When you purchase through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

If you are a big fan of Sony Horizon Zero Dawnyou might have been a little worried that the new remastered version would just be too much for your gaming PC, especially portable devices. This latter aspect was not helped by the fact that the remastered version is not verified for the Steam Deckbut after playing HZDR on an Asus ROG Ally X, I’m pretty sure it will be fine on the Steam Deck.

Guerrilla Games, the developers behind Horizon Zero Dawn, went all out with its remaster, with help from Nixxes Software for the PC port. Of course, it’s still exactly the same game (it’s not a remake) but the graphics of the original look a bit poor compared to what Horizon Forbidden West has to offer.

Well, not anymore, and it’s a smorgasbord of visual effects, high-resolution textures, and sumptuous lighting. And to make sure it can run on as many gaming PCs as possible, you also get the full range of upscalers and frame generation systems.

Weighing in at 105GB, the remaster is 33GB larger than the first PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s not just a set of better textures: characters and environments have been overhauled to be much richer in appearance, while still remaining true to the original.

The larger cities look particularly beautiful in the remaster, and they look much more like what you’d expect in a world that nature has reclaimed much of. If, like me, you’ve played a lot of the original game, a lot of things will feel familiar, but some aspects will seem noticeably altered – the same furniture, so to speak, but rearranged somewhat.

I haven’t explored all areas yet, but first impressions are very encouraging and the machines look fantastic at maximum quality settings.

Image 1 of 4

Image 2 of 4

Image 3 of 4

Image 4 of 4

Of course, any added visual benefits come at a cost and if you change all the quality settings you will face a considerable drop in performance. Fortunately, you have scaling and frame generation to recover some images. Where the first Horizon Zero Dawn only had FSR 2 and DLSS, now you have the latest version of AMD, Intel and Nvidia systems.

In the case of FSR, this means you get AMD’s shader-based frame interpolator and, even better, it’s the decoupled version of the upscaler. So if you have an Nvidia graphics card capable of running the game, you will be able to use upscaling. And frame generation, even if it is not an RTX card or an RTX 40 series model.

Image 1 of 2

Image 2 of 2

With the ROG AllyI would get around 42fps on average in-game using the “Original” quality preset (aka low quality) and without scaling. In the remaster, the handheld only achieves around 25fps with the Low preset and 30fps with Very Low.

But apply a bit of FSR Balanced scaling and frame generation, and you get almost 60fps with the low quality preset. Even low frame rates of 1% exceed 30fps.

But not everything is perfect. Some character models seem to have a little too much light around them and, while the surface reflections are better, they are still on-screen reflections, which can sometimes lead to some awesome visuals. And not all textures look better either.

What you don’t get is the rather variable performance of the original. The remaster looks much more cohesive, no doubt helped by Nixxes’ work in handling shader compilation and asset streaming.

Learn more about the Steam Deck

Best portable gaming PC: Who is the best travel companion?
Steam Deck OLED Review: Our verdict on Valve’s handheld.
Best Steam Deck Accessories: Get ready.
Steam Deck Battery Life: What is the actual battery life?

On my main PC, with a Core i7 14700KF and an RTX 4080 Super, the game runs extremely well with DLSS quality enabled, although it’s fair to point out that I haven’t tested many areas yet.

Even though I don’t have Steam bridge available to test if the game is working properly, there are enough options in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered to ensure that most PC platforms are covered.

You’ll probably need to use the Low or Very Low preset, as well as a bit of FSR scaling and frame generation, but since the game isn’t fast and frenetic, the extra input lag due to using interpolation should not be. a problem.

Sony, Guerrilla Games, and others have done a remarkable job of making this remaster the best version of Horizon Zero Dawn that it could be, short of a full remake.