Horizon Zero Dawn Laptop and Desktop Benchmarks

After the recently released PC version of Death Stranding functioned well, hopes for a decent implementation of the console hit Horizon Zero Dawn were high. According to numerous users and some press reviews, though, the port we got could be improved. As our tests show, many of the technical criticisms are well justified. We would, therefore, also classify the PC version as a rather mediocre port.

First, let us touch on the fact that, when the game is started for the first time, there is an automatic system optimization that takes more than 5 minutes; it ends up being even more annoying than the very aggravating and incomprehensible shader optimizations of Call of Duty Modern Warfare. After what feels like an eternal pause, players then have to endure a several-minute (albeit very nice) intro video that cannot be skipped and appears every time the game starts until you begin the campaign and save. The fact that Horizon Zero Dawn crashed every now and then during our test and that (rather minor) graphics errors often occurred despite using current drivers did not improve the situation.

The publishers and developers should also work on the game's performance. Regardless of the strength of a user's hardware, Horizon Zero Dawn has occasional and random jolts, which can be seen clearly from the low minimum FPS in the benchmark tables below. Why Horizon Zero Dawn often continues to run in the background for a certain time after it has been closed (see the task manager below) is also a mystery to us.

There is little to complain about when it comes to graphics options. These have been split into two menus. While the display tab takes care of the resolution and resolution scaling, the field of view, the aspect ratio, the image mode, and the FPS settings (optional HDR, V-Sync & FPS-Limit), the Graphics menu contains 9 detail options that can all be controlled at once using a number of presets. The presets do not have the usual names Low, Medium, High, and Ultra; instead, they have the names Favor Performance, Original (= PS4 level), Favor Quality, and Ultimate Quality.

On the medium graphical settings, i.e. the original quality, we think the game looks quite pretty. The higher presets hardly have any effect, which our comparison screenshots confirm. Positively, setting changes do not require a restart of the game. Overall, the graphics look nice, but without - in contrast to Death Stranding - breaking any major records. Given the unique style of the world (mixture of ancient civilizations and futuristic technology), the high level of detail is definitely a positive. That said, we were a bit disappointed with the water graphics.