In a Gamescom virtual event relatively light on content, the release of a free 60 frames per second PS5 upgrade for Horizon Zero Dawn was a definite highlight, giving another Sony first-party classic the full frame-rate upgrade and dramatically improving the experience as a result. This patch is an interesting, because unlocking 60fps is not as easy as flicking a switch, as demonstrated by the initial release of the PC version last year. This showed that simply removing the frame-rate cap brought into a focus a range of issues for a game designed primarily with 30fps in mind. Put simply, it's clear that this patch took real effort to produce and it's likely that many of the solutions in the revised PC version worked their way back to this new PlayStation 5 upgrade too. The bottom line is that however Guerrilla managed it, it works, and it works well.

So, what does the patch actually do? On the face of it, Horizon Zero Dawn follows the template laid down by the God of War, Days Gone and the initial Ghost of Tsushima patches in that graphics are totally unchanged from the original release and frame-rate is unlocked, with v-sync providing a 60fps limit. That means that the 2160p checkerboarding solution remains in place, but the PS4 Pro's alternative 1368p native rendering performance mode option has been removed as it's essentially redundant. Despite no improvements in how the game renders, there's an argument to say that graphics have improved perceptually thanks to the frame-rate upgrade - simply because checkerboarding artefacts persist for just one display refresh now rather than two. On a modern LCD screen, this helps to blend them somewhat, making them less noticeable.

In terms of actual performance, you are effectively looking at a locked 60fps experience that is nigh-on perfect. Even in backwards compatibility mode, PS5 offers substantial upgrades over PS4 Pro - a 2.5x multiplier in compute performance and twice the memory bandwidth. In prior 'back-compat plus' first-party patches, we've seen that translate into a performance bump that scales almost in line with the compute boost. With Horizon Zero Dawn specifically, we only noted one slight drop in an early cutscene, then it was a straight 60fps from there on out. If the game does deviate from the 60fps target, it should only do so fleetingly and you may not notice it at all. I'd describe performance overall as impeccable.

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Horizon Zero Dawn protagonist Aloy is heading to Genshin Impact, PlayStation announced earlier today.

A tweet from the official PlayStation Twitter account confirmed the crossover between developers Guerrilla and miHoYo, explaining Aloy will be available as part of the roster "for a limited time". The tweet didn't go into a huge amount of detail, but a blog post by miHoYo explained Aloy will be a free five-star character available to all players.

Those with PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 accounts will be able to claim Aloy directly through in-game mail after the 2.1 update, while other platforms will be given access following the arrival of update 2.2.

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UPDATE 2pm UK: PlayStation has now confirmed its Fortnite and Horizon Zero Dawn collaboration, and revealed our first look at Aloy hanging out with Fishstick:

Aloy will appear in the Fortnite item shop this Thursday, 15th April, alongside various other accessories. There will also be a bundle including all of the items, which features the loading screen art above.

The character has a second style themed around Horizon Zero Dawn expansion The Frozen Wilds as an exclusive for PlayStation 5 players, in the same way PS5 owners can unlock a second style for Kratos, and Xbox Series X players got an exclusive Master Chief style.

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With the announcement of more PlayStation exclusives coming to PC, starting with Days Gone this Spring, the time felt right to return to Horizon Zero Dawn, Sony's first full-blooded attempt at porting one of its most celebrated triple-A masterpieces. On release, performance and the overall quality of the user experience was poor, but six months on there's no doubt about it: the game has dramatically improved. It's not perfect, it's still far from ideal, but Guerrilla Games has taken onboard feedback and corrected many of the issues, while dramatically improving performance in some scenarios.

Even just loading up the game, there are some immediately apparent differences. When the game first released, booting the title at 4K resolution saw Horizon actually internally render at the correct resolution, before downscaling to 1080p, then upscaling back up to 2160p - this is now fixed. The initial shader compilation that took so long back in the day is now carried out in the background, allowing you to visit the settings screen while it's in progress or even start the game (I would recommend letting the shader caching process complete, however). The menus themselves remain much the same, but the various v-sync options now work properly too, without the massive performance drop the borderless windowed mode had when the game launched. Anisotropic filtering? That was broken on release too, requiring a GPU control panel tweak to improve detail, but this now works as it should.

This is basic stuff but it's good to see it fully fixed. The same goes for dynamic resolution scaling: at launch, running at 4K ultra on an RTX 2080 Ti could see a targeted scene operate at 54fps, so DRS should only need to slightly tweak resolution downwards to get us to 60fps - but instead, resolution dropped to 1080p instead (!). You guessed it, it's fixed now, and I would now recommend DRS to be enabled if you're running at a fixed frame-rate like 60fps. AMD's FidelityFX contrast-adaptive sharpening (CAS) is also added to the menu system: it is just a sharpening filter, but I think it is a nice enhancement for those who want to increase contrast when at lower resolutions and using TAA anti-aliasing.

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Guerrilla has released a significant patch for Horizon Zero Dawn on PC that combats many of the remaining issues players had with the game.

Patch 1.10 introduces crash fixes and performance improvements reported by the game's community, Guerrilla said.

There are a raft of graphical improvements, too.

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Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition launches on GOG on 24th November 2020 with full GOG Galaxy 2.0 features support.

Sony's once PlayStation 4 exclusive game launched on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store in August. As you'd expect of a GOG release, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition launched on the platform DRM-free. Horizon on Steam uses Valve's in-built DRM. There's no DRM on the Epic Games Store version.

Guerrilla's action adventure is the first first-party Sony game to launch on GOG as part of its recent push on PC. On the platform, Horizon is published by PlayStation Mobile, Inc., which is also the publisher of Helldivers, Guns Up!, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and Arrowhead Ultimate Co-Op Collection on Steam.

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Sony has said it'll continue to release first-party PlayStation games on PC.

In its 2020 corporate report, Sony talked about the future of PlayStation and of course the upcoming release of PlayStation 5. Buried within the generic, non-committal notes is a single nugget: the confirmation Sony will release more of its games on PC.

PlayStation has largely ignored PC, instead focusing on creating exclusives for its consoles. While its marketing for PS5 has reinforced the idea of console exclusives, Sony has begun to dabble with putting its PlayStation games on PC, with the release of PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam in August 2020.

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Guerrilla has released a small initial patch to help combat Horizon Zero Dawn on PC's various performance issues.

Patch 1.01 for the game is live now. The patch notes are over at the Horizon subreddit.

Digital Foundry called Horizon's hotly-anticipated PC port "deeply disappointing... a stunning game marred by a range of technical problems". The video below goes into more detail.

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Horizon Zero Dawn developer Guerrilla Interactive has released a statement saying it is investigating the "technical issues" currently plaguing the game's port to PC.

"We have been monitoring all of our channels and are aware that some players have been experiencing crashes and other technical issues," said a statement on Steam. "Please know that we are investigating your reports as our highest priority.

"We appreciate those who have already taken the time to report their issues on Steam, Reddit, or via our website," the statement continues. "If you are still encountering crashes or bugs, please continue to use those spaces, or refer to our FAQ if you are unsure of how to proceed. Your reports are, and have already been, incredibly helpful for our teams."

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Horizon Zero Dawn has its own particular place of honour in a phenomenal line-up of PlayStation 4 first-party exclusives - an open world delivered with some of the best technology in the business, combined with the gameplay finesse and polish of a more linear experience, humanised with some of the most impressive character rendering of the generation. When Hideo Kojima went shopping for a game engine to deliver his vision for Death Stranding, it was Guerrilla Games' Decima technology he settled upon - and can there be any higher praise than that? In the wake of Kojima Productions' generally excellent Death Stranding PC port, expectations were sky-high for Horizon's PC conversion. With that in mind, it's both baffling and extremely disappointing to see the port fall so far short of expectations.

Make no mistake, the core game is all there. It is indeed the Complete Edition. It's still a unique experience for PC users, simply because multi-platform projects and even the odd PC exclusive aren't built quite like this. Horizon Zero Dawn looks and feels a class apart in many ways - and yes, you can increase graphics settings and improve resolutions and frame-rate compared to the PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro originals. However, where the game falls short is in its many technical failings.

When a game is content-complete but requires polish and bug-testing, it's considered beta code - and that's the impression we got from this conversion when we tested it, to the point where much of the reviewing process has been a case of testing and re-testing the game on multiple pieces of hardware to answer a simple question - is there something wrong with our kit or is the game at fault? It's a little bit of one and a lot of the other, but the bottom line is that there are many technical issues that need addressing to the point where not all of them can be included in this article. A 35GB day one patch arrived on the same day as the embargo lift - hence the delay in publishing our review - but the many and varied problems are still in effect in the code that makes its way to players.

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