Realistically, you already know whether you are going to enjoy Horizon Zero Dawn, either because you played it back when it came out in 2014, or you’ve watched one of the tens of thousands of videos of it online… or even maybe you’ve gone back and read some of the reviews from 2014. And where the remaster is concerned, you’ll be pleased to hear that it is as good as the 2014 game, but with the DLC attached and a much prettier package around the game to go with it… in short, if you want to play Horizon: Zero Dawn today, this is the definitive way to play it. Controls wise, it also holds up. It’s not one of these remasters that will remind you that control schemes have evolved since it’s release, leaving it difficult to play. Games like the recent Metal Gear Solid collections for example, can be hard to return to… or at the least involve some messing around and onboarding while you retrain your brain to deal with what are often clunky and difficult to wrangle controls. The only spot where I would throw shade in this regard is around some of the movement. The climbing and traversing is very much from the Assassins Creed book of movement. Movement is generally fluid and responsive, so long as you maintain an adherence to the strict pathing that the game is expecting from the player. This, as I say is mostly fine, but it can result in some sticky moments where a player might struggle to exit a stream because the game just seemingly wont let you, or you won’t be able to climb a hill in a specific spot because the pathing hasn’t registered this as an area you can traverse, despite allowing you to do so a couple of meters over in an identical, or seemingly identical spot. Thankfully though, these are few and far between with the game feeling mostly modern.

It perhaps feels modern because it is. I was struck in playing this by the notion that games have settled into a string of established rules. Gone are the days where developers would have different ideas about control inputs. Take FPS games for example. Think of the reload button… that’s right, it’s X on Xbox controller and Square on Playstation. It’s almost always not R! or RB or B or Circle as used to sometimes be the case. Games are settled and that is both comforting and a bit of a shame to think that we are in an age that perhaps lacks the feeling that you are at the cutting edge of a growing and adapting hobby. The games industry is very much at maturity just now, making some remasters feel a little unnecessary. And this is where it’s probably interesting to consider. The original PS4 release of HZD is absolutely still playable and absolutely acceptable. If you are picking up the remaster, it should be for two reasons. 1, you’ve played it before and you just want to replay it in a shiner skin or 2, that you didn’t play the original, but you are interested and this is the most easily accessible version and it’s at an acceptable price point for whatever you feel that is. Other than that, it’s pointless really… but again, you know this, so what are we doing here?

Having now finished this game and got the Platinum for it for the 2nd time, my major takeaway is that Sony find themselves in a fascinating spot just now. Coupling this with the idea that Sony are reportedly changing their plans to release games on PC, and reverting to the exclusive, I find myself reflecting about just how strange a position the Sony exclusive currently is. Back in the good old days, Sony was the place you went to for cookie weirdness. They were a brave, exciting and interesting company that were willing to fund people throwing ideas at the wall in the hope that it resulted in something amazing. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t but regardless, they were an exciting company to follow. Only Sony would have funded the PSP and Sony at their best are unlike anyone else in the industry. Latterly, in the PS3 generation and into the PS4 generation they changed their sports somewhat, becoming the arbiters of the big budget, single player experience, often open world, carving out a place in the industry as the must have console for longer, story based games; think The Last of Us, Uncharted, God of War etc. They were best in class and companies like Microsoft simply couldn’t keep up and indeed began to mismanage their own IP’s with Halo, Gears and Fable, all losing their way.

Something interesting happened after that and one that I think will end up being looked at as the Canary in the Coalmine. Their games seemed to catch the old Ubisoft disease and began merging into one globular mass of similarity. They became open world, map-vomit collectathons. No longer were they satisfied to make good games. They had to be shiny sprawling masses that would take hundreds of hours to finish. Sony clearly had an appetite for player retention in their games as development costs began to spiral, showing itself no more clearly than when they bought Bungie and started to chase the Live service bandwagon, a decision that has cost the company countless millions in both wasted money and man hours and because of this, the modern Sony don’t really seem to stand for much. They take less risks than they ever have and the cadence of their releases has almost completely ground to a halt. Both because of a forced change of tact, and because their games have spiralled so much in a budget sense that we are 7 years into the current generation and have yet to see a new Naughty Dog game.

Which brings me to my ultimate point. HZD is as fun as it ever was. It plays well, is interesting and looks fantastic… with that said, it lacks the wow factor it once did, because in the years following the OG HZD, the formula has been run into the ground and although fun, I find it a melancholic window into the beginning of the demise of what made Sony the company they once were, and set them on the path to the company they are today, which strikes me as one that has lost its way and identity in favour of chasing a pile of gold at the end of a rainbow, that realistically was never there. Not just Sony, but the games industry as a whole feels as if its hurtling towards cliff edge that it’s currently incapable of avoiding. HZD is a reminder of the good old days and a warning light for what was to follow.