Born and raised in Oregon, the very Oregonian Days Gone has a soft spot in my heart [8 out of 10]. Not just from seeing major landmarks like Mt. Bachelor, Three Sisters, and Three Fingered Jack pushing up against the horizon's skybox, but also from how the trees, roads, and parklands feel just right. Anyway, Days Gone makes me feel nostalgic for my home state—and I still live here.
The big deal is: the PlayStation-exclusive Days Gone is porting from PS4 to PC next week. I can't give you my final review-scored thoughts until then. But I can give you a couple hours of unadulterated opening gameplay. Two hours' worth, unsullied with commentary, so you can judge for yourself how things look and, generally, how things play. I'd say there are no major plot twists or anything like that spoiled in these first two hours. It's all stuff that's foundational to the gameplay, no big deal.
I'm indeed playing on PC, though you'll see onscreen button prompts for a PlayStation controller. That's because I have a DualShock gamepad plugged into my PC. I don't play third-person action games with WASD; it feels terrible to me. Otherwise, you can rest assured that this is what the PC version looks like.
I can tell you right now that the lighting is more dynamic, with dark tunnels being far more menacing to traverse through than before. Even the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is more brilliant as you get closer. There's no ray-tracing support, but the developers generally lighten and darken scenes well for dramatic effect.
Load screens are only half as long as they are on my vanilla PS4. Which is a relief because before, on console, there was a full three or four minutes of load screens before I'd actually be in game. That doesn't sound long when you put it on paper, but it's definitely too long when you're staring at a loading screen. Bend Studio must've known their load screens were too long, since the PC version even removes the loading bar at the bottom of the screen. Now it's just a gif of the main guy's big ol' wolf ring spinning in the corner.
The liquid effects are better. Which is good for a game that's set in some very rainy places. And an early cutscene, where your bike's fuel tank gets shot up, has dripping gas that no longer looks like wide brown ribbons falling down (like it does on my PS4).
That opening cutscene, though, woof. I'd mentioned that the load times were about half as long on PC, but it seems like the opening cutscene needs just a few more seconds of loading time to render all the objects during that first rather-fast camera pan. I played it and restarted multiple times. Same muddy textures plague the thing no matter how many times you try. It clears up. Takes only a few seconds. But things stay choppy during camera transitions. That's too bad, as far as putting your best foot forward is concerned. Perhaps there's a day one patch in the works (there always is with games) that'll clear that up. That'd be nice.
Otherwise, Days Gone is still a fun zombie action-adventure. The scares are never scarier than jump-scares, and the blood and gore never gets too personal, which leaves the open world playable for dozens of hours. Low to medium tension is the sweet spot for a post-pandemic zombie apocalypse like this.
After two years of PS4 exclusivity, Days Gone launches on PC on May 18.
