Days Gone Remastered gives Bend Studio’s open-world zombie survival game a second chance to impress on modern hardware. With improved performance, visual upgrades, and faster load times, the remastered version smooths over some of the technical bumps that held the original back. But while the fresh coat of paint helps, it can't completely mask the uneven pacing and narrative issues that still linger beneath the surface.

Running at a steady 60 frames per second with 4K support, Days Gone Remastered finally feels like the game it was always meant to be. Gone are the stutters, frame drops, and overly long loading screens that plagued the PS4 version. The dynamic weather, dense forests, and terrifying hordes of Freakers look more immersive than ever, especially during large-scale encounters at night. The remaster doesn’t overhaul the game’s art direction, but the improved lighting and texture work make a noticeable difference in bringing its Pacific Northwest setting to life.

What Days Gone gets right, it still gets really right. The horde mechanics remain a standout—hundreds of Freakers flooding toward you in terrifying waves, forcing you to plan every bullet, Molotov, and escape route. Riding Deacon’s motorcycle across the rugged, desolate landscape continues to be an oddly therapeutic loop: scavenge fuel, upgrade parts, and keep moving. The remaster’s higher frame rate improves aiming and responsiveness in a way that makes both stealth and combat far more enjoyable than before.

However, repetition sets in around the mid-game. Many missions follow a formula of “ride here, kill this, listen to a radio call.” The side quests lack depth, and while the core systems (bike, upgrades, combat) are solid, they don’t evolve enough to stay fresh across a 30-40 hour runtime.

Deacon St. John is a character who grows on you, even if his gruff biker persona feels heavy-handed early on. His emotional arc, centered around loss, loyalty, and survival, hits some genuinely moving beats—especially in the quieter, more personal moments. Unfortunately, the dialogue often veers into melodrama, and some characters lean into cliché.

The remaster doesn’t revise any of the original’s story beats or structure, which means the uneven pacing and jarring tonal shifts are still present. It’s a story that tries to be Sons of Anarchy meets The Last of Us, and while it doesn’t always hit the mark, there’s ambition behind it.

Days Gone Remastered doesn’t reinvent the original, but it does give it the technical polish it sorely needed. For newcomers, it’s the definitive way to experience an often-overlooked survival game with big ideas and even bigger zombie hordes. For returning players, the upgrades may not justify a second full playthrough unless you were already a fan. It's still not perfect—but with smoother controls, faster loading, and better visuals, the journey feels far more worthwhile.

Not a classic, but a cult favorite with enough improvements to deserve another spin of the tires.

Rating: 8/10

10/10

Look the game overall is fine, fun enough mechanics and an ok example of the form, nothing special or unique, but also not terrible.

However, it has the distinction of being the game with the most tedious protagonist I have suffered through listening to whine and complain for 50 hours.

Deacon is a self centred tosser who in any real apocalypse would have been taken out behind the woodshed 3 days in just so no-one would have to put up with him anymore. The most realistic part of the game is that his GF didn't bother looking for him for 2 years.

I slogged through it because I wanted to see the end and was hoping for a heroic sacrifice to know Deacon died, unfortunately no such luck. Had forgotten the game even existed until the recent DLC update, hope to return to that state soon.