Days Gone
Bend Studio · Shooter, Survival, Horror, Action
Overview
Days Gone is an open-world action-adventure game developed by Bend Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Released in April 2019 for PlayStation 4 and later for PC in May 2021, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where players control Deacon St. John, a drifter and bounty hunter navigating a landscape overrun by "Freakers," zombie-like creatures created by a global pandemic. The gameplay focuses on exploration, combat, and survival elements, with players able to use various weapons, craft supplies, and upgrade Deacon’s motorcycle, essential for travelling across the vast and hostile environment. Days Gone combines narrative-driven missions with an open world filled with dynamic events, enemy camps, and environmental challenges.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,998 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players recommend Days Gone for its story and cast, the zombie hordes, the Oregon wilderness and a motorcycle you have to fuel, repair and upgrade to survive. 21% of the longer reviews explicitly praise the story, 35% talk about the hordes and roughly a third bring up the bike. 9% call it underrated or better than its launch reputation, and a fifth ask for a sequel.
20% of longer reviews mention bugs, crashes or stutter. Owners also complained about the remaster update and the paid Broken Road DLC, which reviewers date to 2025: some say their game stopped running well, others object to paying for photo mode, permadeath and accessibility options. On the gameplay side, 15% of longer reviews call the errands and side activities repetitive, and that rises to a quarter of the negative ones. Players split over the slow opening, the fuel and bike upkeep, and Deacon himself.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
The story and its charactersHigh
21% of longer reviews explicitly praise the story or the writing, against 4% that call it boring, predictable or badly written. Fans describe it as emotional and say it grows on them over a long campaign, and several single out the bond between Deacon and Boozer. "The story is something to behold and enjoy," one short review puts it. Comparisons to The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon and Sons of Anarchy appear in 13.5% of longer reviews.
Critics call the plot cliched, the twists easy to see coming and the dialogue cringe-worthy: "good gameplay but horrid writing its like if a middle schooler wrote a play." A few say the final act drags on and lost them, while others call the ending one of the best parts.
The zombie hordesHigh
35% of longer reviews talk about the hordes. Players describe being chased by hundreds of freakers, luring hordes into traps, and the panic of a horde turning toward them at night, and some use the word terrifying. "Best horde mechanics bar none," reads one review. A few describe setting out to clear every horde on the map.
Some players raise the timing. A small group of longer reviews say the hordes arrive late, because the gear needed to fight them isn't available until the last stretch: "The game's signature feature i.e. the hordes is held back in story mode until the final third because your skills, weapons and gear simply aren't there earlier." A handful of others find the big horde missions stressful rather than fun.
The Oregon setting and visualsHigh
A third of longer reviews (32.5%) praise the open world, the atmosphere or Oregon itself, and 28.5% mention the graphics or visuals, mostly positively. Players describe forests, mountains and changing weather that still look good years after release, and a few reviewers who live in Oregon say that made it closer to home. "Even in a zombie apocalypse... Oregon is still beautiful." A small minority of longer reviews counter that the world looks great but gives little reason to explore beyond the main routes.
The motorcycleHigh
32% of longer reviews mention the bike. Players praise riding it, drifting it and upgrading it, and some describe it as part of the journey rather than just transport. One player sums up its role: "This system adds a survival layer that makes every trip across the map feel tense & meaningful." Criticism of the bike itself (slow, floaty or a chore to maintain) is rare, and comes mostly from players earlier in the game, before upgrades. Fuel gets its own section below.
A long campaign with replay valueMedium
8% of longer reviews mention replays, New Game Plus or multiple playthroughs, some from players who first played it on PlayStation and bought it again on PC. Players call it long and good value on sale, and a smaller group recommends the harder difficulty settings for a tougher survival experience. "Classic game, replay value is gold," as one review says. A few reviews mention mods that raise horde sizes, stretch fuel or adjust the camera.
Where players are split
Combat and gunplayMedium
A quarter of longer reviews bring up combat. Fans call it satisfying and flexible, mixing stealth and loud approaches: "Combat feels great and has a surprisingly high skill ceiling." Critics find the aiming clunky, the early guns weak and headshots inconsistent: "Imagine a bow that never hits where you aim unless you put it inside them." 4.3% of longer reviews call the controls or movement clunky, stiff or janky. Reviews on both sides say combat improves once better weapons and skills unlock.
Deacon and the constant chatterMedium
Opinion on the protagonist divides. 3.8% of longer reviews praise Deacon or Sam Witwer's performance ("Sam Witwer absolutely carries the Deacon role"), while 2.5% are annoyed by his muttering, heavy breathing and running commentary: "Deacon won't shut up. He's just constantly mumbling." Related complaints target the radio calls that interrupt riding, the voice mix, and dialogue that repeats. A few fans say Deacon grew on them as the game went on.
A slow opening that pays off for someMedium
9% of longer reviews talk about a slow start. Many of them say it clicks once the bike, weapons and story open up: "Days Gone takes about 12 hours too long to become the game it should be," wrote one player who still recommended it. Others never reach that point and resent being told to wait, mocking the advice that "It picks up after 40 hours!!!!" A related group (5%) feels the campaign is padded or drags on too long.
Fuel and bike upkeepMedium
Fuel comes up in 9% of longer reviews. Some enjoy the pressure it adds and treat running dry as part of the survival fantasy, often with a joke: "Days Gone is a zombie game where the real horror is how often your bike runs out of fuel in the middle of nowhere." Others find constant refuelling tedious, especially before tank upgrades: "the refilling the gas on the bike drives me absolutely insane."
What frustrates players
Bugs, crashes and stutter on PCHigh
5.5% of longer reviews describe serious problems: the game crashing, refusing to launch, soft-locking a mission or becoming unplayable. Counting milder bugs, stutter and frame drops, 20% bring up technical trouble. Reported issues include stutter while riding the bike, cutscenes that skip or freeze, characters vanishing mid-scene, the game process staying open after quitting, and mission-blocking bugs late in the story. "game keeps crashing every 20 to 60 min," one player wrote.
Results differ from machine to machine. 3.6% of longer reviews praise the port as smooth and well optimized ("Still one of the best console to pc game ports I've played"), and Steam Deck owners report both great results and severe drops. Bugs also show up in reviews that recommend the game, often as something the player put up with.
Repetitive missions and errandsHigh
Players describe clearing the same nests and camps, riding back and forth between camps, and side jobs with little variety: "The game is an ocean that's a mile wide but just a foot deep." Another sums up the loop as "Kill Zombie, get thing, kill some more zombie get other thing." In all, 15% of longer reviews call the missions repetitive, heavy on fetch quests or formulaic, and 24.5% of negative ones do. Some fans say they stopped doing side content to finish the story.
The remaster update and the paid Broken Road DLCMedium
6.8% of longer reviews mention the remaster update, the Broken Road DLC or the classic version, mostly in reviews written in spring 2025. Owners say the update brought new stutter, muffled audio, long loading times, lower Steam Deck performance or a game that no longer starts: "Worked fine before the update, can't get past the first loading screen now." Several point others to the classic version on a beta branch as the fix, and one was upset that toggle sprint and crouch stopped working.
The paid content draws a separate complaint. Reviewers object to paying for features they consider basic, including photo mode, permadeath, DualSense haptics and accessibility options: "Never seen a game lock something as basic as a photo mode and permadeath mode behind a DLC." Completionists were also annoyed that new achievements tied to the DLC broke their 100%: "Spent the time to 100% the game then 2 years later they add achievements." A few who bought it liked the Horde Assault mode and the visual upgrade.
Scripted walk-and-talk, instant-fail stealth and unskippable creditsLow
A smaller set of complaints targets moments where the game takes control away: slow follow-the-NPC and walk-and-talk sequences, forced or instant-fail stealth sections, and end credits that can't be skipped. Each comes up in only a small fraction of longer reviews. "Instant fail stealth sections are so outrageously outdated," reads one; another complains about "the forced sequences where you walk around at a snails pace following someone for dialogue that is unskippable."
Weapon durability and small carry limitsLow
1.6% of longer reviews bring up melee weapons that break quickly, or carry limits on ammo and crafting materials that feel too tight. "my axe degraded 50% after few hits, wtf!" Some note that upgrades expand capacity later.
Saving only at checkpointsLow
1.2% of longer reviews complain about the save system. Players say a manual save mid-mission sends them back to the mission start, and that saving works only near the bike or a bed, which isn't explained: "Checkpoints in an open world game? Whats the point of a save button? No thanks." A few also report lost or overwritten saves.
3. The player conversation
The tone is warm and defensive. Nearly half the reviews are a single short line ("underrated", "peak", "we need a sequel"), often from players who feel the game was unfairly judged at launch, and 9% of longer reviews say outright that it is better than its reputation or that critics got it wrong. Some reviewers are returning PlayStation owners buying it again on PC, and a fifth of longer reviews wish for a sequel.
Negative reviews are fewer but often long and detailed. They argue that the game is a padded, formulaic open world with weak writing, and they pair that with technical problems. Complaints about weapon durability and the bike tend to come from players earlier in the game, while the paid-DLC complaints come from long-time owners, many of whom had already finished the game and came back to find it changed. Complaints about the remaster update cluster in reviews written in spring 2025, while crash and launch complaints appear throughout.
4. What the developers could do
- Fix the PC crashes, launch failures and riding stutter, since 20% of longer reviews mention technical problems and the severe ones (crashes, no launch, soft-locked missions) stop people from playing at all.
- Undo the regressions from the remaster update, because owners say it brought stutter, muffled audio, long loads and broken toggle controls, and some have gone back to the classic beta branch to keep playing.
- Add variety to side missions and cut repeated errands, as repetition is named in a quarter of negative longer reviews and even fans say they skipped side content.
- Move photo mode, accessibility options and haptics into the free base game, since paying for those features is the core of the DLC complaints and the added achievements cost completionists their 100%.
- Allow real mid-mission saves or explain the save rules clearly, because players report losing progress after saving manually inside a mission.
- Bring the hordes and better gear in earlier, because the slow opening and late-arriving hordes are what players who quit early describe, while fans say the game only clicks after that point.
- Add a setting to reduce Deacon's self-talk and radio calls, which would answer the complaints about his chatter without changing the story.
- Make the credits skippable and soften instant-fail stealth sections, small fixes for moments that players say take control away from them.
