Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Review

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is Sony’s latest update to a PS4 classic, enhancing Guerrilla Games’ beloved action RPG with the power of the PS5. Originally released in 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn captivated players with its unique world—a post-apocalyptic Earth where nature has reclaimed the land and robotic beasts roam free. Players control Aloy, a young hunter with a mysterious past, as she uncovers the secrets behind both her origins and the strange, mechanized wilderness she inhabits. With Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Sony aims to align the visual quality of the game with its 2022 sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, offering a more modernized experience that still honors the original’s vision.

Packed with graphical improvements, the remaster leverages advanced lighting, high-resolution textures, and enhanced character models to bring Aloy’s world to life like never before. It runs at a fluid 60 frames per second in Performance mode, with environments that feel denser, more vibrant, and truer to the vision that first made Horizon Zero Dawn stand out. Priced reasonably for owners of the original, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is both a fitting upgrade for returning players and an appealing entry point for newcomers looking to experience one of Sony’s most iconic modern franchises in its best form yet.

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AT A GLANCE
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG
Developer: Guerrilla Games, Nixxes Software
Publisher: PlayStation Publishing LLC
Release Date: 31 Oct, 2024

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Story

The story of Horizon Zero Dawn remains one of its most compelling aspects, holding up remarkably well even after several years. Set in a distant future where humanity has regressed to tribal societies and towering, animal-like machines dominate the wilderness, the narrative follows Aloy, an outcast hunter raised by a recluse named Rost. As Aloy grows, she becomes determined to uncover the truth of her origins, a quest that eventually entwines her fate with the mystery of the world’s downfall and the rise of the mechanical creatures. This journey is layered with themes of identity, technological responsibility, and the clash between nature and artificial life, which resonate strongly even today.

What keeps Horizon Zero Dawn engaging is its focus on Aloy’s personal journey alongside the larger mysteries. The remastered version highlights this by enhancing facial animations and motion capture, allowing for a more emotionally resonant experience in character interactions. The narrative pacing, combined with Guerrilla Games’ careful world-building, invites players to explore every corner of this richly imagined world. As a result, the story feels just as relevant and immersive as it did in 2017, offering new players and returning fans alike a reason to delve back into Aloy’s adventure and the captivating lore of a fractured future.

Gameplay

Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay continues to be a defining aspect of its appeal, blending action RPG elements with strategic combat, exploration, and light survival mechanics. In the remastered edition, the gameplay feels as engaging as ever, enhanced by a smoother 60 fps performance mode that supports its fluid, dynamic action.

At the core of Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay is its unique combat system, which encourages players to adopt a hunter’s mindset. Rather than charging into battles, the game often rewards stealth, preparation, and the use of Aloy’s diverse arsenal. Players use a variety of weapons, each suited for different approaches: bows with specialized arrow types, tripwires for ambushes, and slingshots for elemental attacks. The range of options lets players tackle the game’s machine creatures creatively, depending on the situation. Each weapon also plays into the elemental weaknesses of different machines, incentivizing players to analyze and strategize for each encounter.

The creatures themselves are the real stars of combat, inspired by real-world animals and mechanical designs. Each machine, from the horse-like Striders to the towering Thunderjaws, has unique behavior patterns and weak points that can be exploited. Aloy’s primary tool, the Focus, allows her to scan these machines, revealing valuable information like component weaknesses and elemental resistances. This system promotes a careful approach, as players can mark weak points or craft specific ammo to gain an advantage. It also adds a layer of depth to combat, making encounters feel tactical rather than simple hack-and-slash battles.

The remaster benefits from subtle tweaks that enhance the combat experience, particularly in terms of animation and responsiveness. The new lighting and textures make environments feel more dynamic, while additional animations smooth out some of the more rigid transitions between actions, allowing for a more immersive combat experience. The added fidelity in character animations during battles makes Aloy’s movements look more fluid and natural, especially as she dodges, switches weapons, and uses the terrain to her advantage.

Hunting machines often requires a blend of stealth, setting traps, and luring enemies into ambush zones. This aspect of Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay is almost puzzle-like; players can experiment with various approaches, leading to rewarding encounters that feel unique. For example, one could lay down a series of electric tripwires to incapacitate a group of Scrappers, or use tearblast arrows to dismantle critical components from a larger machine before engaging it head-on. This versatility keeps the gameplay fresh, as players can continually adjust their approach based on the machine types and their own playstyle.

Another strength of Horizon Zero Dawn’s gameplay lies in its exploration and open-world design. The map is expansive yet avoids overwhelming players, presenting biomes that range from arid deserts to lush forests and snowy mountains. Each area is densely populated with points of interest, from bandit camps and Cauldrons (mysterious dungeons housing advanced machines) to hunting grounds and side quests that flesh out the world and its inhabitants. The remaster’s visual upgrades bring new life to these environments, enhancing the natural beauty of each biome and making exploration feel even more rewarding. This sense of discovery is a significant draw, as players uncover remnants of the Old World, collectible lore items, and hidden challenges across the map.

Traversal and exploration are intuitive, with Aloy able to climb marked surfaces, use zip-lines, and override certain machines to use as mounts. While climbing is somewhat restricted to designated paths, the world is generally accessible and offers plenty of freedom. The remaster doesn’t change these core mechanics but improves visual markers, making paths and key objects easier to spot in the lush, densely detailed world. This attention to detail adds to the immersive experience, helping players feel more naturally integrated into the environment as they explore.

The game also incorporates a light RPG progression system, allowing players to earn skill points and unlock abilities across three primary trees: Prowler, Brave, and Forager. The Prowler tree focuses on stealth, Brave emphasizes combat skills, and Forager enhances resource gathering and healing abilities. This system provides flexibility, letting players shape Aloy’s skillset based on personal preference. However, it’s possible to eventually unlock most abilities, encouraging experimentation without limiting player choices in the long term.

As players progress, they encounter various human factions that add diversity to the combat, although human enemies are generally less challenging than machines. Still, these interactions help break up the gameplay and add variety, with some missions involving infiltration, stealth, or larger-scale skirmishes. Additionally, the remaster’s improved NPC animations contribute to a more immersive experience during these encounters, as characters display more nuanced reactions in dialogue and combat.

The Frozen Wilds expansion, included in the remaster, introduces new machines, weapons, and abilities, as well as a more challenging region with some of the game’s toughest enemies. The additional content enhances the original experience, offering players a refined combat system and added difficulty for those looking to test their skills.

Overall, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered preserves the core gameplay elements that made the original a hit while benefiting from technical enhancements that make each aspect more polished. The blend of tactical combat, exploration, and immersive open-world design has aged well, solidifying Horizon Zero Dawn as a standout action RPG. The remaster’s visual and performance upgrades breathe new life into these mechanics, making Aloy’s journey through a machine-dominated world as captivating as ever.

Visuals, Audio and Technical Performance

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered leverages the PS5’s power to deliver a significantly upgraded visual experience, refining both the game’s aesthetic appeal and immersion. The technical improvements are apparent from the moment the game opens, especially in its lighting, which gives the world a vibrant, natural quality that was previously limited by the PS4’s capabilities. Dynamic lighting effects make sunlight filter through tree canopies, casting realistic shadows and enhancing the natural beauty of the game’s forests, deserts, and mountain ranges. The clouds and skies have also been enhanced, creating more painterly, atmospheric backdrops that shift fluidly with the time of day. The use of HDR in the remaster deepens the color palette, intensifying sunsets, lush forests, and more autumnal environments.

Texture detail is another major upgrade, with significantly denser foliage, finely crafted details on rocks, and improved textures on machine creatures and human characters alike. While the original Horizon Zero Dawn was already visually striking for a PS4 title, the remaster adds subtle but impactful layers of detail, creating a more immersive and polished experience. Environments feel fuller and more lifelike, especially in the villages and settlements scattered throughout Aloy’s world, which now appear busier and more populated, providing more of a sense of a living, breathing society. In the original game, towns sometimes felt sparse; here, denser NPC populations and more intricate environments lend a sense of vibrancy and realism to these areas, enriching the player’s experience of the world.

Character models have also been given a detailed facelift, particularly for main characters like Aloy, Rost, and Erend. Their models now showcase higher-resolution textures, refined facial structures, and more realistic hair, bringing them up to the standards of Horizon Forbidden West. Facial animations were one of the original game’s weaker aspects, often appearing limited and unexpressive. In the remaster, Guerrilla Games addressed this with an additional 10 hours of motion capture data, enriching characters’ reactions and mannerisms in conversations. This improvement is especially noticeable in cutscenes, where characters now gesture, shift body language, and convey emotion more convincingly than before. For example, Aloy’s curiosity, determination, and empathy are more effectively conveyed in her expressions, which now seem organic and lifelike.

The environmental geometry has been revisited, particularly for buildings and terrain features, resulting in sharper and more defined structures. Architectural details, such as wooden beams, stonework, and foliage around settlements, have a higher level of realism that adds to the immersion. Vegetation has been improved as well, with plants and trees swaying dynamically in response to wind and player movement, making the wilderness feel more interactive and responsive. Moreover, the enhanced draw distance on the PS5 means that landscapes remain crystal clear from afar, removing the pop-in textures that could be occasionally distracting in the original game.

Performance-wise, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered shines on the PS5 with a stable 60 frames per second (fps) in Performance mode, which maintains visual detail while providing smooth, responsive gameplay. This frame rate increase enhances the fluidity of Aloy’s movements and the combat, particularly during fast-paced encounters with the game’s mechanical creatures. The 60 fps also greatly improves traversal across the game’s open world, making it easier to appreciate the subtleties in both landscapes and character animations without sacrificing the rich detail that was a hallmark of the original.

In addition to the increased frame rate, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered benefits from faster load times thanks to the PS5’s SSD. The original game’s load screens could be lengthy, particularly when fast-traveling or loading into new regions. Now, load times are drastically reduced, which allows players to jump back into the action quickly, a crucial improvement that enhances the overall flow of the game.

Overall, the technical improvements in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered elevate an already visually impressive game, providing a richer, more polished experience on the PS5. The remaster has brought the game’s visuals, performance, and immersion closer to modern expectations, making it a worthwhile upgrade for fans of the original and an enticing entry point for new players. By enhancing everything from lighting and textures to frame rate and loading times, Guerrilla Games has transformed Horizon Zero Dawn into a visually and technically robust experience that holds its own against newer titles on the PS5.