Days Gone Remastered Review (PS5)

Coming out six years to the day of its original 2019 PS4 release, Days Gone Remastered puts us back into the war-weathered biker boots of Deacon St. John as he rides through the murky climes of the Pacific Northwest. The original game was met with a mixed reaction, with some becoming completely enamored with Deacon and the post-apocalyptic world he explores, and others derided it for being highly generic with nary a new thing to say. With refined visuals and promising new additions, can Days Gone Remastered curie favour with its detractors, or will it retain its divisiveness?

SONY Bend Studios gave us an ambitious open-world post-apocalypse to explore in 2019 littered with riotous shambling undead hordes known as freakers. Days Gone’s reception was middling because while it catered for our insatiable appetite to slay nasty fiends, and contained a proper narrative to emotionally invest in-it was also highly generic and containing a freighters-load of worn out tropes, oh and not forgetting the protagonist Deacon St. John was a dullard, who speaks like a teenager refuses to arise from his bed and go to school in the morning. Nevertheless, the Playstation fanbase has seen fit to rally behind Days Gone by craving for a sequel, which at this rate will continue to linger in perpetuity, but while we wait for this unlikely hypothetical sequel, here’s a remastered version of Days Gone with new content and renewed aesthetics. The results? It’s more Days Gone, and you’ll want to book a return trip to this one if you haven’t played it since 2019.

In this remastered version of Days Gone, you’ll find ample challenge courtesy of Permadeath Mode and the frighteningly hassle-strewn Horde Assault Mode, both of which push the envelope to challenge players to think on their feet in order to survive the madness scurrying towards them due to an uncontrolled armada of freakers. Relentless and unstoppable, these waves of freakers will ensure that you keep your wits about you and maddeningly fend off the massive swarms.

Horde Assault is a quasi-roguelike with an insane amount of frantic weapon-firing that feels like you’re mowing down an entire country’s worth of bloodthirsty cattle. It’s all about racking up as many points as you can and surviving wave upon wave of freakers. Attempting to thin out hordes by hurling Molotovs to set the scourge ablaze, and hectically keeping your bullets firing away, is an exhilaration that makes the most of one of the biggest incentives of playing Days Gone to begin with-to be a badass and unstoppable one-man army.

As you can tell already, Days Gone Remastered is decadent, containing new modes and additions that push the excitement and challenge to the maximum degree to keep you entertained plentifully. On top of this, the remaster looks and runs sleekly in native 4K resolutions, and there’s the option to maximize framerate or graphics output, and there’s a third option that boosts performance and graphics output together, with the benefits being most recognizable on the PS5 Pro.

Though there’s a general remaster effort put forward here, there’s nothing particularly staggering about the visuals. Days Gone certainly looks a lot sharper and smoother, nourishing a 6 year-old PS4 game in all  the expected ways, and it looks better than ever before-though it’s not a drastic evolution like the recently-released Oblivion Remastered (seeing as Oblivion Remastered upgrades a 19 year-old game). However, wastelands weren’t made to look good, but as you explore Days Gone there are some beautiful sights that have remained untouched by the desolation, and those places are reminders of the tranquility inherent in the old world-which is one of the loveliest aspects of Days Gone. The skies and the textures of water, as well the lighting are all upgraded noticeably and marvelously, so you won’t want to return to the PS4 version again.

If there’s one glowing achievement of this remaster is that it turns a muddy and middling PS4 triple A game, into one that looks spiffing with a myriad of admirable improvements that you will be somewhat spellbound by it. You’ll still notice the grid and mud stuck to its tyres though, you can’t really do anything about that, no hosing down will wash away the grime, but you’ll still enjoy using these dirty tyres because they’re robust and they’re reliable-just like Days Gone…..just don’t attend some fancy bike meet!

Similarly to its release in 2019, Days Gone is still a divisive-if-revered post-apocalyptic open-world game. Various reminders of The Last of Us coarse through Days Gone’s biker veins, whether it’s the desperation and conspiratorial aspects of the story, the crafting, or the bleak open-world, you’ll certainly notice the similarities to Naughty Dog’s classic as you traipse through Days Gone’s ruined Oregon landscape. On top of this, Deacon’s grumbles and disinterested dialogue makes him sound like a teenager who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and go to school. Who considers Deacon much of a biker anyway? He wears his cap backwards like a 10 year-old who can’t get enough of baseball, and let’s admit that Boozer fits the biker mold much more convincingly than Deacon-must because Boozer resembles Johnny Klebitz from the GTA series. While Days Gone is seemingly infected by a lack of convincing characterization and writing on top of its generic core, the longer you dig into it the quality improves massively, and somehow it doesn’t stop provoking your interest no matter how much it marches in dismal lockstep with its contemporaries.

Days Gone has always been quite the fascinating product that at once surges with eye-rolling feelings of dismay, and yet continues blinkering with surprises and thrills. There’s so much to glean from Days Gone and it’s an oddity that can be loved and loathed, but no matter what it keeps you gripped to its handlebars throughout.

If you’ve been waiting 6 years to experience Days Gone, then Days Gone Remastered features everything you could ever need, and it’ll give you the best way to play the game, and all the added content gives it nothing short of a luxurious appeal. The new Horde Assault, New Game Plus and Permadeath Mode options deliver the ultimate rush for die-hard Days Gone fans, and it feels like a love letter and a thank you to fans who’ve rallied behind the game since it first came out. The visuals are much crisper, meaningfully upgrading a game that used to look a bit shonky and almost as dirty as its post-apocalyptic world. Yes, the characters aren’t remarkable, and it treads the same tarmac as The Last of Us, but Days Gone Remastered feels like a complete game that irons out many of the aesthetic kinks, while adding more meat in the process. Nobody should feel dissatisfied with the remastering job done here, especially seeing as you now get more for your money.