Arguably the greatest exclusive title to hit PS5 in its three year lifespan is scheduled to launch on PC early next year. This is clearly great news for folks who own one of the best gaming laptops or best gaming PCs.
Horizon Forbidden West launched in February to critical acclaim, and as one of the best PS5 games, we piled praise on it for being a “crowd-pleasing sequel” in our review.
Aloy’s adventure is now back in the news with the announcement that Horizon Forbidden: West Complete Edition is launching on PS5 on October 6, with a PC version to follow in early 2024.
This ultimate edition of the sandbox smash hit includes the game’s well-received Burning Shores DLC, both a digital soundtrack and digital artbook, alongside a digital comic book. There are also additional in-game items that didn’t initially appear in the base game, like the Apex Clawstrider Machine Strike piece or Aloy’s Nora Thunder Elite outfit.
There’s no word on PC pricing for Forbidden West yet, but the Complete Edition on PS5 will set you back $59.99. While we don’t know how much the PC version will cost, you can already add it to either your Steam wishlist or Epic Games Store wishlist.
As great as Aloy’s open-world adventure is, though, there is some cause for concern on the PC side of things.
From hero to Zero
The original adventure, Horizon Zero Dawn, was released on PC in 2020 and hoo-boy the state of the game wasn’t pretty at launch. This marked the first occasion developer Guerrilla Games had ever ported a game over to PC (with additional help from a studio called Virtuos), and hot damn could you tell.
I reviewed the PC version when it came out, and the state it shipped in was pretty shameful. Even on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, the game was a stuttering mess, frequently dropping frames as Aloy roamed through the wilds of her post-apocalyptic surroundings. Frame rate hiccups were so bad, I’d argue it was close to unplayable for the first few months it was on sale on Steam.
To give Guerilla credit, the studio worked hard post-launch to fix the PC version and after a number of patches, Zero Dawn eventually ended up in good shape. Play it now on a decent gaming rig, and I’d argue it’s one of the best open-world games of the last half decade.
You just have to hope Guerilla has learned its lessons ahead of Forbidden West launching on PC next year"
You just have to hope Guerilla has learned its lessons ahead of Forbidden West launching on PC next year. If there’s room for optimism, it’s that Death Stranding — which uses the same Decima engine as both Horizon titles — launched in fine shape on PC in the summer of 2020.
On the flip side of that ‘glass half full’ view, another PlayStation title, namely The Last of Us Part 1, was an abomination when it hit PC earlier this year. Again, post-launch patches eventually saved Joel and Ellie’s bacon, but Sony’s history of its big PS4 and PS5 games releasing on PC in shoddy shape is definitely a thing.
Anyway, fingers crossed the PC port of Horizon Forbidden: West Complete Edition launches in good shape this year, because 2023 has been a seriously rough time to be a fan of triple-A PC gaming. Yes, I am looking at you Forspoken and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
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