You won’t be able to get Horizon: Zero Dawn until March 1 in Australia and New Zealand. But when you do – which seems likely given how many of you voted for Horizon – make sure you play with the photo mode.
I’ve already written about all of the bits and pieces you’ll find when you fire up Horizon: Zero Dawn. But one of the game’s best attributes is just how luscious and lively the post-apocalyptic world is, which by extension makes Photo Mode ridiculously entertaining.
The developers livestreamed all of the options you’ll find in-game a couple of weeks ago. If you need a refresher, or missed it the first time around, you can see that below.
To get the most out of Horizon, you’ll want a PS4 Pro. If you’re playing on a 4K HDR TV, then you’ll get a very pretty game at 4K with HDR. For those just playing on a regular 1080p TV/monitor, Horizon will super-sample the image down from their internal rendering resolution (which they said last year was close to 4K) to 1080p.
Along with the benefits that brings – fewer jagged edges, crisper and more stable images – PS4 Pro users will also get more detail from the in-game world. Draw distance is improved, pop-in on objects and textures is reduced, and the quality of shadow maps is higher. It’s a noticeable difference, especially if you just stop to look at the way the wind blows through the grass and the leaves.
That detail comes through to the photo mode, as well. All screenshots captured on a PS4 Pro are at 4K, but I’ve resized them down to 1080p so it doesn’t chew up everyone’s mobile data. It’s worth noting that you can even use photo mode to take nice screenshots during dialogue sequences – not major cut-scenes – although the camera controls are disabled. See if you can pick which photos were taken from the same spot!
You get the picture: Horizon‘s a very, very pretty game.
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