Horizon Zero Dawn made a splash in 2017. Full of surprise, mystery, and AAA-production value, gamers near and far adored this new intellectual property. Being a new IP is risky business, especially with the sort of budget this title had. When sequels and reboots are the soup of the decades, a publisher (Sony) really needs to have faith in the team and project. Which leads us to the Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered! Is this worth your time and money? Kind of!
Aloy, our lead protagonist, is an orphan under the care of an outcast, which makes her an outcast. The setting is a harsh world in which humans survive in low-tech tribes amongst animal machines. Up until recently, the machines and humans lived with a quiet understanding, but something has begun to corrupt the machines as they aggress on humans and their territories. We get to see Aloy grow up and try to earn her way back into this new, old civilization, but wouldn’t ya know it? Something turns everything on its head.
Captivating, unique setting? Check. A heroine worth rooting for? Check. Inspiration to explore? Check. Does the story continue to deliver? Absolutely. Creating an engaging premise and introduction is hard enough, but meeting expectations to the end is even harder. Having played Horizon Forbidden West first, this was my initial time venturing into the wilds everyone else got to experience in 2017. Although I had a pretty good idea of what Zero Dawn entails after playing Forbidden West, I still enjoyed the pace, flow, and rolling out of all the details touched upon in the second game.
I will try to avoid comparing to Forbidden West too much, because it’s not exactly fair. While sequels don’t always improve on the forebearer, Forbidden West absolutely does. That doesn’t discount Zero Dawn’s quality, but remember that Zero Dawn is over seven years old, and while not retro by any stretch of the imagination, game design and scope have evolved over time. If you’re like me and have played Forbidden West first, don’t expect the same caliber of game.
That’s the key here: a good story is a good story is a good story, but great gameplay doesn’t always age as well as one might hope. For its time, Horizon Zero Dawn was undoubtedly an astonishing work, and it’s still a great game, but it lives in Forbidden West’s shadow in almost every respect. Did I have fun? I absolutely did, and I’m glad I got to play Zero Dawn in all its shiny new coat of paint.
For the uninitiated, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is a third-person action RPG. Combat isn’t as slow and calculated as a Souls game, but can feel as difficult at times, especially if one ventures where they shouldn’t given that this is a large open world to explore. Players sport a few different kinds of ranged weapons, like bows and slingshots that can use various ammo types, including explosive, ice, and electricity. Scanning enemies to find weaknesses helps choose an ammo type, but ranged combat isn’t always an option when a giant rhino-machine is stampeding toward you. Melee is a reasonable option with its own perks, as players can more easily knock down enemies or knock off armor bits.
Harvesting machine parts is intimate to Zero Dawn’s gameplay loop, as players can use machine parts to craft better weapons and armor with them, but the variety and options are significantly lacking compared to Forbidden West. I was honestly shocked at how fleshed out the sequel is compared to Zero Dawn in this respect, but a part of me enjoyed the simplicity, as it allowed me to focus on the other bits, like questing and exploring. While most quests devolve into following tracks, collecting a bounty, or retrieving machine parts, the world is so stunning and rich that any small motivation to go out in search of just about anything is a joy.
I’ve seen some videos, playthroughs, and pictures of the first iteration of Horizon Zero Dawn, and it’s still no slouch by today’s standards, but playing the remaster on my PlayStation 5 felt like playing a new AAA title. I sometimes wished I could just turn off enemies and walk around freely to take everything in. Climb a mountain and stare at the horizon as the sun sets and rises. The team who worked on the remaster completely pulled this beautiful game into the modern era, giving it the respect it deserves.
That being said, not all is glorious in this remaster. Keeping in mind this is a remaster and not a remake, some odd quirks remain, like annoying inventory limits, grinding to find necessary machine or animal parts, and difficult-to-find ledges to climb and find collectibles. Compared to Forbidden West, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered can feel like a slog for the aforementioned reasons. I also had a few technical issues, like ladders and ledges floating in mid-air where I presume a mountain should have been, leaving a collectible unattainable, frequent crashes, and pop-in; these grievances rarely occurred, except for the crashes, but even the crashes didn’t hurt too much because Zero Dawn auto-saves frequently.
[Editor’s Note: Developer Nixxes may have addressed some of the issues above in patches, including Patch 1.06, which was released just two days before we published this review.]
The audio, of course, is fantastic, with all the main characters boasting talented voice actors. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered’s music kind of falls into the background, but it’s always appropriate and accentuates the moment. More importantly, the ambient noise, like all the naturey sounds to bring the wilds to life, creates a real sense of immersion. Aloy’s yelps and thuds when she hits the ground sound good, but I could do with fewer repeated lines; minor issues like these took me out of the moment, but only briefly. Some of the less central characters don’t have the best acting, but they weren’t so bad as to disrupt the game. Rather, they felt charming. What I didn’t enjoy was the odd echo that happens whenever a character speaks from far away. I get that the developers were trying to create a sense of distance, but the effect is terrible, if I’m being brutally honest.
In a word, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is stunning. If you missed this title because you didn’t have a PlayStation 4, then this is a worthwhile purchase. Don’t expect this to be Forbidden West-caliber, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’ve already played Zero Dawn, this is much harder to recommend unless you’re a super fan. The remaster undoubtedly looks better, but I’m not sure this warrants shelling out the cash or investing precious time, unless you’ve been meaning to give this game another go.
[Editor’s Note 2: For what it’s worth, a $10.00 USD PS5 upgrade is available for owners of the PS4 edition, with eligibility details in the footnotes of the Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered PlayStation Store page.]
