Days Gone PC: a quality conversion that elevates the console experience
Sony promised us more PC conversions of their stellar first party development output and while Horizon Zero Dawn illustrated that this is far from a simple process, Days Gone is on another level. The upgrades are strategically chosen but effective - and performance is solid on both Nvidia and AMD hardware. In fact, there are one or two touches here and there included in this game that really hope to see other developers bring to their own titles, especially when it comes to configurability. While we're not getting the ultimate package here - there's no ray tracing and disappointingly, no DLSS - there's no doubt that this is a solid, impressive port.
Booting up the PC version of Days Gone, it's immediately apparent that this isn't just a basic PS4 Pro conversion. The game is based on Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and I was happy to see that Bend Studio had updated the PC version to include a more recent UE4 innovation - software-based screen-space ray traced global illumination - available as an upgrade over the standard ambient occlusion tech deployed on the console versions. Essentially, the appearance of light bouncing around a game scene is emulated in screen-space, delivering a richer presentation with more realistic lighting and better, more realistic shadows. If light hits a red surface, for example, some measure of that 'redness' will illuminate the surroundings where appropriate. If this sounds familiar, The Coalition made a similar upgrade to the Xbox Series and PC versions of Gears 5, again by dipping into more recent UE4 engine updates and adding it to their existing codebase. The old SSAO is still there though for that authentic console look - it's now simply the 'high' setting for the in-game lighting.
Beyond the realm of visuals, the PC game now spends a lot less time loading than it does on consoles - even on PlayStation 5. For game loading in general, a 9.5 second load time on a fast NVMe PC SSD takes PS5 33.5 seconds by comparison, so I assume that this is an area where backwards compatibility isn't leveraging all of the storage potential or CPU power of the new console. This carries over to in-game moments as well, where even PS5 features some loading screens between gameplay and cutscenes. Meanwhile, playing on PC, a simple fade-to-black with no screens is used to mask loading, which does not break the flow of the game as much.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to point out just how good the options menu is. For one, it is very fast and navigable with keyboard or mouse without requiring one or the other, and there's controller support too. Secondly, for mouse users, it takes full advantage of the fact that the mouse is a pointer device which makes scrolling useless - so like your favourite RPG inventory of old, you see every option without scrolling. Aspects like this may seem small, but triple-A PC games can still get these things wrong, making menu navigation an irritation instead of a joy like it is here.
In fact, the graphics menu hits so many high points that I hope other developers take note. For one, all of the graphics options adhere to the left side of the screen and the menu splash goes completely transparent, meaning that every tweak and change you make plays out in real-time. You can literally see what you're changing it as you're changing it. This is reflected with continually updating frame-time metrics in the top-right. This is excellent! For the knowledgeable, you have an immediate understanding of what impact a graphical option has on your performance - how much GPU time you're expending on an effect by raising the setting, or how much you're clawing back by lowering it. This is the best options menu I have seen since Gears 5 and Gears Tactics and I really hope that it becomes the model going forward.
So, Days Gone is looking good - and it is, but it's not perfect. One bug I found on all PC configurations I tested concerns game speed. For some reason, moving around on the motorcycle or even walking about the game world can cause the speed of the game to slow down and then return to normal rapidly. When this happens, the game looks like it is having performance issues, but in reality, Days Gone is producing perfect frame-rates. Remarkably, it really is the speed of the game update itself that is the issue - there's the illusion of hitching and stuttering even though performance is actually locked (we tested at 30fps too). This doesn't happen on PS4 Pro or PS5. The second bug concerns some ground decals, which look like they are projecting at the wrong depth, which hopefully should be easy to fix.
In conclusion though, this is a successful release in my view. Adjustable resolutions, frame-rates and ultra-wide support are in, and so is a tweakable field of view. Users can jettison checkerboarding, enjoy higher quality artwork and improved global illumination and draw distances. Performance is good and the amount of noticeable bugs and issues is very much on the low side. It's an excellent conversion overall though and I highly recommend checking it out.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi ... t-analysis
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