Considering how quickly technology moves, remastering a game from the early days of polygons and bringing it to the modern era can make a game look amazing. The remastering process also has the benefit of bringing a beloved game to a wider audience, especially if the game in question was only available on a platform that is no longer available. This makes the idea of Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered feel a bit unnecessary. This was a PS4 game that was released in 2017 on the PS4 and the PC in 2020. Backward compatibility on the PS5 means that people can play the game now in an already improved state, and the high frame rate complements a game that still looks good today. The title isn't old enough to qualify for a remastered treatment, so the question is whether this remaster is worth checking out.

Horizon: Zero Dawn takes place in a future where, after a great calamity, the Earth is healing itself. Mankind is rebuilding, nature is thriving, and mechanized animals are part of the natural order. You play the role of Aloy who, as an infant, was already labeled an outcast by the members of a nearby tribe. When she was young, she stumbled upon an underground cave system that was home to an old technological base built by humans. This sparked the idea of trying to discover who she really was, and the idea was kickstarted with the death of her father figure and her eventual acceptance of a nearby tribe.

We've reviewed the original game on the PS4, and the general feeling of the game matches what we had said at the time. The story is good, but the characters can sometimes feel rather thin, even if the actual performances are excellent. The land is fun to explore, and fighting the mechanical beasts never gets old. This feeling only continues once you enter The Frozen Wilds expansion, and time has proven that this was a very good experience once you get the comparisons to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild out of the way.

When it comes to the remastered version of the game, there are some noticeable changes versus the PS4 iteration. The first is that load times have shortened significantly. That might not seem like a huge thing when you consider that the original PS4 version's load times were already quite good, but since this is a native PS5 title, it takes advantage of the NVMe storage speeds, so things feel instantaneous. In terms of accessibility, the game now sports every option the second game had, which is always a welcome sight.

The controls also take advantage of just about every major feature of the DualSense controller. This is surprising since some of these things could have also been done on the PS4 with the DualShock 4 controller, such as the addition of using the gyroscope to aim the bow. Fans of the motion control method will like how it feels here. Elsewhere, adaptive trigger support is available for the bows, and haptic feedback is everywhere, including during menu navigation.

The audio has received some improvements, but they are more subtle to pick up on unless you have the right equipment. If you have a Dolby Atmos-capable system or play the game with headphones, you'll get more enveloping audio when going out into the world and cities. It can sound awesome, but it doesn't come at the cost of regular surround sound or even basic stereo, as that has remained relatively untouched. That's good, since the audio was already excellent.

The most noticeable change is with the graphics. The environments get a lion's share of the attention, as just about everything in this area has received some sort of reworking. The skyboxes are filled with a more detailed and dynamic cloud system. The outdoor environments have received a vast increase in foliage. Volumetric lighting is everywhere to give the game a richer look. Cities now have more people milling about to make the environments feel fuller. It's gorgeous looking, and while the PS4 version still looks quite nice, the upgrades in the PS5 iteration take it to a noticeable notch above. All of this is done with a frame rate that's locked whether you go for a full 60fps in performance mode, 30fps for quality, or 40fps for the balanced mode. Considering that the resolution drop from 4K in quality to over 1800p in performance isn't severe, most people will be happy with performance.

Cut scenes also reveal a good deal of the visual upgrades. The character models, both human and machine alike, have gotten something of a glow-up; the polygon count has been increased, and little touches like the hairs on the skin have been touched up to look much more detailed. There's also loads more movement in the cut scenes, so even minor dialogue sequences don't have characters standing around with stiff movements when speaking. The changes are noticeable and welcome, but they won't instantly wow players as much as the environmental changes.

Despite the attention paid to enhancing the graphics, there are some issues that may be considered minor but are noticeable, since they didn't occur in the original game. The lighting is gorgeous, but there are moments when entering a dark environment for the first time briefly gives Aloy an unnatural glow from an unknown light source. Some elements like the Focus can sometimes lose lighting elements in scenes, such as when you discover it and don't see the white glow running through its designated area. While most of the human character models look great, the holograms that you see with the Focus have large, dead eyes that make them look less human. Finally, the physics for some elements in cut scenes tend to perform unintended bounces even when the character's movement shouldn't cause them to move at all. Again, in the grand scheme of things, these are minor issues, but for a remastering effort with this much scrutiny behind it, these kinds of things stand out more.

Perhaps one of the more appealing parts of this remaster is that the upgrade costs $10 if you own the PS4 title. It's a nice throwback to the early days of the PS5, when some PS4 games got graphical updates and you simply paid to upgrade rather than be asked to pay full price for the title, like Sony recently did with the Until Dawn remake. It is otherwise $49.99 for those who never bought the game before, and while that's still a good price considering that new games go for $69.99, you still can't help but feel that the time and resources spent remastering this game would've been better spent on other big PS3 or older titles that are still loved but can't be played without pulling out those old consoles or using emulation.

The decision to pick up Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered is completely dependent on your status with the original PS4 title. If you've never played the first game and like open-world adventure games, then this is definitely worth getting. From the story to the action to the decidedly different postapocalyptic setting, the game delivers a good time from beginning to end, even when factoring the expansion pack into the mix. Those people can look at the score and rate it higher. If you've played and beaten the game, then things get more complicated. For $10, the upgrade gets you much richer-looking environments and some better graphics during some of the cut scenes while also introducing some minor issues. Proper DualSense support is also thrown in for good measure, and if you're big on those things, then the price for the upgrade makes it worthwhile. However, for those who aren't so big on aesthetics and were fine with the original controls, you're best waiting a bit for LEGO Horizon Adventures to drop to get a completely different experience in this world.

Score: 7.5/10