20 LAZIEST Video Game Re-Releases They Thought You'd Buy

5. Days Gone Remastered (2025)

If Ubisoft’s seven years seems like a curiously short time to wait before releasing a remaster, then Bend Studio/ Sony’s six-year gap between the original and remaster of post-apocalyptic, Sons of Anarchy/Mad Max-adjacent action-adventure game Days Gone seems downright confusing.

Set in Oregon after a 28 Days-style pandemic turned a good chunk of humanity into violent, feral zombie-like Freakers, the 2019 game kicked us into action as outlaw biker Deacon St John (voiced by video gaming icon Sam Witwer). While not the perfect game, Days Gone offered an enjoyable open world that may have been a tad repetitive and uneventful at times, but definitely made the most of its biker premise.

Fast forward to 2025 and Sony dropped the remastered version for PlayStation 5 gamers, with new modes, such as permadeath, speedrun and survival, to tempt existing fans to splurge on it once more. But these features turned out to be window dressing for a game that hadn’t been done quite right. On the one hand, noticeable improvements like better lighting simulation, more convincing nighttime scenes, and more dynamic sound design were precisely what we wanted in a remaster; but on the other, compromises and alterations like trade-offs in image quality, sub-4k resolution and lower frame rate felt like a step back.

On balance, the improvements didn’t outweigh the new limitations, and even the low price point for the PS4-to-PS5 upgrade couldn’t seem to justify buying it over again.