Horizon Forbidden West has received a PS5 Pro patch and the game represents one of the best-looking and most interesting efforts we’ve seen on the new console. After all, developers Guerrilla Games are famous for their use of checkerboard rendering on PS4 and PS5, and they’ve now moved onto something new – but it’s PSSR, the upscaler introduced on PS5 Pro that has been used in so many other PS5 Pro enhanced games. Instead, it’s its own solution – a kind of ‘Guerilla Super Resolution’, if you will, and it represents some of the cleanest reconstructed image quality we’ve seen on consoles. Just how good is it? We decided to find out.
To refresh your memory, Horizon Forbidden West on PS5 includes performance and resolution modes, which have been combined into a performance pro mode for the new console. Since a patch in summer 2022, performance mode on base PS5 has run at a circa 1800p checkerboard with dynamic resolution scaling, trading a bit of image quality and stability for a 60fps update rate that makes the game much smoother to play.
The new performance pro mode keeps that same 60fps but increases clarity substantially with an internal resolution of around 1440p. This mode boasts improved subpixel detail, better texture clarity and better anti-aliasing which is particularly noticeable on transparencies like foliage. Temporal stability is also improved, meaning the image suffers from fewer instances of artefacts or breakup. Finally, screen space reflections and depth-of-field effects are also noticeably improved, without the characteristic checkerboard pattern in SSR or shimmer in depth-of-field.
All things combined, you can examine the image from only a few inches away without spotting any imperfections, save for some minor ghosting with foliage – it’s impressive stuff.
Of course, the PS5 already had a mode that boasted better image quality and stability – the resolution mode. This is limited to 30fps, of course, but how does it fare against the new performance pro mode? In short, the difference is minimised – but still exists. The old resolution mode, which was often a native 4K, is slightly sharper and has better screen-space reflections, but the performance pro mode still has its benefits in terms of image stability and anti-aliasing.