Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered looks incredible. Does it matter?

digitaltrends.com:

If you need proof that the video game industry’s current rerelease craze has started to lose the plot, look no further than Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

Like Sonic Generations of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Sony’s latest gives its debut Horizon game a major visual upgrade that’s far more polished compared to its predecessor. Unlike those games, though, Horizon Zero Dawn isn’t a release from two or three generations ago; it only launched in 2017. Seven years may sound like a lifetime for younger players, but it’s barely any time at all as far as console generations go. If Sony was going to convince players to double-dip, it would need to deliver one heck of a remaster.

I’ll give credit where it’s due: Guerilla Games and Nixxes have risen to that tall task. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered pumps the PlayStation4 classic up with significantly improved lighting, more detailed faces, brighter colors, and more edits that genuinely do add up. Throw in some DualSense support and you’ve got a definitive edition that anyone coming to the series for the first time should start with. That all may be true, but the reality is that all the improvements in the world still can’t quite make sense of what’s undoubtedly the most needless remaster of this generation.

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is hitting PC in January, won’t get any more story content
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will have way more NPCs thanks to PS5 specs
• The PS5 is finally on sale for Prime Big Deal Days. Now’s the right time to buy it

A big improvement

WhenHorizon Zero Dawn Remastered was first announced, I rolled my eyes. From a casual perspective, I could barely see a notable difference in its first trailer. After all, 2017 and 2024 aren’t all that far apart in terms of tech. Seven years used to signify an enormous hardware gap, but the differences between two PlayStations continues to shrink with each new machine.

Now having spent significant time with the console version, I’m