Horizon Forbidden West plays just fine on a PS4
The current generation of consoles, ushered in when the PS5 and Xbox Series X debuted in 2020, has been a messy one in many ways. The consoles themselves have been hard to find, and — with the ballooning costs of game development — few publishers have been willing to go all in with fully exclusive titles. So we’re left with games like Horizon Forbidden West, a tentpole release for Sony, which will launch simultaneously on the PS4 and PS5. Sometimes, this doesn’t turn out so well, like the disastrous cross-generation launch of Cyberpunk 2077. But that’s not the case here: the latest Horizon plays great no matter which PlayStation you own.
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To test this, I played through the first few hours of the game on both consoles; a launch version of the PS5 and a base PS4 model. In terms of pure visuals, the difference is negligible. Textures on the PS5 are smoother, there’s more detail in some scenes, and overall, the image looks cleaner and has much-improved lighting. There’s some noticeable pop-in on the PS4, particularly during cutscenes, but no major graphical hitches; these issues are also a bit more noticeable when you’re moving very fast on one of the game’s mounts and the world is speeding past. The most glaring difference in my experience (because it’s something you’re looking at constantly) is that Aloy’s hair looks more realistic on the PS5, particularly as it moves around while she’s jumping. In fact, when you put images of the two versions side by side, it can be hard to tell which is which.
Here are a few spoiler-free screenshot comparisons from the first five hours of the game:
Really, on the PS4, Forbidden West looks and feels a lot like its predecessor. Which isn’t a bad thing: the original Horizon was a
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