Horizon Forbidden West - PS5 vs PS4 vs PS4 Pro - Can Cross-Gen Deliver For All Gamers?

Concluding our Horizon Forbidden West coverage - for now, at least - John and Rich share their thoughts on how the latest Guerrilla Games masterpiece scales between PlayStation 4, PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5.

[wendelljsilva]

The fact that PS4's 9 year old hardware can even handle this game without imploding is impressive enough.. Kudos to Guerrilla.

[RandyCR]

To be honest, the true magic Guerrilla has done is optimizing their engine in such an incredible way.

[KarlRock]

I’m so surprised by how well the PS4 still runs! I played God of War and Last of Us 2 on PS4 and was really impressed. Now Horizon Forbidden West looks even better on PS4. The lower quality things like moss or draw distance I won’t really notice while running around and playing. Pretty cool 👍

[kresimirmandic]

PS4 / PS4 PRO versions of the game are impressive considering targeted hardware. It is great to see how much effort went into the PS5 version as well, Guerilla did an amazing job overall. I love first game and gonna have a blast playing Forbidden West on my PS5.

[TheOvermind]

The fact that Digital Foundry can point out so many reductions and differences on the old consoles and it still looks as good as it does is a testament to the devs and their technical prowess.

[hauntedhotdog]

The work they've done to squeeze those visuals out of the base PS4 is remarkable. Can't wait to play this.

[adamprestidge]

The Decima engine is bonkers for how well it scales

[synak]

Love how you guys break everything down in such a detailed way!

[KillSchwill]

We're kind of in the generation where even the inferior versions of games still look amazing. I'd be interested to see a side by side of HZD vs HFW on PS4.

[MiamiSunrise]

Guerilla is in an elite class of game development. The talent and quality they bring to these projects is astonishing, especially in regards to having a game be so well made on three prespective Sony consoles and be a pleasure on each one to play. Playstations 1st party is amazing at what they do.

[griffgames]

*The art direction helps the PS4/Pro versions look pretty great* helped by good world design, but the raw density and coverage is so much better on PS5. Really fills out the environments for exploration.

[theryan]

Obviously the PS5 version looks stunning but the fact that Horizon 2 looks that good on a 1.8 teraflop base PS4 is black magic if I’ve ever seen it.

[peterGchaves]

Massive respect for Guerrilla Games.

This is such a masterpiece. Only God knows what will they achieve with a PS5 exclusive. I'm really loving this generation so far! 😊

[RainOfAshes]

This game is a love letter to gamers. The whole industry should take note of the attention to detail and care put into making this -- all while the developers were working from home.

[joshp]

Choosing between fidelity and performance mode was borderline heart breaking today. Have been back and forth, but have finally settled on performance. I didn't think there would be much of a difference in detail but, it really is noticeable.

[UserInterface]

Devs that work on PlayStation platform preforms some sort of magic voodoo. A lot of the single player games are world class in graphics, mechanics, and are award winning games.

[MoonSarito]

It's insane what they managed to do on 2013 hardware, I'm glad to see that the PS4 still manages to deliver a good experience even though it's almost 9 years old, I don't plan on buying a PS5 anytime soon so it's great to see that it still gets some great ports.

[soraaoixxthebluesky]

The fact that they go as far as layerin an image reconstruction with VRS just to showcase how beautiful and dense the world of Horizon 2 is on a last gen machine is just mind blowing.

[pommedapi]

When you jump from one system to another you can clearly see a difference but the ps4 version looks so good, if you have no comparaison you will never notice the difference. Great work done here.

[lakisanghera]

a little cool thing ive read... is that the developers artificially made the load screens on ps5 longer... so you have a chance to read the 'quick tips' ... they state you can turn them off.. have have the level load in 4 to 5 secs... well done Guerrilla (for the choice, even)

p.s. Great showing D.F. enjoyed this breakdown.