In my home office, next to my metal posters of Geralt of Rivia and Kratos, is one of Deacon St. John. That’s the level of love I have for Days Gone, its story, and characters. The Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy!? The game spoke to my love of motorcycles and zombie games.
If you never played the 2019 original or haven’t booted it up in a while, now is the perfect opportunity. With the release of Days Gone Remastered, the game looks and plays better than ever.
The Remaster Treatment
If you haven’t played Days Gone, here are the crib notes. It’s an open-world, third-person action game that focuses on dope motorcycles and huge hordes of fast-moving zombies, called Freakers.
The game takes place two years after mass outbreaks of Freakers caused the fall of society. Government agency NERO tried to work on a cure, but failed. The few remaining survivors live in gated communities. The hero (anti-hero, more like) is Deacon St. John, a member of the Mongrels motorcycle gang. He and his bikey-BFF Boozer are nomads who move from town to town, taking on odd jobs, all the while looking for Deacon’s missing wife, Sarah.
Days Gone Remastered officially brings the game to the PS5 and PS5 Pro, adding new content and features to the core game. There are new Speedrun and Permadeath modes, as well as an enhanced photo mode and a whole new game type, Horde Assault. The game also makes the most of the modern hardware with upgraded graphics and lighting.
All of the screenshots in this article were captured on a base PS5 in Graphics mode, which plays at 4K targeting 30fps.
Biker life
I got my motorbike license as soon as I could, at the age of 18. My first ride was a little blue Suzuki GSX250, which served as my main transport all through university. Now, in 2025, I ride a Yamaha Stryker, a 1300cc power cruiser with a blacked-out frame and sweet custom saddlebags for weekend getaways. I’m fascinated by motorbike mechanics, the customisations and, of course, the culture that goes along with it.
Speaking with some of the developers at a media event back in 2018, they told me that Bend Studios was filled with motorbike nuts, and that getting the bike right was as crucial as nailing the hordes of Freakers. And they did that, I can confidently say that Days Gone has the best motorcycle handling in any game. Full stop.
All about that handling
Often in games, motorcycles are mistakenly made to control like cars, having the rider and the bike move as one solid object that tips from side to side. But if you’ve ever ridden a motorbike up a mountain or down a winding canyon, you’ll know that approaching a corner is more than just steering. You slow down, lean your body to guide the bike, maintain enough speed to keep your centre of gravity balanced in the turn, and once you line up the exit, pull on the throttle so the bike straightens back up and you shoot off.
When I picked up the controller in Days Gone, I could easily make the bike do everything I wanted. My real life riding experience made me better at the game. I could slide out the back tyre to clear a corner on a dirt track, or pull the front brake and countersteer to avoid a Freaker, and I could handle all the twisty mountain roads that Oregon could throw at me.
Days Gone Remastered has souped-up the already fantastic motorbike mechanics. I spent the majority of my time in performance mode; which outputs 1440P at 60 FPS… And boy, does it make those extra frames work! With the additional 30 FPS, I felt like I was reacting quicker, more easily dodging infected animals on the road. I’m also quite sure that — like the PS5 Spider-Man remaster — the additional horsepower meant I could go faster as well.
The remaster also makes excellent use of the DualSense controller on the bike. The adaptive triggers react to tension on the brake, and you can feel the rumble of the big V-Twin engine as it eats through gears. I actually went into the setting to see if I could increase the vibration of the engine in the controller because it feels so damn good.
Sunshine on a rainy day
Days Gone was gorgeous on the PS4, but the remastered graphics take the environments of Oregon to the next level. Deacon’s story takes you across vastly different parts of the state, from rolling forested hills to towering snowy mountains, gaping desert canyons, and small towns deep in logging country. They all look absolutely incredible.
There were moments when I’d jump on my bike and tear off down an abandoned highway, watching a bird circling overhead and deer prancing nearby, I was totally engrossed in the world. Until a tripwire strung across the road spun me off the bike, and raiders promptly ambushed me. A harsh wake-up, but unfortunately for the raiders they’d messed with the wrong biker.
The best part about a weekend road trip is watching the world go by and the landscape change as you eat up the kilometres. Days Gone has that same effect on me as the mountains turn to small towns, and you watch the landscape change.
Check out a few of the memories:
Hording all the fun
Horde Assault is the kind of arcade mode I’d have loved as a kid. The kind of mode you’d stay up late playing at a friend’s house, passing the controller back and forth between bites of pizza, competing to get the highest score.
This mode is all about the hordes and, as you’d expect, they get ridiculously huge. You’re dropped into one of four maps — shrunk-down versions of locations from the main game — equipped with a random weapon. Once you land, your objective is simple — fight to your bike, survive the horde, and rack up points for each Freaker you kill. There are also supply points throughout the map that let you choose a helpful bonus — new gun, ammo refill, health items, score boosts, etc.
The first horde is relatively small, 30-40 Freakers, but they quickly grow to overwhelming sizes!
For me, the loop is simple — ride my bike around looking for loot, gear, and crafting materials until the next horde spawns, then find a place to hunker down and defend. On one run, I was laying traps around a post-apocalyptic treehouse when the game unexpectedly spawned a second horde! Suddenly, I needed to book it to the bike asap and get outta dodge.
I quickly learned that as the mode progresses, you’ll have multiple hordes coming at you from every direction, meaning you’ll need to keep your head on a swivel and your bike nearby.
There are various character skins to swap into, including multiple versions of Deacon, Boozer and others from the main game. You also unlock injectors that grant positive or negative buffs, altering the challenge, and impacting your total score. For example, slow healing, fragile weapons and exploding Freakers!
The idea is that Horde Assault is Days Gone when you strip away the story. It has all the gunplay, running, crafting, and strategy of the late-game horde hunts, and you can just drop straight in. It’s an exhilarating microcosm of the main game and is plenty of fun to jump into.
I’m also thinking it would be a great way to sell my friends on the game before surreptitiously mentioning the 50-hour action-packed story that goes along with it.
This one’s got teeth
Should you buy Days Gone Remastered? Simply put, if you played the original but didn’t finish it — or bought the game but never got round to playing it — then the $15 upgrade from the original to the remastered edition feels like a no-brainer.
If you’re interested in the world of Days Gone, this might be the time to finally give it a go. The remaster is the best the game has ever been. Awaiting you is a meticulously crafted post-apocalyptic world on par with some of the genre’s greats, incredible horde AI, and spectacular motorcycle controls.
One way or another, if you need me, I’ll be out in the wilderness with my bike, one eye on the horizon, the other keeping watch for Freaker hordes.
Quest Daily was supplied with a review copy of Days Gone Remastered thanks to the publisher.
