Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered review for PC, PS5

I know this isn’t an original thought, but I can’t figure out why Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered exists.

I mean, it’s unquestionably a great game. It was one of the best games on the PS4, and when you factor in The Frozen Wilds, it easilymoves up in those rankings. The release of its Complete Edition four years ago only reinforced its awesomeness. Even today, its gameplay still stands out as exceptional, its world still feels well-imagined, its characters still feel outstanding, and it still looks absolutely gorgeous.

But that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it? We’re talking about a game that only came out seven years ago, during a generation that hasn’t entirely ended, on hardware that’s still regularly getting new games. It’s not as if anyone could’ve looked at the Complete edition that was on sale up until a few months ago and said, “Yeah, this was a good game in its time, but it’s really showing its age now.”

At the same time, though, the operate phrase in the previous paragraph is “on sale up until a few months ago”: if you want to play Horizon Zero Dawn – either because you want to go back to it, or because you want to experience it for the first time – this is the only way to do so now (unless you want to find the PS4 disc and play via backwards compatibility, which is obviously not an option for PC gamers). So from that perspective, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered kind of makes sense.

And to be sure, it’s still a game worth playing, whether you’ve played it before or this will be your first time visiting the post-apocalyptic world of Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s an open-world game in the best sense of the term, which means that not only did Guerrilla Games do a great job of creating a massive, vibrant world, they also did a great job of filling it with things to discover (and, of course, Nixxes deserves credit for making sure that this remastered version allows you to experience that vibrant world in all its glory). It’s got a plot that can carry you through dozens and dozens of hours, and in Aloy, you have a main character that you won’t mind spending all that time with.

Horizon Zero Dawn also (still) deserves credit for finding a way to make survival a key part of the game – so looting, and building weapons and ammo, and gathering supplies – without making it a defining feature of the game. As Jim noted way back when we first reviewed this game, it’s incredible the way Horizon Zero Dawn makes you constantly look out for more supplies without making you feel like you’re looking out for more supplies – it just kind of happens. And once you have those supplies, the game gives you plenty of opportunities to use them, because, again, this world is filled with things to do.

Is any of that enough to make Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered feel like it has to exist? Probably not. Sure, it might look a little better than it did before, but when we’re talking about a fairly recent game that was already widely praised for how beautiful it looked, unless you’re pushing it to its maximum settings, you probably won’t notice a huge difference. But if this remastered version is what it takes to get more people playing a modern classic, then so be it – Horizon Zero Dawn is a great game, and this remaster just reinforces that every step of the way.

PlayStation Publishing provided us with a Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered PC code for review purposes.