Originally released in 2017, it has been over 7 years since the game came out – but it still holds surprisingly well to this date. As such, the thought of a remastered version might sound like a cheap attempt at grabbing some quick cash from gullible consumers but Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is a lot more than this initial preconception. With this technical analysis, we will be taking a look at both versions of the game to try to understand exactly what has changed.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is essentially an attempt to bring the original up to spec with the visual splendor of the sequel Forbidden West, and the brains behind this operation are Nixxes Software. The team has solid experience of working on PlayStation ports and remasters, and the fact that the transition is happening across the same engine makes compatibility a whole lot easier.

Fans might remember that Horizon Forbidden West was also a cross-gen game, so the engine was already built to be scalable across both generation machines which would probably have helped the developer’s cause by a significant margin. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered brings both iterative changes and radical overhauls to the image quality which we will be discussing in detail in further sections.

Character Models

The original Horizon Zero Dawn had some pretty good-looking character models for its time, complete with a high polycount and brimming with detail. Physically based materials had been used for clothing, and hair physics was pretty rudimentary – but they were definitely an integral part of the presentation itself. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered doesn’t rewrite the story, but it does bring several improvements over the original in key areas.

Character models look much sharper with an even higher polycount budget, and skin meshes look a lot more detailed and realistic than before. These changes aren’t really visible during exploration, but when the camera juts in close during cinematics – you can easily see the differences. In a similar vein, one can also notice a bump in the quality of cloth materials which exude more detail than before.

Having that bump in material quality also gives the machines a fresh new look. Machines have more complex geometry, and it’s markedly easier to make out the individual parts that coalesce to create these goliaths of destruction. Having these higher-quality materials also helps with enhancing reflections on their bodies, which gives a more premium look to the machines this time around.

Moving on to the hair physics, they are quite a bit more sophisticated than before – and Aloy’s hair will appropriately sway to the tune of the winds and fly around as she waltzes through these environments. Hair textures are also finer this time around, and reflect light in a much more accurate fashion.

What’s Changed In The World?

Switching gears over to the world, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered brings plenty of changes that long-time fans will appreciate. Starting things with the textures, Nixxess has updated texture quality across the entire board of assets – no matter how big or small. Of course, these changes might not be instantly visible on a macro level – but if you stop and stare at the finer details, it all starts to make sense. Different kinds of plants and ferns now flaunt finer details than before, and it is almost on par with what Horizon Forbidden West offers. Another noticeable change occurs in how dense bushes of plants react to Aloy’s movements. Notice how blades of grass and edges of leaves can awkwardly cut through the character model while in the remaster – Aloy gracefully swerves without much of this clipping issue.

Another change in the environment is with regards to how clouds function. In the original, we had fairly static meshes that served the purpose but didn’t really stand out in terms of the quality itself. Forbidden West brought significant improvements with the Nubis system, delivering realistic cloud volumes that stand tall as one of the best in its class. That very Nubis system has been brought into the Remastered version, and the results are definitely noticeable for one. Clouds look more realistic than before with denser meshes and realistic movements that help elevate the look of the environment in the remaster.

Moving over to the lighting, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered has updated the lighting system which results in a lot more accurate reflections this time around. The original majorly relied on precalculated lighting for different times of day, and while the implementation hasn’t changed, the extra processing power has been utilized for better and more accurate results this time. The settlements provide a great point of comparison for this change, notice how areas that should have been under the shadow are corrected this time around while the original had a lot of lighting data mistakes stemming from the rudimentary calculations.

These improvements also extend to the shadows department, where we get to see a more robust implementation this time around. Shadows are cast by a lot more light sources and are cast at further distances than before, so characters and enemies blend in well with the surrounding environment rather than awkwardly jutting out from the ground as seen in the original – giving the world a more uniform look this time around.

One should also check out the changes in the reflections departments. The original used a cube map implementation which worked for its time but suffered from poor accuracy and low-resolution artifacts, but the remastered version changes that up to the screen space reflections that are used in Forbidden West. What once seemed like muddy reflections have now been replaced by fairly accurate, high-resolution reflections which also update with the change in player perspective.

This is most notable in the water reflections, and on that topic – also notice how the water textures and meshes have been updated with the remaster. Caustics both look and behave a lot more realistically than before, and water looks quite a bit better as a result.

Then there’s the world streaming. Despite having a lot of micro-level detail, the Decima Engine didn’t really compromise much when it came to streaming all of these assets without showing signs of artifacting. Clever use of distant fog volumes and blocking geometry like huge mountains helped to ensure a smooth world streaming solution, and it works just as well as the original with little to no difference between the two versions.

Finally, there’s the post processing pipeline. Light shafts look a lot better than before, and beams of light emanating from machines and surroundings have better bloom effects. Other elements of the presentation such as anisotropic filtering, depth of field, and motion blur have also seen incremental upgrades – though not as pronounced as the previously discussed changes.

Performance

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered on PC offers a plethora of graphical options to choose from ranging from texture quality to clouds quality and FOV sliders and much more. It’s a robust experience this time around, largely owing to the increased maturity of the team after handling so many projects of this ilk. Apart from the buffet of options that fans can choose from, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered also does away with the shader compilation issue that plagued the original PC release.

We tested the game on a PC consisting of AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080Ti, 32 GB of RAM, and a PCI 3 4.0 SSD which is well over what the game recommends. We set the resolution to 4K with DLSS 3.0 turned on and maxed out the game. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered performed fairly well during our tests, constantly hovering between 60fps and 70fps with little to no major drops.

Loading times have also been improved in the Remastered version with fast-travel and loading from a fresh save being faster this time around. While it definitely helps that we are loading off of a PCI e 4.0 SSD, it’s also possible that Nixxess might be using Windows DirectStorage options to help speed up the process even further.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is a great attempt to breathe new life into one of the biggest games of the recent generation. It sits very comfortably between a by-the-numbers remaster and a full-fledged remake, and it makes for a great way to experience this classic in a new light.

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.

There isn’t really much that can be said about Horizon Forbidden West from a pure gameplay point of view that we haven’t already talked about in our original reviews for the base game as well as its DLC, Burning Shores. Nothing’s really changed, and even just switching to mouse and keyboard rather than a DualSense controller doesn’t bring about any difference in gameplay that can be too dramatic. Sure, aiming Aloy’s bow with a mouse does allow for a lot more accuracy than aiming with a controller would, but the game itself provides plenty of assistance in that regard anyway (like the ability to slow down time while aiming with a bow).

It is worth noting, however, that using a mouse and keyboard for a game that was developed with a controller in mind actually does create some headaches when it comes to things like how the UI was designed. While the inventories, skill trees and map are all perfectly usable with a mouse, they were quite obviously designed with controllers in mind. There are also quite a few things in the menus that will have you hold down a button to confirm something, like when spending skill points for example, that just feel unintuitive and incredibly pointless when playing the game without a controller.

"Sure, aiming Aloy’s bow with a mouse does allow for a lot more accuracy than aiming with a controller would, but the game itself provides plenty of assistance in that regard anyway."

The flip side of this is that the game works rather excellently with a DualSense controller on the PC. You don’t even need to keep the controller connected to your PC with a cable like you would with the Remote Play app—Bluetooth works just fine, and you get all the fancy DualSense features you would want, be it the haptic feedback, or even the adaptive triggers.

Now for the most important aspects of the PC release of Horizon Forbidden West—how well it runs on PC. It’s safe to say that the game is a downright fantastic, and a generally excellent example of what an almost-perfect PC port looks like. Performance is downright phenomenal, and even my mid-range PC, which runs on an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPU, and 32GB of RAM had no problems pushing the frame rate up to the 90s without breaking a sweat, all with graphics options sitting somewhere between the High and Highest presets and running at 1080p. The game looks downright fantastic, and I was even able to get a few more frames per second by making use of DLSS, taking full advantage of my 144Hz monitor.

While Horizon Forbidden West can look rather fantastic on a mid-range PC, it’s also worth noting that the game runs quite well on much slower hardware. I was able to spend a fair bit of my time with the game on the Steam Deck, and while I did have to be more careful about which settings I was tinkering with to what extent, I was able to get a solidly playable frame rate of up to 60 FPS with settings hovering between medium and high. It certainly also helps that the Steam Deck doesn’t really benefit from pushing the resolution higher than 1280×800, so there just weren’t that many pixels for the game to push.

"While Horizon Forbidden West can look rather fantastic on a mid-range PC, it’s also worth noting that the game runs quite well on much slower hardware."

All told, Horizon Forbidden West’s PC version is a downright amazing release, offering just about everything a PC gamer could ask for. It provides plenty of graphical options to tinker around with, and when it comes to scalability, the very fact that it ran just fine on a Steam Deck without too much tinkering means that the game has also been optimized incredibly well for a wide range of hardware. The only downside—an admittedly minor one at that—is the fact that mouse and keyboard is a less than ideal way to play the game. It really is best enjoyed with a controller, and if you have a DualSense lying around, you’re going to get some of the best uses of the controller’s feature set you’ll find anywhere.

Just about every other aspect of Horizon Forbidden West, as well as Burning Shores, is essentially unchanged. The game’s story picks up shortly after the events of its predecessor, Horizon Zero Dawn, and an interesting form of escalation happens quite early on in the scope of problems that protagonist Aloy has to deal with. While the story itself is quite well done and fun, the game certainly features some rough spots here and there. For example, Aloy has a real hard time keeping quiet sometimes, to the extent where she’ll happily spoil puzzle solutions for you if you happen to take more than ten seconds looking for a solution.

I should reiterate that these aren’t really major problems with Horizon Forbidden West, none of what I’ve said above means that the game is fundamentally broken by any stretch. The game just seems to be very scared of a player possibly facing any friction while playing. While this can be an admirable trait, especially when it comes to reaching a wider audience and offering a greater level of accessibility, it also makes for some incredibly annoying parts where the game ends up making you feel ignorant because it was too impatient to let you figure out the answer to a potential puzzle.

"The game just seems to be very scared of a player possibly facing any friction while playing."

Twp years later, Horizon Forbidden West and its DLC, Burning Shores, is still a fantastic open-world game, and quite easily sits up there as one of the best alongside other heavyweights of the genre. With its more story-focused approach, the game also has plenty of memorable characters and fun interactions, and Aloy continues to be an incredibly interesting protagonist, especially in light of her coming to terms with her “destiny” from the end of the first game.

The PC release would probably be the first time some players would be exploring the world of Horizon, and it will make a great first impression on them. It’s downright gorgeous, has virtually zero gameplay or performance related bugs, and has been optimized incredibly well for a wide range of hardware. The only real downside is the game’s controller-first approach to gameplay and UI design. While playing with a mouse and keyboard is possible, playing on a PC with a DualSense controller feels like the definitive way to experience the continuation of Aloy’s journey.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Even after a year since its release, Horizon: Forbidden West stands tall as one of the best looking open worlds on the market. Thanks to the newly released Burning Shores expansion, we are getting another chance to dive deep into this beautifully desolate world and see what’s under the hood with this PS5 exclusive expansion.

Horizon: Forbidden West Burning Shores – What’s New?

The Burning Shores expansion transports players into a post-apocalyptic rendition of Los Angeles where all kinds of hazards lie in wait for series protagonist Aloy. But unlike the base game which was a cross-gen release, the Burning Shores expansion is only available for the PS5 – which has allowed the developer to increase fidelity levels in certain areas without having to worry about how to scale back for weaker hardware.

This in turn results in a richer presentation for the world. While the rendering pipeline hasn’t changed all that much in terms of micro level detail, players will be able to observe the general uptick in draw distance and increase in visual complexity within the environments as they find their bearings in this new land. That said, the Burning Shores DLC would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce current-gen elements to the presentation like ray-traced indirect lighting – but that obviously didn’t make the cut this time around.

Environments

The Burning Shores DLC introduces a new element to the environment – the lava. It’s an important part of the expansion’s visual identity, so it stands to reason that the rendering for the same should be spot on. That is thankfully the case, and we get to see a detailed representation of lava with a dense mesh for the surface and appropriate shading to simulate the glaze and sheen for the lava texture. The lava reflects light out into the surrounding environments, which cover the surrounding terrain in a reddish tint. Pools of lava also radiate huge amounts of volumetric smoke out into the environments, which adds to the richness of it all. This is coupled with a healthy amount of alpha particles that simulate the ash emerging out of lava. Finally, we also get to see some photorealistic textures for the volcanic rocks – complete with all the geometric complexity that one would expect from Decima’s terrain rendering system.

The cloudscapes have also seen a considerable uptick in quality with the Burning Shores DLC. Guerilla Games’ Decima Engine is already a pioneer when it comes to rendering realistic clouds thanks to its new tech, but the DLC pushes those rendering techniques even further. Entire cloudscapes are 3D voxels that react accordingly to light and deform accordingly as the player skirts through the skies. You can also see clouds covering the skies far out into the distance, which really helps convey a sense of scale within these environments as well.

In a similar vein, you can also make out an increased level of detail away from the camera thanks to better draw distance this time around. Guerilla Games already utilizes a clever implementation for simulating the scale within the environments with height fog and distant shadows, and it works to great effect over here as well. That said, we did notice plenty of texture detail pop-ins during the opening shot of Burning Shores where Aloy arrives on to the scene while riding atop her flying mount.

Switching gears over to the water rendering, the base game features some really detailed meshes that simulate the movement of water in streams and oceans. Water physics also does a good job of aggregating ripples and flow pressure, and now that Burning Shores gets to use the entirety of PS5’s processing power without any limitations – these simulations can be more realistic than before. The skiff is a new vehicle that Aloy can use to cross water bodies quickly, and it produces proper gurgling around the motors as well. Mathias De Jong hinted at better simulations for physics in Burning Shores during an interview with PlayStation Blog, but these changes aren’t necessarily visible to the naked eye.

Apart from the aforementioned changes, there doesn’t seem to be much of a change when it comes to the asset quality of the textures that comprise the environment. You might be able to make out more complexity in terms of props and foliage density in certain scenes, but there’s nothing really new in terms of rendering techniques themselves.

Characters

Horizon: Forbidden West provided a huge leap over the original with characters that have highly detailed skin meshes and clothes composed of physically based materials. Characters would also express themselves in a better fashion through expressive facial animations and movement of limbs – which was a far cry from the original that was pretty bland.

The Burning Shores DLC doesn’t really seem to improve much upon the character rendering for the most part. The models have roughly the same polycounts as the base game, and there’s no additional detailing on the models to speak of. The same story continues over in the Machines department as well. Take for instance, the new Bilegut which is a fast enemy that spews venomous bile all across the arena while moving around in an aggressive fashion. You can see the many individual components that make up the machine, and different parts are composed of different materials that come together in an identical fashion to the base game.

Graphical Modes And Differences

The Burning Shores DLC gives players a total of three options when it comes to choosing graphics – a favor resolution mode and a favor performance mode. Much like the original, the Favour resolution mode presents the game at a resolution of 2160p with a pass of TAA and FXAA to further clean up the image, but the frame rate is limited to 30fps. The favor performance knocks down the image quality to 1800p upscaled via checkerboard rendering, and instead bumps the frame rate up to 60fps.

There’s also a new Balanced mode this time around, which bumps the frame-rate to 40fps while keeping the visual features of the Resolution mode. That said, this mode is only available on displays that have a refresh rate of 120 Hz. Burning Shores also brings with it full support for VRR and HRR which improves dynamic resolution scaling in the performance mode.

As for the changes between the three modes, the Favour Resolution and Balanced mode don’t seem to have any major differences in the visual presentation. Apart from a lower internal image, the Favour Performance mode also knocks back detail on faraway objects which will result in visible pop-in for objects far from the camera – especially in the peripheral vision cones. Everything else like the texture quality, the reflections and foliage density remain the same across the three modes.

Loading Times, Performance, And Conclusion

Horizon: Forbidden West makes good use of the PS5’s SSD capabilities to deliver a snappy experience when it comes load times. Burning Shores takes anywhere from 7 to 10 seconds to get you into the game, which is roughly the same amount of time it took with the base game. As for the performance, the game does a good job of holding its performance targets for the most part. There are a couple of hitches and slowdowns here and there, but that is to be expected from an open-world game like this one – so that isn’t a really big deal.

In conclusion, Horizon: Forbidden West Burning Shores is a great expansion that adds more content to a game that’s already brimming with oodles of things to do and vistas to witness. While there isn’t much of a bump in terms of fidelity with the transition to a PS5 exclusive, players will be able to notice the difference in more chaotic fights and complex settlements as they explore the far reaches of this new map.

As reported by GamesIndustry, the latest data revealed by GSD reveals that 44% of Elden Ring’s sales came on PC, followed by PlayStation 5 version selling 27%, the Xbox version selling 16%, and the PlayStation 4 version selling 13%.

As such, it was Europe’s biggest game of February, and ranked No. 1 in most of the major territories, barring Germany, which saw Pokémon Legends: Arceus topping its monthly charts.

Meanwhile, Horizon Forbidden West is the biggest PlayStation 5 launch in the region, and the best launch for a non-Call of Duty PS5 title, placing it at the second position in the overall charts for February. 59% of its sales were on the  PlayStation 5, with the rest being on the PS4.

Additional key takeaways include Pokémon Legends: Arceus being the best-selling game on a single format, and Dying Light 2 Stay Human coming in at No. 5 while selling best on PlayStation 5, accounting for 44% of sales, followed by the PlayStation 4 version selling 28%, the Xbox version selling at 16%, and the PC version selling at 12%. Finally, SEGA’s new strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 on PC reached No. 7 in the charts.

In total, 13.56 million software units were sold across European markets in February, making it 8% higher over February 2021, with the physical market enjoying a good share of 5.9 million units (up by 11%), and digital sales accounting for 7.66 million units (up by 6%).

You can check out the European GSD February 2022 top 20 games below. Keep in mind that Nintendo does not share their digital sales data, so the position for their games only accounts for the physical sales data.

As per GamesIndustry, the racing game sold 28% lower than its predecessor GT Sport at launch, but is still the fourth biggest physical launch of the year, trailing behind Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring. 76% of Gran Turismo 7’s sales are from the PS5 version of the game, with the remainder coming from the PS4 version. As always, these charts don’t include digital sales.

Elden Ring, on the other hand, fell to the second position with a 69% drop in sales week-on-week. Meanwhile, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is holding the third position, enjoying a sales rise of 16% week-on-week, along with Horizon Forbidden West holding the fourth position, which saw a dip of 47% week-on-week.

Another new release, Square Enix’s Nintendo Switch exclusive strategy RPG Triangle Strategy, comes in at the seventh position, selling almost exactly as much as Bravely Default 2 did at launch last year- though it could not surpass Octopath Traveler in terms of launch boxed sales.

You can check out the Gfk’s top ten for the week ending March 5th below.

Of course, even the best open-world games of recent memory are subject to some of this criticism to varying degrees, so it’s really surprising when a game so focused on its open-world actually manages to carve out a space of itself in the hearts of fans and maintain a decent level of fandom even years after its release. Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn was released in 2017 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive and rightfully deserves a place as one of the best open-world games you can experience to this date. Horizon Zero Dawn also eventually made its way to the PC platform last year, although it did take some post-launch patches to get its performance issues alleviated. It’s been close to five years since the original game released, and with its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West planned for release early next year – the time seems ripe to look back at Zero Dawn, and ask, what made it one hell of a game.

To really understand what made Horizon Zero Dawn a fabulous game requires paying attention to the time when the game was released. Open-world games were all the rage back in 2017 too – sure, and they were subject to the same criticisms I mentioned before. However, the concept of mish-mashing action RPG-esque progression into an open-world game was present in very few games but they were pretty rooted in the tropes that came with them – from restricted movement mechanics to level-gating content and so much more.

So, when Horizon Zero Dawn was released in February of 2017, it was almost unlike anything fans had seen before. And what a world it was (and still is to this day), with its rich post-post-apocalyptic setting, flaunting its juxtaposing tribal denizens and lush green forests along with unique technology, machines and weaponry. Guerrilla Games worked with a bunch of experts on how to make the world as realistic as possible, and it clearly shows in the final product with crisp visuals and superb art direction.

Horizon Zero Dawn takes a lot of cues from other modern open world games, especially in its hybrid stealth approach to the combat loop. As fans of the game might already know, players get to face both humans and robotic dinosaurs in this one hell of an adventure. You can either choose to take your enemies head-on or take them out one by one by devising and then carrying out unique and creative strategies. Of course, as you’d expect – downing these gargantuan dinosaurs is no easy feat- more so with primal weaponry like bows and spears. Thus, it becomes absolutely essential to target weak points on the dinosaurs in an effort to take them down as efficiently as possible.

You can go behind weaker machines to either take them down silently or even take control of them to either ride them or make them fight their species. You could also use traps to lure enemies into them, causing them to trip over them or electrocute themselves. There are also multiple types of traps and ammunition that you can craft on the fly. All of this coalesces together to make Horizon Zero Dawn‘s combat system a highly dynamic experience that promotes player expression with its bevy of tools on offer.

Horizon Zero Dawn‘s movement system relies heavily on the use of parkour and free-running across its environments. You can climb up huge towers, travel down ziplines, and so much more – giving you a lot of freedom in how you want to traverse the world all while giving the game’s world a whole lot of verticality. It’s not Mirror’s Edge levels of free-running, but what’s here is certainly impressive in the context of the packed world. There are a ton of side-quests to track, camps to clear out, dinosaur species to hunt, resources to be scrapped, towers to climb, and so much more. Of course, it’s not anything new that we haven’t seen in previous games – but the game doesn’t excessively pad itself out and the rewards (for the most part) are worth making the effort for completing these activities. These rewards all feed into making you even more powerful than before with an increase in core stats and tools, which is absolutely vital if you want to survive the increasingly tough assortment of enemies.

Tying it all together is a tale about protagonist Aloy who has been shunned from the Nora tribe and raised by an outcast by the name of Rost. Throughout the campaign, players learn more about the world, what happened before the machines took over, their origins and how to stop them, and what happened to her mother. The story itself isn’t the most riveting, although it does put a lot of focus on Aloy – who is an interesting character that’s worth rooting for. The way in which it is told, however – does leave a lot to be desired with robotic animations and inconsistent dialogues being a major point of criticism on launch.

That said, when looking at Horizon Zero Dawn as a whole – is simply put, an unforgettable experience. What makes it such can be attributed to some great art direction and background research that makes this post-post-apocalyptic world a beauty to gaze at. Its combat system is very well-thought-out and most importantly unique which makes fighting the machines a constantly frantic and exhilarating experience. Of course, it ties everything together very neatly in a package, which is the most important aspect of an open world and is integral to making any game of this ilk one hell of a game. Guerilla Games nailed this aspect with Horizon Zero Dawn and its follow up expansion, The Frozen Wilds, and we hope to see more of this magic once again when Horizon Forbidden West releases in February of this year.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As previously showcased in the Game Awards trailer, the Slitherfang is a hybrid of a rattlesnake and a cobra that can spew venomous acid on Aloy. In addition to that, it has various other moves, such as a ground burrowing move, a dash, a lightning attack, and also a sonic pulse attack that comes from hidden nodes in its neck, which is capable of deafening Aloy and rendering her unable to attack for a short period.

Game director Mathijs de Jonge also said that the machine has even more attacks dangerous attacks and unpredictable patterns, and as such, the Slitherfang seems to be a formidable foe. It is weak to ice, fire, and plasma attacks, but it sounds like it’s going to be a tough foe to takedown. Players will constantly need to be on the move at all times, as the Slitherfang’s attacks changes depending on its health and the kind of tactics players use against it, which should make fights against the machine a lot more dynamic.

Horizon Forbidden West releases for PS5 and PS4 on February 18th, 2022.

In a recent post on Twitter, Guerilla acknowledged this and thanked the development team for the work. Of course, given the fact that Nixxes Software is primarily a PC port specialist, it isn’t too much of a surprise that the studio has been brought on to handle the PC side of PlayStation release.

Nixxes was one of the many key acquisitions that Sony made this year, along with other development studios like Housemarque and Bluepoint, among others. Support studio Valkyrie Enterainment was also recently acquired, while Sony has alsoc confirmed that Nixxes will be helping with the porting process of PlayStation games– although the upcoming Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is being handled by Iron Galaxy Studios.

A huge shoutout to our friends at @NixxesSoftware who helped our teams with the recent PC patches! ❤

— Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) December 16, 2021

The game’s latest update, patch 1.11, now also adds support for both AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS technologies. Both use machine learning algorithms to upscale visuals to a higher resolution with minimal loss in quality, also allowing for improved frame rates. Horizon Zero Dawn on PC previously supported AMD’s FidelityFX CAS, which this update replaces with FSR. In addition to this, there’s also no pre-compilation of shaders on startup- which was a major point of criticism of this PC port.

The follow-up to Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West is currently in the works at Guerilla Games and will be releasing on February 18th, 2022 for both PS4 and PS5.

Patch Notes: