Genre: Cinematic Action RPG
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive
Release Date: October 31, 2024
PS Studios Game? Yes
PSVR2 Compatible? No
Metacritic Score: 85
PSSR? No
RT? No
Highest Resolution: 4K
Highest FPS: 90fps
favor resolution pro: 1584p-4K native DRS at a locked 30fps.
balanced pro: Looks almost identical to favor performance pro mode, but is capped at 40fps.
favor performance pro: 1440p-1584p DRS to 4K at a basically locked 60fps, or usually around 65fps with VRR.
Guerilla recommends Pro's performance mode, as it's only very slightly blurrier than other modes due to lower DRS before upscaling, but looks less aliased in motion. Regardless, all 3 modes have improved shadows, depth-of-field, skin/hair shaders, clouds, god rays, etc compared to every base PS5 mode. Base PS5 performance mode is particularly blurry (especially foliage and SSR in bodies of water) and more aliased/unstable than Pro performance mode, as its DRS maxes at 1800p checkerboarding. Pro performance mode actually improves over base PS5 resolution mode, except for slightly blurrier SSR.
Digital Foundry thinks HFW is the best-looking console game (along with Horizon Forbidden West) ever. It's equivalent to a high-end PC game, and its Pico upscaling even beats DLSS in areas like SSR.