Horizon Zero Dawn’s 60fps Performance on PS5 Is a Great Taste of What’s To Come in Forbidden West

Horizon Zero Dawn recently got its much requested performance patch for PS5, increasing the frame rate cap to 60fps when played on the new console. The performance uplift is a welcome addition complementing news of the game’s sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, being delayed from 2021 to early 2022. But with the game having launched on PC almost a year ago, providing better visuals and performance over its console version, how different is the PS5 version now?

I took the performance patch as an opportunity to go back to the game and finish its DLC expansion, the Frozen Wilds. I still haven’t finished it, but running it on a 4K TV (LG 49UM7300) at 60 frames per second is a great way to revisit it. My gaming PC, which is armed with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32 GB of RAM and an Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 Super, can run the game just fine at higher graphical fidelity, but where it stumbles is on higher resolutions. Performance above 60fps on mid-range hardware on PC isn’t truly attainable, which just goes to show how shoddy the game’s port was. Granted, Guerrilla has ironed out a lot of the issues since the port’s launch, but compared to the enhanced console version, it can still feel a little unstable unless you’re running it on a particularly high-end system, which is what we noticed when running it on an Alienware Area 51 with an Intel Core i9 9900K, 32 GB RAM, and an RTX 2080 Super.

Here’s a look at how the game runs on the PS5 with the performance patch installed:

Horizon Zero Dawn on PC includes a graphics preset that I hope more console ports in the future include – an original console settings preset. With just one toggle, you can play the game on PC with its visuals set to the (almost) original settings on the console release, which makes for a nice reference point for times like these where a console game does get a performance boost. With that, comparing the game’s new PS5 performance against that of my PC became easier.

From what I can tell, Horizon Zero Dawn on PS5 renders at a checkerboarded 4K resolution, similar to, if not the same as, its resolution target on the PS4 Pro. However, unlike the PS4 pro, you can’t toggle between a ‘higher resolution’ or ‘higher performance’ with the PS5 patch. Those settings are greyed out when the PS5 performance patch is installed.

What I can say from playing on the PS5 is that it runs at the same graphical settings as its PS4 Pro version. That’s not a bad thing, as the game’s different visual presets on PC aren’t too distinct from one another. Sure, some extra detail would be nice but the improved resolution and stability is far better than what I can experience on my PC.

Surprise announcement we know you’ve been waiting for: the Enhanced Performance Patch for Horizon Zero Dawn on PlayStation 5 is live now!

???? Unlocks 60 FPS Mode
✨ 4K Checkerboard Resolution
???? Free for all PS5 players#HorizonZeroDawn pic.twitter.com/HdiuNNBTmS

— Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) August 25, 2021

Playing on the PS5 also comes with its own set of quality of life changes that aren’t necessarily due to the update itself. The sounds and vibrations from the DualSense controller are slightly more defined due to the hardware itself. You don’t get the fancy features from native PS5 games like use of haptics and adaptive triggers, and while I do miss them (especially after Ghost of Tsushima director’s cut), it’s by no means a deal breaker. If you didn’t own a PS4 and are just jumping into the world of Horizon, then it’s a great time to do so with it being such a refined experience in the state that it is right now, on both PS5 and PC.

While the update itself is great, its arrival could have been a little sooner. Considering how PlayStation’s previous PC game ports, Days Gone and Death Stranding, were met with unanimous praise for their polish, one has to wonder why it took so long for Guerrilla to fix its game on the platform along with pushing an update on the PS5. If I had to guess, it’s probably because the game, and it’s engine, was built primarily for the PS4 architecture. While the Decima engine was used by Hideo Kojima in Death Stranding, that collaboration took place years after the first Horizon game was out, by which it probably would have been updated quite a lot in preparation for Horizon Forbidden West’s production.

Horizon Forbidden West is set to release on PS4 and PS5 on February 18, 2022. The first instalment in the franchise, Horizon Zero Dawn, is out now on PS4 and PC along with being playable on PS5 via backwards compatibility.

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