It took me five minutes once I passed the tutorial of the game to remember and understand how to create such a thing on the fly and then use it. While I could have cheated and just looked at the menu system for control guidance, I felt like it should be an intuitive experience that is seamless to pull off, as much as it is respectfully thoughtless.
Instead, I had to pull up the crafting/weapons wheel, choose Molotov Cocktail, after fighting with the pipe bomb option located in the same area of the wheel, and then craft the cocktail with R1. After crafting it, I then had to choose it with the same wheel, which can be a very slippery slope at times, and equip it. The entire process felt cumbersome, especially when a hoard of baddies was charging at me. Ultimately, the crafting menu needed faster accessibility and without going 3-4 menus deep to use it.
That portion of the control complaint out of the way, overall, the game felt good when controlling Deacon and managing giant scrums.
Choices
The choices in Days Gone Remastered come in a variety of flavors. You have a huge number of choices for weapons, customization, and choices to make when talking to people. Choices feel like an important part of the gameplay experience.
On the weapons side of the tracks, the game tiptoes its way up a huge flight of stairs with picking the right weapons, upgrading them, and getting the most out of them. Having an arsenal at your disposal helps, and having the ability to acquire them easily during firefights is a huge plus. Downed armed enemies leave behind their weapons, which you can pick up and use. While Deacon can be armed to the teeth, the limited amount of ammo keeps his badass status limited, which balances out this portion of the gameplay. Arms can be upgraded as well, and more can be had from an easily accessible vault in several areas.
About this, you can choose to upgrade your chopper/motorcycle to make navigating the world a bit easier. For example, you will happen upon mechanics in survivor camps that will offer gas, engine, frame, and even tire upgrades for the right price. What choices you make with your motorcycle upgrades could mean more longevity with gas or a quicker getaway without sliding in certain hazardous weather conditions. The upgrades aren’t just for show, they’re impactful to the gameplay, which makes choosing and acquiring upgrades more meaningful and motivating. I’m not a huge crafting fan, but I thought this was an appropriate design for this game. It gave more purpose for the player to consider upgrades and keep surviving/taking chances in such a broken world.
The last bit of choices comes in the form of dialogue. There is a minor amount of branching dialogue in this game. How you treat people or respond to them makes a shift in the story and/or relationships. For example, occasionally, you will happen upon hostages being held by lunatics out in the wild. If you rescue them, you have the choice to send them to safe areas or just give them some supplies and send them on their way. These are minor branching moments, but they are a solid example of how the world and story can change with a simple choice. While Days Gone Remastered is certainly not Knights of the Old Republic or even an Elder Scrolls game, having branching moments and choices that mean something helps to give deeper meaning to the Deacon and his journey. It’s a nice addition that doesn’t get in the way as much as it adds to the experience.
Overall, you have some great choices to make in this game, which helps to expand the gameplay positively.
Enemies
You have wretched and disfigured enemies, as well as normal human enemies. This is just like The Walking Dead! The mutants in the game are unnerving, though mostly repetitive, especially the common enemies. They are an added obstacle in the game and not the main characters by any means. However, their role in the overall scheme of the world works well for the game.
The mutants in the game pose problems when it comes to accessing places or taking down camps. Everything you interact with in the environment and how you approach it can set these suckers in motion. Once you set them off, they can go from minor obstacle status to a horde of them running at you, which forces you to delay your journey until they can be sorted out. They are scary in large numbers and are always present throughout the game, so they don’t offer much rest when you travel between quests.
On the more story-centric side of the tracks, you have camps of survivors, outlanders, and Nero folks (an evil army trying to figure out how things went wrong). The camps of survivors can be dangerous, while the outlanders are unpredictable. Nero folks are a good part of the narrative, so they’re not as repetitive as the rest, but far deadlier. Ultimately, regardless of which comes after you, they are all out to kill you.
Anyway, camps of humans are manageable when it comes to fighting, as there are generally big places that feature spots that allow you to maneuver and hide. Even though you can duck and cover, then return fire, not all the NPCs will openly just allow you to kill them. Camps contain a lot of humans who are smarter than the typical NPC. They will move, shift, and rush you when they have the right moment. They also flank during fights, which adds more drama to the situation.
Beyond camps, you also have random occurrences that happen while walking around in environments. For example, the first time I ran into a random occurrence, everything started with a sniper’s red laser targeting my motorcycle. I had no idea what it was until it was too late, and I was tumbling to the ground. Once I fell, the sniper had a field day, while other outlanders decided to rush at me. It did not end well. When I revived and returned to the same spot, they were gone. I love this type of gameplay because you must keep a sharp eye out for humans and environments that never feel comfortable, which adds to the overall world-building.
Mutants and humans truly cause a lot of drama in this game, and it’s good drama. The latter of the two makes for more narrative-driven gameplay, especially when it comes to questlines (tons of those) and bounties. Again, the mutants just seem like they’re fun obstacles that you must deal with from time to time, or just lead toward humans to let them sort things out. You can do that in the game, and it’s fun as hell.
Overall, the gameplay for Days Gone Remastered is solid. I enjoy the world built for the game, the enemies that live within that world, and how everything reacts and progresses as you move through the story. The gameplay is every bit of what happy gamers crowed about the first time around.
Remastering
As I said at the beginning, I missed this game the first time around, so my knowledge and experience of the original game in comparison to the remastered release are very limited. Now, that said, I think that it’s also relevant because I went into this game with an open mind that was unimpeded from whatever argument gamers were having about it.
In my opinion, this was the right time to get into this experience. The PS5 brings beautiful environments, very well-modeled and textured characters, and just a better visual experience that sells the world of Days Gone. I had heard from Dillon Sweeney that this game was phenomenal in the visuals department, but I wasn’t prepared for the details to be this good. Everything was gorgeous.
On the gameplay side, the game gets a permadeath mode, which I’m sure some streamers will adore, as will Dark Souls fans, and a horde assault mode that is pure survival. Combined with the original content and graphical upgrade, the game delivers a good, remastered experience. For yahoos like me, who are first timers, this is an absolute delight with what the remastered game delivers.
On that sweet note, I’ve talked your head off enough. Let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Days Gone Remastered, from developer Bend Studio and publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment, brings a more defined and pointed experience, as well as a bigger world and a more refined amount of gameplay. While the story feels disconnected from said gameplay, which does hurt the game, the overall gameplay experience is pretty solid.
