Introduction
Horizon Zero Dawn was released over three years ago back in 2017 and it was one of the hottest launch releases to date as well as holding its place as one of the best-selling Playstation4 games. As an exclusive, it remained in Playstation4-only status for the past 3 years but that changes today, as Guerilla Games’ hit is now on PC.
We’ve checked out Horizon Zero Dawn before for Playstation 4 and you can check out our gameplay and story review in our original look at the game (Horizon Zero Dawn PS4 review). In this article, we’ll break down the gaming experience and try to compare side-by-side the graphical and gameplay differences of the PS4 and the PC release. We’ll also try and see if there are any PC-only changes and see how that affects gameplay.
About Horizon Zero Dawn
[letsinfoup]Let me make this very clear from the start: this is a story-driven game and is a single-player experience. There’s no multiplayer of any sorts nor leaderboards to tackle. But if you’re the F2P/esports crowd, this may not be for you so feel free to continue reading or click away now.
Echoing much of our initial review of Horizon Zero Dawn over 3 years ago, not much has changed in our perception of the game but there are particularly some details worth pointing out on the PC experience of HZD.
Screenshots
Here are some game screenshots during early game, around 1 hour into the game or less. Screenshots are taken in 4K resolution at Ultimate Quality.
Horizon Zero Dawn also features a built-in photo mode wherein players can changes camera settings and angles for a better composition as well as change Aloy’s pose. The time of day can also be changed as well.
With Photo Mode, more scenic and beautiful shots of the game can be made even with Bokeh effect for dramatic portraits.
That said, these screenshots are raw Steam screenshots.
Detail Settings and Comparison (4K)
The Decima Engine made its PC debut with Death Stranding but its global debut game was Horizon Zero Dawn. Both games are open world titles and offers vast open spaces with lush foliage and waterways. While Death Stranding offers a much more relaxed gameplay experience (albeit tiring) Horizon Zero Dawn has a faster vibe to it and its combat is certainly much friendly to stealth or full-frontal assault styles whichever the player chooses.
In Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC port, we expected to see a nice array of tick boxes and we aren’t disappointed: the graphics settings for the game allows tweaking of texture quality, anti-aliasing and more but the game does set pre-determined presets for quick configuration. We’ll take a look at how these settings affect performance in the following page but first let’s take a look at how they compare.
Below are some comparative screenshots showcasing the game’s various detail settings and will be indicated in our comparison images.
Ultimate Quality (Very High/Max) vs. Favor Quality (High)
Ultimate Quality (Very High/Max) vs. Original (Medium/PS4 Quality)
Ultimate Quality (Very High/Max) vs. Favor Performance (Low)
Original (Medium/PS4 Quality) vs. Favor Performance (Low)
GPU Performance & VRAM Usage
Test Setup
Test Setup: Intel “10th-Gen” | |
Processor | Intel Core i9-10900K |
Motherboard | GIGABYTE Z490 Ultra |
RAM | Gskill TridentZ RGB DDR4-3600 32GB (8GB)x4 CL16 |
VGA | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, etc. |
Storage | Patriot Viper VP4100 1TB |
Power Supply | Seasonic Platinum 1050w |
VRAM Usage
We check how much VRAM the game uses on our test setup with a 11GB RTX 2080 Ti.
The game scales its VRAM usage depending on the card but will happily use up much of VRAM as available. The optimization at the start of the game during first run lets the game allocate and configure usage before you actually start so changing graphics cards forces a restart of the optimization process.
Graphics Preset Performance Comparison
We always test games using the maximum detail (some exceptions exist) but let’s compare performance of the different graphical presets that Horizon Zero Dawn has.
The game features a graphics tab in the option which allows configuring of the graphics details of the game. We will primarily be using the presets to run these tests. We have to stress that the PS4 original of HZD was already a beautiful game. The developers dub that settings Original in the graphics menu and is tiered as Medium Graphical settings with Favor Performance as Low and Favor Quality is High and the top most in-game graphics detail settings being Ultimate with all settings cranked up to the max.
GPU Performance
PC Experience, Port Report & Conclusion
In closing, Horizon Zero Dawn is plagued with launch woes and despite a day one patch to update some things, the game still suffers from some performance issues that its Decima-brother, Death Stranding on PC, does not.
To start off, facial animations are still animated at 30FPS but unless you’re really looking, this is minor. It does cause weird stuttering that may take you out of the experience but from my personal playthrough, it just whiz past so unless its a lengthy cutscenes, you may or may not even feel it.
That said, the game feels at home at 30FPS but in no way it is acceptable to have the game perform in that level. Going back to GPU performance, I was initially under the impression that NVIDIA didn’t have launch day drivers for this game hence I reserved review after launch only to find out that the game was already optimized for the July 9 GeForce drivers. The same situation applies to Radeon Adrenaline. Apparently, the drivers were ready a month before yet the game still runs like molasses on a top-end system.
Unsurprisingly, the Radeon RX 5700XT and RX 5700 put up impressive numbers for this game. Also worth noting is that this game is light on the CPU. Either on an i9 10900K or a Ryzen 9 3900X, the game barely breaches past 20% CPU usage on average and peaks at 46% on certain scenes but mostly just sits at the lower end making it easy to work with from a CPU perspective but the GPU demand of this game is incredibly ridiculous and I expect the devs to address them in the comings weeks following launch.
Our quality comparison shows us that Ultimate, High and Original are pretty much beautiful and rich already in terms of graphics while low removes the bulk of other details to improve performance and while still playable, just looks awful. Players may want to consider tweaking their settings to get the best balance of performance and details. As an AMD game, it’s apparent that DLSS 2.0 doesn’t make appear in this game despite its incredible performance gains from Death Stranding without degrading image quality. We hope that once the timed partnership expires, Guerilla Games might be able to utilize DLSS2.0 to improve this game further .
Based on an older Decima Engine version, Horizon Zero Dawn is in no doubt a great story and a great experience but its support for varying configurations proves to be the developers’ crippling flaw with many disgruntled players hitting the Steam boards’ looking for answers for their problems.
The Good
For those manage to run the game without a hitch or just don’t care about the graphical glitches, gameplay upwards of 30FPS is fluid enough for combat and this is one of the most robust improvements of the game over console. Despite the game’s native PS4 gamepad support, the mouse and keyboard control allows much more accurate aiming giving players a more refined method of hunting which is predominantly the main part of the game. Without a locking system, this game forces players to be wary of their surrounding and mouse look will always dominate stick panning. With that, it’s a much better experience for seasoned PS4 players looking to improve their Hunting Trials scores.
Final Words
As with most PC ports, the discussion revolves around performance but despite the feedback, even a modest CPU/GPU combination will be able to deliver a decent gameplay experience for HZD in Original settings but still, given the amount of time from announcement till launch, it’s unforgivable for the game to be this troubled by graphical glitches and glitches in general, Random crashes and stuttering will find their way to anyone and my personal experience seems be on the low side, some have reported the game to be unable to proceed past certain points.
Having tested this on 4 machines with varying specs, ranging from an i3+GTX 1060 to a Threadripper 3960X with a 2080 Ti, the amount of problems appearing is still minimal and those that expected a lot for this game certainly put it through a microscope.
What cannot be taken away from this game is the amazing story of this new world with Aloy’s mysterious past. With Horizon Forbidden West already announced, it’s exciting to see this game eventually make its way to PC but for now, Horizon Zero Dawn gives us a glimpse of what’s to come and while its off to troubled start due to high expectation, it manages to maintain the same wonder it bestowed on the PS4 over 3 years ago and that brings a new audience who are force fed esports and redundant titles over and over again, that for adventure and action RPG seekers, the faults are is easy to overlook.