Days Gone (PC) Reviewed.

Wow…2 years fly in the blink of an eye. When I originally reviewed Days Gone (Playstation 4) for the site in 2019, I never figured I’d be reviewing the PC port of the game in 2021. I never figured we’d see a PC port in the first place!

How times have changed.

Well…with 2 years in between, has Days Gone gotten any better?

Find out by reading!

What is Days Gone?

Days Gone is an open world action game set in the post zombie apocalypse. It’s single player, and developed by Sony’s Bend Studios. Unfortunately, word came out months back that Days Gone isn’t probably getting a sequel any time soon (though things might’ve changed since then!) so you’re going to have to enjoy this as much as you can.

Fortunately, there’s a ton of game to enjoy. I’m not going to talk about the game again (read the PS4 review to see what it’s like) so I’ll just be focusing on the new PC stuff in this review.

Over the time since it came out, Sony’s quietly been chugging away and patching most of the issues I’ve had in the original game. Besides, most of them came from the aging PS4 hardware anyways, which isn’t an issue when you’re talking about a PC port.

Here’s what you’ll need to get it running, courtesy of the game’s Steam page.

While I was unable to run the game at 4K, I was able to run the game comfortably with all settings enabled at 60FPS on the Aorus 15 with its NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti.

Despite the lower resolution, the game looks much better than the Playstation 4 version. In fact, the added visual effects make it seem preferable to the Playstation 5 version as well, though I do prefer playing the game on a big screen compared to a laptop’s monitor.

The game’s clearly been optimized to hell and back and I was pretty damn happy at its performance throughout. There are hitches here and there when it comes to the hordes (which I suspect’s due to the hardware, not the game’s engine) but other than that, the game’s pretty awesome.

Controls are responsive (though is no DualSense support) and I had no issue playing with the Xbox Series X controller attached to my notebook. The prompts reflect your controller, so there’s no need to worry if you’re unfamiliar with a Playstation controller.

Like on the Playstation 5, the increased framerate transforms Days Gone from a good game to a great one. Everything’s smoother and more responsive, which makes for a really enjoyable experience all around. Loading’s infinitely better too, due to the SSDs in PCs now.

One of the things that I really appreciate about the game is that changes you make to the visuals are all done in real time. You don’t need to restart at all, and the game also gives you a preview of the type of performance you’re going to get with the new settings via a handy indicator on the upper right of the screen.

I’d have loved it if there was a native benchmarking tool but unfortunately real-time options menu is the best we’re going to get.

While I’m happy to see that the game now runs smoothly and the technical hitches are pretty much gone, there are still some gameplay niggles that carryover from the original versions of the game.

My main pet peeves’ being the game’s really too empty. You’re usually travelling large distances with your bike and there’s really nothing interesting going on in the world. The world’s lifeless (which fits the game) but that also makes it boring. I’d have vastly preferred a smaller play area with more stuff to do.

The Bottom Line.

Days Gone for the PC is hands down the best version of the game. Not only does it perform better, it being on the PC also brings on the possibilities of mods to make the game even better! There’s really no downside to having the game on the Playstation AND the PC, though some problems still carryover between the two versions.

I’d have loved a more fleshed out experience but that sadly wasn’t on the cards for the port. For good or for ill, Days Gone on the PC is pretty much the same (at least gameplay wise) as its console brother. That’s a bit of a bummer considering the developers could’ve taken the time to tweak and enhance the basic game but at the end of the day, Days Gone is still a great game that Sony will hopefully create a sequel for.

TLDR:

The PC version is the definitive version to play!