Days Gone Review: 8 Ups & 5 Downs

5. You Feel Connected To Your Motorcycle

It's easy to take the piss out of Days Gone's decision to centre so much of its experience around Deacon St. John's motorcycle. It doesn't make a lick of sense why everyone would drive around on these ridiculously loud vehicles that can easily alert a Freaker horde, or why, despite there being so many cars left abandoned, nobody thinks to drive them, but it's all in service of making the player rely on their bike.

Not only is it a lifeline in gameplay, giving you the ability to escape enemies and holding extra ammo if you're in a sticky situation, but you can't even quicksave or fast travel without being near the vehicle. Likewise, you spend a whole bunch of time refuelling the damn thing, which can lead to some particularly interesting enemy encounters when you're low on fuel and need to sneak into an infested area to resupply.

You really do feel a connection to the bike after a few hours though, deepened further by the extensive customisation on display. While it's been compared to how Rockstar handled horses in Red Dead Redemption 2, it's actually a little closer to the Magnum Opus in the criminally underrated Mad Max, which similarly centred its systems around the maintenance and upkeep of a vehicle.

It helps that the bike controls well also, with a great sense of weight and speed to it. It's a little jarring at first, as the controls are initially sluggish and unwieldy, but learning how the bike controls is rewarding, and makes the endgame where it's fully upgraded and you're drifting around trees effortlessly seem well deserved.