Thanks to the skill of the team at Guerrilla Games and its powerful Decima engine,Horizon: Zero Dawnmay be the most technically adept game for the PS4 yet.
The launch date forHorizon: Zero Dawnis only a week away and thefirst reviewsof this exciting new title by Guerrilla Games are already rolling in, generally extolling the open-world feel and the depth of Aloy’s story. However, there is more to games than just their story and graphics, especially when they’re exclusive to a console like the PS4: namely how they run and if there is any funny business going on with CPU stutters, frame flickers and the like.
Eurogamerdived into the tech behind the game and came to the conclusion thatHorizon: Zero Dawnmay be one of the best games for the PS4 in that department. Not only has the studio been able to iron out all the small problems, including the frame-rate stutter seen in the very firstgameplay trailer ofHorizon: Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games has also managed to strike a balance between the demands of the regular PS4 on the one hand and its Pro cousin on the other.
The Pro, quite simply, can do a lot more than the PS4: its CPU is a lot more powerful, almost two-and-half times so, and graphically it not only just looks better thanks to its 4K resolution, but it also renders a lot faster. The trick when developing for Sony’s console is then to make something that takes advantage of thePS4 Pro’s power, while also keeping it adjustable in such a way that regular PS4 gamers can still enjoy themselves while playingHorizon: Zero Dawn, without the frame rate dropping into the single digits every time they blow up arobotic dinosaur.
No mean feat, indeed, but Guerrilla Games has pulled it off, in no small way thanks to itsDecima Engine, which has proven uniquely flexible and thus perfect for the stated goal. Between the engine, originally developed forKillzone,and some good, old-fashioned Dutch ingenuity and know-how,Horizon: Zero Dawnscales almost imperceptibly between the two Sony consoles with nary a dropped frame.
Horizon: Zero Dawnwill release for the PlayStation 4 on June 02, 2025.
