Days Gone PC Port Review

The day has finally arrived—we can now talk about the Days Gone PC port, which officially launches May 18th, 2021. I’ve spent the past week talking about this game and answering as many questions as PlayStation would allow. But now the gloves are off, and I can talk about what I feel is one of the best efforts at porting a PlayStation 4 title to PC.

Game Name: Days Gone
Platform(s): PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): PlayStation Mobile
Developer(s): Bend Studio
Release Date: May 18th, 2021
Price: $49.99 (Steam, Epic Games Store)

Before you jump in, this isn’t a review of the game, as we already reviewed Days Gone on the PS4 several years ago. Instead, I’ll be going over the port itself—what works, what doesn’t, and ultimately, whether this is a good PC port. If you’re looking for gameplay analysis, you’re in the wrong place. But if you want to know about performance and other PC-centric features, read on.

So how is the port?

Unlike prior PlayStation 4 game ports like Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone was built using Unreal Engine 4. As such, I’d imagine it was easier for Bend Studio to bring it over to PC versus a custom engine. Either way, I’m not kidding when I say that Days Gone on PC is optimized. The biggest reasons to check out this two-year-old title on PC are the enhancements: unlimited frame rates, increased level of detail, a stellar FOV slider, and foliage draw distance improvements that genuinely enhance immersion.

For testing, I used three different PCs:

• PC 1: Ryzen 3 1300x, GTX 1080 Ti, 32GB DDR4 RAM – 1080p, 60 FPS (Medium/High mix, CPU bottlenecked)
• PC 2: Ryzen 5 5600x, RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB RAM – 4K60 (Max settings, V-Sync/motion blur off, averaged 60-70 FPS)
• PC 3: Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3090, 64GB DDR4 RAM – 3440×1440 ultrawide (Max settings, 100-120 FPS)

Ultrawide support works great—no black bars or cropping. When the game launched, it recognized my ultrawide monitor and ran without any issues. That FOV slider? It goes up to 100 and makes the game feel even better on widescreen.

Check out some Days Gone ultrawide gameplay below:

There are plenty of visual settings to tweak, including:

• Presets: Low, Medium, High, Very High
• Lighting, geometry, foliage draw distance, shadows, clouds, fog
• Texture filtering, texture streaming
• Motion blur, chromatic aberration

It also supports up to 144Hz displays. You can disable V-Sync and let the frame rate soar. However, there’s no anti-aliasing toggle, and features like DLSS and ray tracing are missing—a bit of a letdown for modern PC gamers. Still, the optimization makes up for it.

HDR is supported, but I skipped testing it due to poor Windows integration. It resulted in washed-out colors. Hopefully, Auto HDR support in Windows will fix this down the line.

Curiously, Bend Studio stuck with DirectX 11 over DirectX 12. DX12 is technically superior and offers better control and performance, but DX11 is more stable and compatible with older hardware. It’s a safe, if slightly outdated, choice.

Controller support includes Xbox 360, Xbox One/Series, Nintendo Switch Pro, and DualShock 4. The game automatically detects your controller. DualSense also works via Steam API, though it defaults to DualShock 4 UI prompts. Hopefully, official support is coming. Surprisingly, the KBM combo plays well—mouse sensitivity and smoothing are customizable, and key bindings can be remapped.

Photo Mode

At any time, you can activate photo mode. It pauses everything and lets you adjust FOV, focus, aperture, film grain, tilt, brightness, contrast, and more. You can’t change character poses, but the control it gives over framing is excellent. I don’t usually use photo modes, but I can see fans really enjoying this one.

[videopress 6IZsqBCl permalink=”false” hd=”true”]

Accessibility options (or lack thereof)

Accessibility is limited. There’s UI color mode, auto-complete for QTEs, and some button behavior tweaks. That’s it. Given the game’s age, it’s not a surprise, but it’s still a bit of a letdown. The accessibility bar has been raised since 2019, and it would’ve been nice to see more effort here.

Verdict

As far as PS4-to-PC ports go (granted, there aren’t many), this one’s excellent. Bend Studio clearly knows what they’re doing. I didn’t encounter any crashes or major issues. From settings to performance, Days Gone runs beautifully. It’s hard to find negatives.

If you’ve played before, you’ll feel right at home. Whether you should replay it depends on your preferences. But if you’ve got capable PC hardware and want to experience Days Gone at its best, this is absolutely the way to do it. And for those who never owned a PS4? It’s an easy recommendation.

Days Gone is available May 18th, 2021, via Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99.

Review Disclosure Statement: Days Gone PC version was provided by PlayStation for review purposes. For more information, please read our Review Guidelines.

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