Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Review – DID WE NEED THIS?

This seems to be the year of remasters and remakes for Sony; some a little more unnecessary than others… Though, is Horizon Dawn Remastered worth the investment, or is it just another quick re-release to cash in on this popular franchise? Let’s find out.

A Beautiful World I Couldn’t Care About

Considering that Horizon Zero Dawn originally came out in 2017 on PS4, it honestly feels like we’re going through another Last of Us Part 1 situation again. While the enhanced graphics, loading times and frame rates are good upgrades, the original looked pretty fantastic and ran fine enough, being almost on par with today’s next-gen visuals. Well, unless you’re talking about the main character, Aloy’s crazy Medusa hair that had a mind of its own—glad that’s been taken care of. Phew! The devs also packaged in The Frozen Wilds DLC and re-recorded 10 hours of motion capture, so the stilted, look-at-you, now look-at-me camera angles give your eyeballs something new to gawk at. The lip-synching and mouth animations will still get a little funky at points, unfortunately.

That being said, it doesn’t make the why-are-we-in-a-post-apocalyptic, robotic-animals-of-doom setting any more interesting. This was my first time playing the Horizon series and let’s just say that the story bored me out of my brain. In all my years of reviewing games, I’ve never heard this much listen-to-my-yarn-ya-goose exposition as I have here. I genuinely just stopped paying attention a couple of hours in. And past that point, there was no way in ever loving José that I was going to seek out any extra dialogue wheel fluff. It was that egregious. Major characters come and go like hotcakes, while pivotal story beats aren’t given ample time to marinate.

But the biggest issue is that the game barely gives you any reasons to care. Aloy rides front and centre of the proverbial plot vehicle, swerving through what should be important events that ultimately fall Star Wars: Episode I levels short of expectations. Yes, a select few characters are slightly memorable, and the grand mystery at the centre of it all is adequate. However, it’s definitely not something I’d stick around for purely the story’s sake.

Switching Gears

On the other hand, when the combat gets going that’s when things become exciting. Even more so with the PS5’s haptic feedback for Aloy’s bowstrings, and the adaptive triggers to intuitively feel the world around you. Shooting off critical sections on a robot’s armour, shocking them with a well-placed tripwire or taking them down all sneaky-sneaky-like really gets the blood pumping, especially on higher difficulties. Plus, being able to slow down time to line up shots or mount mechanical steeds are nice little touches that help make Aloy feel like an ancient huntress of ye olde yore.

While consistently stopping to pick up materials for trading and crafting resources feels like quality gameplay-story integration, I swear I pressed the triangle button about 50,000 times before the credits rolled. Yep, scavenging got old long before that happened. From my perspective, this has got to be the game’s biggest crux: repetition. Whether it be hunting something down with Aloy’s detective-like Focus tracker, eliminating an enemy group or going on basic fetch quests, the main and side missions barely ever deviate from this formula. Think of the most generic open-world tropes you could pour into a vat like maps flooded with icons, enemy bases and skill points for the sake of it, and I present to you, Horizon Zero Enjoyment.

Alright, alright. That was partially a joke. Partially. But remember ladies and gents, this is the same year that Breath of the Wild came out. So I’ll just let that sink in for a second. In all seriousness though, there are a lot of in-between moments in this game that can be quite a hoot! Especially when Zero Dawn lets you stumble upon certain enemies and scenarios that give players time to plan out their moves. Not to say that it can’t feel empty at times, that’s definitely true. Although, these natural encounters have never looked better. The game features three different 4K graphical modes including: Quality which targets 30FPS, Balanced that hovers around 40FPS, and Performance where the frame rate sticks to 60FPS. You can also transfer your saved data from the original PS4 release or The Complete Edition and jump straight into New Game + if you want to start smacking some serious robot butt.

Decision

Even though I’ve been quite negative throughout this review, the Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster is still a fairly solid adventure. While it’s great that existing owners can upgrade on the cheap, newbies paying almost full price could view this as a big ol’ punch to the hip pocket. Despite the improved graphics, animations, character models and the bundled Frozen Wilds DLC, the core experience was perfectly playable before on PC and PS4. So, I don’t know why Sony felt the need to remaster Zero Dawn. But I digress, because if the story didn’t resonate with you in 2017, the ridiculously exposition-heavy dialogue and flat character depth won’t sway you here either.

That being said, the in-between moments and combat can shine quite bright in this game, as the tense encounters with mechanical beasties offer up platters of dynamic and strategic action; being especially immersive with the Dual Sense’s controller features that make you truly feel alloy. I mean, Aloy… Sorry, I couldn’t resist! Just like the original game though, a few repetitive gameplay mechanics and generic open-world tropes do detract from its lasting appeal. Albeit, some handy accessibility features like remappable controls and assist toggles, along with 3 frame rate options will help tailor the experience to a variety of different players.

By Anthony Culinas – Reviewed on PS5

Good

While the graphical enhancements, quicker load times and bundled Frozen Wilds DLC make for a strong package, they don’t exactly justify the Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster, given how polished the original 2017 release already was. However, through all the repetitiveness of its open-world structure and exposition-heavy dialogue, this game certainly has its moments of magnificence.

This game was reviewed using a download code provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The Beta Network uses affiliate partnerships, however, this does not influence reviews or any other content published. The Beta Network may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links that are on the website.