You can now get a look at Horizon Forbidden West running on a base PS4

Ahead of Horizon Forbidden West's release later this month, PlayStation has shared footage of the game running on a base PS4 for the first time. 

The footage was shared via a tweet from PlayStation's official Twitter account and you can see it for yourself below. 

Now, given it's only 22 seconds long and doesn't show a particularly action-packed segment of the game, we can't exactly call it a definitive example of how well the game will hold up on the base PS4 compared to the more powerful PS4 Pro and PS5 consoles. 

The game does, however, still look good for the brief length of the clip. This combined with previously released screenshots of the game running on PS4 is promising and does, at least, suggest the nearly nine-year-old console will still offer players a graphically impressive experience.

• Best PS5 games: the PlayStation 5 games you need to play
• Best PS4 games: the PlayStation 4 games you need to play
• PS5 vs PS4 Pro: should you upgrade?

This clip comes only a couple of weeks after PlayStation shared footage of Horizon Forbidden West running on the PS4 Pro. Those clips were also fairly short, though there were a couple of them and they left us feeling pretty positive too.

It's not the biggest surprise that Horizon Forbidden West still looks fairly good on the older PlayStation consoles; Guerrilla Games previously said that the PS4 played a major part in the game's development, with a lot of development and testing taking place on that console. 

Horizon Forbidden West will release on February 18 as a PlayStation console exclusive for PS4 and PS5. 

Analysis: What's the benefit of playing on PS5?

So, Horizon Forbidden West is looking pretty good on PS4. What, then, is the benefit of buying the game on PS5? Well, the power of the hardware will provide a few advantages. 

Like many PS5 games, Horizon Forbidden West will come with a selection of performance modes offering 4K visuals or high frame rates. Game Director, Mathijs de Jonge, has previously said that because of its power, “the PlayStation 5 can go much further” than the PS4, with “a lot more detail.”

PS5 players also have the DualSense controller at their disposal. It’s been confirmed that Horizon Forbidden West will take advantage of the controller’s features such as haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. According to David McMullen, Lead Systems Designer at Guerrilla, the features are “heavily featured throughout our mechanics. From the scrape of rubble as you push a crate, to the sensation of an unravelling winch as you use the Pullcaster — with the increased adaptive trigger tension as you pull!”

That the game appears to run well on the base PS4, though, will undoubtedly be a relief to fans of the series who haven't yet been able to pick up a PS5. That's likely to be quite a few people as stock shortages have persisted into this year.

There are a few more first-party games planned as cross-gen releases, such as God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7. We’re hoping that when it releases Horizon Forbidden West sets a good precedent.

For PS4 players who do eventually want to upgrade, they’ll have the the option to upgrade their copy of Horizon Forbidden West to the PS5 version for free. 

• Horizon Forbidden West will take over 60 hours to complete