Introduction

Days Gone is an open-world action adventure zombie shooter set in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. You’re Deacon, a military veteran who’s been caught in the middle of a global zombie apocalypse. The game takes place two years after the first outbreak, and the world as we know has ended. Hordes of zombie are scattered all around the lands, lurking and hunting the last survivors who have teamed up to improve their odds of survival.

Naturally, the various factions fight over whatever resources are left in the world, and as a mercenary, you’re caught in the middle of it all. As the plot progresses, the National Emergency Restoration Organization (NERO) also plays a role in uncovering more details of what happened.

Just like similar titles, Days Gone plays in the third-person perspective. The developer Bend Studio did a great job modeling the lush American wilderness, and placed hordes of zombies into it. As you make your way through the woods, you often have the choice of sneaking or using stealth to achieve your objective. Some missions are pure stealth, though, and in others you’ll encounter a zerg rush of zombies, which requires you use the environment to survive—shooting your way through is not an option.

Originally launched in April 2019 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, Days Gone uses Unreal Engine 4 in DirectX 11 mode on PC. Compared to the console version, a lot of polish has been added, bugs fixed, and the graphics menu improved. In this article, we test performance and hardware requirements of Days Gone on 23 graphics cards in three resolutions.