Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered review – it’s pretty alright

Horizon Zero Dawn is a seven-year-old video game that was a graphical showcase for the PS4 during its heyday. Guerrilla’s open-world action game was also one of the first PS4 Pro-enhanced titles, and it got an update that boosted its frame rate to 60fps following the PS5’s launch. For most publishers, that would have been enough. However, Sony’s newfound passion for remaking/remastering all of its older first-party games has resulted in a technically competent but artistically questionable release with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

The concept of remasters and remakes have blended in recent years and there’s no other game that’s a better example than this one. Guerrilla and Nixxes Software have updated the game to match the same visual fidelity as its technically superior sequel, resulting in a much prettier game. However, as early marketing material pointed out, Sony’s remasters tend to disregard strong and intentional art direction, and that’s partially true here.

I remember Horizon Zero Dawn as a vibrant game with appropriately muted, sun-tanned colors against the rocky backdrops of futuristic Colorado, Utah, and other territories. Sure, the original’s lighting may have leaned too much into golden-hour reds and icy-cold blues, but it didn’t need a facelift of this magnitude to fix them. The one aspect that HZD needed “fixed” was its character models and cutscene direction in side-quests, which look and feel rather dated in 2024.

The remaster attempts to update the original’s lighting to match the real world, but with the usual vibrant flourishes of the sequel’s lighting. It also brings character models and cutscene direction to a modern standard, along with many smaller animations for Aloy and NPCs.

Perhaps the better call would’ve been to keep the new models and assets and color-grade the game closer to the original. Aloy’s face may seem “yassified”, as my colleagues put it, but there’s still a noticeable difference between this younger Aloy and her slightly matured counterpart in Forbidden West.

Fortunately, the lighting doesn’t clash with the original’s vision everywhere. The developers seem to have listened to the feedback and stealthily tuned the grade to be closer to the PS4 game. While light sources bounce realistically across scenes, shades of the signature red and blue glows emanating from environments from the original subtly remain in the remaster.

On the bright side, it also includes modern accessibility and performance options that make a bigger difference in how the game feels. Gyro aiming, options to turn off tinnitus-inducing sounds, a smooth save transfer option, and new performance modes are welcome here. Some settings and quality-of-life upgrades are still missing here though. I would’ve preferred an auto-pickup toggle for resources, along with updated inventory and crafting menus, the lack of which still clashes with the game’s faster-paced combat. There are also more audio mixes for different outputs optimized for an immersive 3D soundscape, whereas the original only has a basic mix. 

The good news is you don’t need to double dip and empty your wallet to enjoy these upgrades. If you own the original game, you can upgrade to the remaster for $9.99 or its regional equivalent, and that’s a great deal. Sony is also not delisting the original game and it will remain in your library, being easily accessible for years to come.

Those with modern TVs and monitors can enjoy a new “Balanced” performance mode that targets 40fps in a 120Hz container. For the pixel-peepers, an incredibly dense quality mode pushes the resolution and asset detail as high as the PS5 can handle. The fan-favorite performance mode tones it down a notch for a smooth 60fps output, while the HDR implementation works just as well as it does in Forbidden West.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered updates the original game with mixed results from an artistic perspective, but its abundance of accessibility options, improved performance, and technically improved asset quality make it an unnecessary but worthwhile upgrade.

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PS5

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is available on PC and PS5.