The list on SteamDB coincides with areas where Sony hasn’t yet begun supporting PlayStation Network. It matches that of the region locking seen in Helldivers 2, which saw a similar move and a wave of controversy when it enforced a PSN account requirement.

It is notable, however, that Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition has no multiplayer component, and enforcing the need for a PSN account is a strange move. However, the most recent change log for God of War Ragnarök indicates that Sony might be getting ready to introduce region locking through a mandatory account.

For context, Helldivers 2 was de-listed from more than 170 countries back in May 2024. This came about due to Sony wanting to enforce PSN account linking for the multiplayer title, but also not supporting the existence of PSN in these countries. Before the region-locking happened, however, there was plenty of backlash from players before Sony backtracked.

Despite this, however, Helldivers 2 has gone on to do quite well, selling more than 15 million copies as of November last year. The game has since seen constant updates fixing issues, re-balancing gear and adding new content, including the Illuminate.

As for the PC release of Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition, you can check out our review, as well as our graphical comparison between the PC and PS5 release. The PC release did well enough to push it into the US best-selling charts when it came out last year.

The studio seemed to be aware of ambitious the prospect of designing a fight around Horus might be right from the outset. Oehme talks about how the fight acted as a great climax because it was supposed to be the end of the Forbidden West storyline. The fight also acts as a finale in a gameplay sense, since it tests several of Aloy’s abilities.

“We had to complete the story arc of Horizon Forbidden West, as it was the final quest of the expansion and as such, we had to deliver a level that was worthy of being its grand finale,” said Oehme.

“As we are fighting a machine that was responsible for the destruction of civilization, it felt like it shouldn’t be easy to take down with just your bow and arrows. We wanted to challenge all of Aloy’s abilities in this conclusive fight: her ability to sneak in unseen and stay hidden, her agility and ability to climb and swim, and also to collaborate with her friends.”

Baas talks about making the fight look as epic as it feels. He also talks about the sense of scale of the fight, and how it was important to let players see Horus from a distance as well as up-close.

“In order to create structure in the fight and to give it good pacing and rhythm, we tried to separate the player and the Horus throughout the encounter,” said Baas.

“If we were only going to fight the Horus up close, it felt like we were ‘clipping its toenails’ so to speak. You would constantly be really close and you wouldn’t see a lot of it and we wanted to make sure that players get a chance to see the machine and observe its abilities. We also wanted players to witness its ability to move around and notice the destruction it causes to the landscape in its path. It was really important to us to give the Horus this moment of presentation to give players a demonstration of its power.”

Check out the full video, which also features technical designer Marcin Matuszczyk and senior creature animator David Vince talking about all of the challenges involved in designing the fight, from gameplay to animation, below.

Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition was released on PC earlier this year. For more details, check out our review.

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.