Overall, there is no doubt in my mind that Horizon Zero Dawn on the PC is the best version of the 2017 title if you have the right hardware to handle it. If you don’t, you can still bring down the quality to near console and find one of the best games in this generation.
In 2017, with the support of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Guerrilla Games shed its Killzone labels and took a big chance on an open-world game that was led by a female hero. The latter of the bunch is a tough sell in the industry, which is sad. Maybe everyone will come around one day. Hopefully. Anyway, much like Aloy’s breaking barriers in the actual game, Guerrilla Games broke barriers and made memories, and gained a huge fanbase, through their powerful narrative-driven open-world adventure called Horizon Zero Dawn.
Three years later, we’re returning to Aloy’s world for some more, but this time on the most superior platform, the PC.
The Journey Continues…
The story of Aloy, her shunned upbringing, which eventually turns to her outright dominance is a joy to revisit. While I have played through the PlayStation 4 version twice, it still amazes me how much fun the game is and how well built its narrative world is designed. The amount of well thought through cultures and creatures that reside in it makes the experience meaningful, as well as Aloy’s journey and character development. It’s one of those games that you can beat and revisit years down the road. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it makes you give a shit about how everything turns out.
While at its base level it’s a journey for the main character, the tie-in between what happened to the world and how Aloy came about is something of a tragedy with redemption by the end. Every single stop along the way builds upon the next and makes every effort you give during gameplay worth it. There aren’t a lot of games these days that are solely driven by the story. Sometimes its graphics, sometimes it’s gimmicks, but with HZD it is story first. I’ve preached this before in other reviews and it’s worth preaching again — the story is what makes a game last. It makes games legend. It makes you as a gamer hold the game close to your heart as you traverse the real world.
The PC version of the game brings that same story, adds the Frozen Wilds, and is still equally as good as its console little brother/sister. There’s literally nothing that has strayed away from the narrative’s sentiment in its travel to the PC.
In short, you’re in for a good ride, especially if it’s your first time around.
Gameplay Still Intact
Shockingly enough, the game is still intact in terms of gameplay options and design. What worked in 2017, still works in 2020 on the PC. You have this proper skills tree that actually adds value to your journey, meaning that when you use your skill points, you actually get a skill that improves the gameplay. For example, adding a critical hit option skill to take down machines helps to give that final blow to them. This skill not only ensures a violent kill to the mechanical beast but also quickens fights, which means you gain XP to gain more points (it all works together splendidly). Adding this through skill points motivates you to keep hunting and completing side quests, which circles back to upgrading and getting better. Through these skills, you also learn the machines and their moves, as well as their weaknesses. It’s a circle of life and it’s wonderfully balanced. The balance helps to dissipate the grind you might feel otherwise and helps you focus more on the rewards than the risk. You want that in the game and you get that with HZD.
In addition, you also get tiered weaponry, as well as a bevy of weapons to choose from (each with their own unique usage and flavor), and you can improve weapons through modifications you earn with robotic kills. Adding different skills, multiple weapons, and weapon upgrades help make Horizon one of the more entertaining gameplay experiences of this generation. The game provides you with reason to keep going, fighting, and succeeding. That all translates perfectly to the PC platform.
On the frontend of the gameplay, when you’re actually controlling Aloy, the controls are somewhat cheaty thanks to the above options (especially skills). The game allows you to use its mechanics to your advantage, which means that gameplay difficulty, while certainly jarring at first when you’re building Aloy up, plateaus at a certain point, which brings in more fun. For example, you can slow down time when you jump and pull Aloy’s bow back to the ready position. This slowdown allows you time to focus your aim on enemies and their weak points. You also have the ability to focus through a zoom feature, which gives you a more accurate shot that can be incredibly damaging to enemies. This gameplay design works through skills earned, which allows you to focus on the narrative and feel less frustration through fights. Again, it’s some weird balance that works well because it seems planned well. The frontend makes the game less of a chore and more entertaining, which comes in handy when you fight tougher enemies. Most importantly it keeps the story rolling and moving. I like that very much.
Again, it all works on the PC platform the same way it did on the PS4.
A Struggle of Sorts
We are here now. While the above gives nothing but praise to the design, this part stumbles and separates the PC from the console. The console version rarely had issues with performance, as it was locked resolution (1080p) and locked FPS (30) — this was on the PS4 Pro.
For years, people always wondered what a PC port of the game would look and feel like, especially after the PS4 Pro made its presence known. Well, now we know what a PC port feels like.
Before we dig in, let’s discuss what system I’m running this thing on:
– Intel i5 6600K (3.50 Ghz)
– 16gb of DDR4
– NVIDIA 1080 Ti
This game ran with a major stutter two days ago, while I was streaming.
Was I concerned? A bit. I knew that shooting for the stars and opening up the visual palette would probably cause some issues, but I didn’t expect stuttering. It would get bad enough where the game would stop once in a while, sometimes even quitting out. If I had cranked it down to medium visuals, it didn’t help much, but it was still playable. At the beginning of the game, HZD reads your hardware before setting your visuals. The game set it at Ultra, which I could understand due to the 1080 Ti card. The fact it didn’t live up to that was somewhat disappointing.
Tonight, we did another test on launch day and got better results.
While the frame rate (top left) was fluctuating between 60fps – 49fps, it was far more visually consistent with fewer stutters than what we were getting two nights before, which dropped down as far as 15fps.
The drop in frame rate for us is because of that i5 chip that we’re sporting. Yes, we know that we will probably need to upgrade to get this game running properly, but at ultra and high settings we were still doing decently with visuals. The day one patch probably helped to fix things, which made the game a lot more visually appealing (as you can see). I kept tonight’s game on Ultra for the majority of the time and then eventually shifted it down to high. The results were still pretty consistent and better than the first go-around.
All of this said, this game is very demanding on hardware to pull off the above visuals that you’re seeing. It does want you to sport the best of the best and quite frankly PC people have always toted they are such. Well, put your money where your mouth is now and prove it because Horizon Zero Dawn is visually breathtaking with the best hardware. You can see it with the middle of the road hardware that we sport that the game still is very much playable, but to get the best you have to have the best.
Anyway, the hardware demand is tough for us non-dedicated PC folks, but the game is manageable with the hardware that we have, which means prior to this section we’re still enjoying the gameplay that we’re used to from the original release. With the right hardware and the right amount of money, the results produced by this seemingly uncapped game could be nothing short of spectacular.
Overall, there is no doubt in my mind that Horizon Zero Dawn on the PC is the best version of the 2017 title if you have the right hardware to handle it. If you don’t, you can still bring down the quality to near console and find one of the best games in this generation.
