Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Review – Here We Go Again

Typically speaking, games are only really remastered once the original hits a certain vintage. So far, the only real exception to this was the PS4 release of The Last of Us, which was a remastered release just a year after the PS3 original. Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, has been out for around 7 years at this point. And a remaster makes perfect sense to give the game a modern level of visual fidelity, right? Well, the original release was still perfectly playable on not only the PS5 thanks to the system’s backwards compatibility with PS4 titles, but PCs as well, thanks to its 2020 Complete Edition release.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered instead aims to do more than what its title might imply. Rather than just being some minor visual tweaks and some higher-resolution textures here and there, the game has essentially been brought up to a similar level of visual fidelity as its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West. Even the PC release’s system requirements tell a similar tale, with the remastered release requiring a much beefier system than the 2020 PC release did.

Despite the massive visual upgrade, however, PlayStation Studios, Guerrilla Games, and Nixxes have kept to PlayStation PC release traditions and have released a wonderful port of the game. Running the title on an upper-mid-range PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a Sapphire Radeon 7800XT GPU, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered defaulted to its High graphics preset, which gave me a stable framerate of 99 frames per second, with occasional dips down to 74. Turning the visuals up to Very High and making use of AMD FSR3, on the other hand, gave me 91 frames per second with dips down to 79.

"The game has essentially been brought up to a similar level of visual fidelity as its sequel"

Interestingly, the game seems to be bound more to the GPU than CPU, and players with higher-end graphics cards but slightly weaker processors will likely find higher frame rates with better visuals. It is still important, however, that the game does require a relatively modern CPU as well, with the studio indicating that an 11th-gen Intel Core i7 11700 or AMD’s Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5700X as the ideal processors for maxing out the game’s visuals on a 4K display with 60 frames per second.

Much like the original 2020 release, keyboard and mouse work well as a control scheme in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, with the minor (and curious) caveat that you might want to disable the double-tap directions to roll option, as I personally found it to be an excellent way to get myself killed while trying to climb mountains. Generally speaking, however, the game has otherwise excellent defaults when it comes to controls and graphics options, and for players that like to tinker around with settings, there is plenty to play around with.

As for the game itself, Horizon Zero Dawn’s original release has been considered by many to be one overshadowed by titles coming out around the same time. Time, however, has been kinder to Horizon Zero Dawn, and it even got a critically praised sequel that also received a PC release earlier this year.

"For players that like to tinker around with settings, there is plenty to play around with."

Horizon Zero Dawn has never been a game that tried to reinvent the wheel by any stretch; it was always simply an excellent open-world title with a few unique ideas of its own, wrapped up in an incredibly-interesting world that acted as a great backdrop to a fun story. The game definitely had its flaws back then, and revisiting the title through its remastered release, these same flaws tend to feel larger than they really were. For example, the game has an incredibly slow start. Miserable pacing in its opening sections set a really bad first impression, especially considering how much more interesting the game gets the moment you’re let loose in its open world.

The game also has a gearing and skill tree system that tends to feel superfluous. In fact, some of the earliest skills you unlock in the game can feel rather ridiculous, since they should just be baseline abilities. This includes skills like being able to do stealth attacks, or even filler skills that seem to be present just to pad out the tree a bit, like allowing you to salvage items for metal chips, or getting more items when you gather sticks. Thankfully, the game tends to be rather generous when it comes to giving you skill points, thanks in large part to its plethora of side quests that often reward you with a tonne of experience points. You will ultimately end up unlocking every skill anyway, so the skill tree feeling weird in the game’s early portions ends up not being that big of a deal in the long term.

The most unique thing about Horizon Zero Dawn has always been the battles the game pits you in against its giant robotic wildlife. These can often be the highlight of the game, and there is a sense of freedom thanks to how you will often have to track down specific machines for certain parts that can only be grabbed if you damage the right parts. These fights, especially against some of the bigger machines, can often feel like they were taken right out of Monster Hunter World, albeit with a much more simplistic combat system.

"Horizon Zero Dawn has never been a game that tried to reinvent the wheel by any stretch"

It’s a shame that the story of Horizon Zero Dawn often pits you against opposing humans, since these fights never feel as fun or engaging as when you’re taking on a machine. In fact, fights against humans are where some of the title’s most glaring weaknesses get the biggest spotlight; the melee combat system is laughably simplistic. Some humans tend to die in just a single headshot, which means the bow is the be-all-end-all of combat there, while machines can often have you weaving different weapons from throughout your arsenal, laying traps with the Tripcaster, or even getting in a few whacks with your staff.

Speaking of which, the story is rather excellent, telling the tale of not only protagonist Aloy, but of the world as a whole. There are several questions raised throughout the game’s runtime, ranging from why there are robot dinosaurs all over the place, what happened to humanity, and even about the mysteries surrounding Aloy. The world-building is especially well done, and there is a lot of extra details about the mysterious lands of Horizon Zero Dawn hidden away into collectibles that are up for grabs for players that might want to put in the extra effort.

Despite these weaknesses, however, Horizon Zero Dawn is still an incredibly fun game, thanks to its wonderful world and story that, while sometimes poorly paced, has a great payoff at the end, and sets things up wonderfully for a great sequel. It certainly helps the case for Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, then, that it’s essentially the definitive way to experience the game thanks to its enhanced visuals.

This game was reviewed on PC.