Horizon Forbidden West’s PC Port Is Almost Perfect — Tech Review

Horizon: Forbidden West remains one of the best-looking games of this generation, despite being a cross-gen title. Guerrilla Games’ post-apocalyptic open-world adventure extracts the most out of a PS5, sans ray tracing features, and PC players can now enjoy it too. The game’s PC port was handled by Nixxes Software, who have been praised for their work on previous ports of former PlayStation exclusives. So, does Nixxes’ latest project work as well as PC gamers expect? The short answer is yes.

Being a game that was developed for the PS4 at its core, Horizon: Forbidden West doesn’t ask for much from PC gamers. Its system requirements demand a slightly older 4-core CPU and a budget GPU with 4GB of dedicated memory, which can be met by most modern gaming PCs. What’s interesting here is Nixxes’ ability to scale the game across a variety of hardware, offering settings above and below the console equivalent.

The game arrived in good shape on PC last month and has since seen multiple patches to iron out the kinks. Now, a month after its release, Horizon: Forbidden West stands strong with the likes of God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man as one of the best PC ports from PlayStation.

Before we get to the benchmarks, it’s important to note some of the quality-of-life features found in the PC version. Keyboard and mouse support is nearly spot-on, save for some bindings that I don’t like (who uses “G” for heavy attack?). Shader compilation is handled right at the start, so there are minimal frame rate dips during gameplay. Even HDR support, which on PC is usually spotty, is pretty fantastic.

There are small issues though, such as stuttering when skipping dialog sequences. I also found minor lighting glitches when traversing the open world, especially in areas lit by indirect lights such as interiors. Water reflections also seem to be of a lower quality compared to the PS5 version.

While the PC port has been great since day one, there’s been one issue plaguing it that I haven’t seen most reviewers touch on — Nvidia Reflex. For the uninitiated, Reflex is a latency-reduction technology that aims to reduce the time it takes for your input to be received by the game. Normally turning on Reflex leads to reduced input latency from the GPU and CPU, so it’s essential for frame generation.

However, since the game was released on PC, the Reflex integration has been broken, until the latest patch. Before, turning on Reflex would increase the system latency and result in inconsistent frame pacing. You’d still be getting good frame rates, but the spikes in frame pacing would lead to a jittery experience. Turning on frame generation would be counterproductive, with no perceived advantage coming with higher frame rates. That has since been fixed and, as of the latest patch, Nvidia Reflex is working as it should.

This is great, but the lack of PlayStation trophies or cross-save support is disappointing. The former is making its way to PC with the upcoming port of Ghost of Tsushima, but as of right now, you only get some additional outfits for Aloy by linking your PS account. Alas, we’ll have to make do with Steam achievements.

Another disappointing thing is the lack of a console-equivalent graphics preset. Sony’s previous PC ports, like Horizon: Zero Dawn and God of War, included an “Original” preset that would use the same settings as the console versions. That is nowhere to be found in Forbidden West’s port, which is a shame as it would’ve been interesting to compare the game’s scalability with PC hardware.

One of the boons of being on PC is the wide availability of mods. I haven’t experimented with many mods, but I did check out a few that let you switch to other characters. Within minutes, I was running around the world as Seyka, Beta, and Tilda. I also experimented with the Nvidia Freestyle filters to change the look of the game, which is always a fun time.

Horizon: Forbidden West PC Performance Benchmarks

I used the following system for benchmarking the game:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti/RTX 4080
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz
• Storage: WD SN850 M.2 SSD

I started playing the game with a Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 Ti, which normally handles games at 1440p resolution just fine. The GPU ran the game near, or above, 60fps with optimized settings at 1080p just fine, but struggled at 1440p. Turning on DLSS would mitigate these issues, though 1% lows were lower than expected. Check out these benchmarks from a custom run with the RTX 3060 Ti.

Following this, I plugged in an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 to take better advantage of my 1440p monitor, and the frame rate soared high in the sky after that. At 1080p, performance was getting bottlenecked by the CPU, so I played at 1440p. At max settings, the frame rate at native resolution was hovering around 80fps, and DLSS in Quality mode wasn’t helping out much. However, turning on DLSS 3.0 frame generation was a game changer. Performance nearly doubled to around 160fps, looking smooth on my high refresh rate monitor. Check out the benchmarks using the RTX 4080:

The game also supports FSR and XeSS for upscaling, though I stuck with DLSS for benchmarks as it produces the best image quality, along with better performance.

There is one issue with frame generation though — you’ll still get relatively high input lag when plugging in a controller via USB. This is why I stuck to the default keyboard and mount controls or turned off frame generation when using a controller.

With all those numbers out of the way, the real star of the show is the dynamic resolution slider. It works just like the console version, except by using far superior anti-aliasing methods like DLSS/XeSS. You simply set a frame rate target and let the game do the optimization for you behind the scenes, provided your CPU can handle the higher targets. I found the dynamic resolution slider working well when playing at resolutions above 1080p.

Horizon Forbidden West Score & Verdict

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)

Overall, it’s a fantastic port that maintains the game’s status quo as one of the best-looking (and performant) games of this generation. The absence of some quality-of-life features like cross-saves is disappointing, but it’s a PC port you shouldn’t miss if you have the hardware for it.

Horizon: Forbidden West is available on PC, PS4 and PS5. Its Burning Shores DLC expansion is exclusive to PC and PS5.

Originally published at Video Games on SI on April 30, 2024.