Sometimes remastered games can be the hardest games to review. When a game was being upscaled from PS1 to PS3, it was a lot easier as that period of time saw massive advancement in games both graphically and gameplay wise. But when you take a game from the late PS4 life and remaster it for PS5, the changes aren’t quite as stark. Still, I gave it a go with the newest PS5 remaster, Days Gone Remastered, jamming it on a PS5 Pro.
If you haven’t played Days Gone before, it tells the story of the ex-bikie Deacon in Oregon after a zombie attack. Sorry, not zombies, Freakers. Freakers are, well, zombies that come out at night. They come in the normal zombie types, or kid versions that attack when you are low on health, but also come in the wildlife variety. I am being a bit facetious with the use of the word zombie, as they are zombies in every way, but there is some creativity in there with how they act. So I’ll stop being an ass and call them Freakers.
Anyway, Deacon thought his wife Sarah was dead, but finds out that may not be the case. There he kicks off his journey to find her. The writing and story are much better than I expected going into it the first time, and I enjoyed checking it out again.
The game is an open world where you can run around on foot, or on your trusty motorcycle. That’s obviously the faster choice, but you have to manage things like your gas and storage. Throughout the journey you can make camps of survivors who trust you by doing sidequests, and so on. It ticks all the open world boxes, but with its own unique takes and flavours.
When it comes to the upgrade, it is a decent polish. Days Gone Remastered does look better than it used to, but it was a good-looking game before. I noticed you can see details further away, but for the most part it’s a slight upgrade. It definitely runs way smoother than it used to, so performance is where the game has been given the biggest boost. This does make gameplay better, as less jank makes playing more fun.
There are some other additions in this version, like a permadeath mode. I didn’t last long in that mode, and while that isn’t my jam, some people like their games hard. There is also a new speedrun mode, which again isn’t my jam, but it’s there if it is your jam. I was going to say it should have a chill take your time mode, but that’s the base game so it is there. The final new addition is the Horde Assault mode. Here you get to fight waves of Freakers and see how long you can last. This mode also has some new guns, lets you play as other characters, and throws challenges like killing X Freakers with a specific weapon. This is a good time, and a worthy addition.
Days Gone Remastered isn’t a massive change to the original game, but does have some new stuff in it. If you are interested in playing the game again or the new modes, you can upgrade your current version for a fee. Alternatively, if you haven’t played the game before, it is worth getting this version to play Deacon’s journey for the first time. So if you treat the game as “Days Gone PS5 edition”, it’s a solid little upgrade.
