Days Gone review | PC Gamer

An outlaw biker drifting through a Pacific Northwestern post-apocalypse is a killer premise, and Days Gone occasionally lives up to it. When you’re alone on the broken road, riding your scrappy motorcycle between missions, it’s easy to get swept up in the apocalyptic romanticism of it all. It’s just you, your bike, and an unforgiving land. No job, no bills—just two wheels, a thirsty gas tank, and all the time in the (end of the) world.

You play as Deacon St. John, a young Oregon biker who wears a backwards baseball cap at all times—even at his wedding. Two years after a mysterious outbreak has turned half the population of America into zombie-like cannibals called freakers, Deacon embarks on a quest to find his missing wife, Sarah. There are other stories too, including discovering the truth about the pandemic—because there’s always a truth behind these things. But it’s reuniting with his beloved spouse that really drives our anti-hero.

Days Gone is an open world game, set across a large swathe of the American Pacific Northwest. It’s a sweeping, rugged landscape, with old-growth forests, cascading waterfalls, dusty stretches of desert, one-horse towns, and kitschy motels. It’s a completely boilerplate zombie apocalypse, decorated with the End of Days Starter Kit: abandoned government checkpoints, mass graves, gutted houses, car tunnels stuffed with wrecks, and so on. But it’s all well presented and often extremely atmospheric—especially when the sky turns a gloomy slate-grey and the rain and thunder roll in.