Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn brims with ideas and opportunities. And whilst it reaches for and successfully realises some or certain aspects of those, it squanders others in its Elder Scrolls-like wooden cast, shoehorned RPG system, uninteresting tribal war side-narrative and its shamelessly heavy lifting of mechanics from peers such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [Wiedźmin III: Dziki Gon] and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Still, these for the most part stand out as just that--disappointingly squandered ideas and opportunties, not glaringly damaging flaws. This is a fun and at times beautiful game supported by an excellent story, ultimately carving itself a space as a competent jack-of-all-trades as opposed to a masterpiece in open-world gaming.

3.5 stars / Good

I was really looking forward to this new IP from Guerrilla Games and thankfully it was a success. Horizon Zero Dawn is a strong open world title that puts it's focus on detail rather than sheer scope. I can compare this to something like Far Cry and say that the world in Horizon is smaller and there's less to do, but that would be glossing over the fact that this world is more compact with rich design and the missions and objectives are much more thoughtful and interesting. Visually this might be the most gorgeous game I've played on my playstation and the sound design is similarly spectacular with regard to the robot inhabitants of this post-apocalyptic world. The story here revolves around Aloy a curious and strong willed woman who grows up as an outcast from her tribe. Robots had supposedly destroyed the civilisations of old and are now living in harmony with the tribes of the new world...

Well not quite as you'll soon find out, Aloy's story involves proving her tribe wrong and setting out to search for answers regarding her mysterious mother who seems to have had some connection to the old world; all the while deadly machines threaten bring the human race to extinction. Aloy's personality is decently handled as she's often tries to be sarcastic and witty yet confident and independent. Unfortunately this world is in need of a stronger supporting cast with more depth and personality to them, there are some notable stands outs but most are pretty generic and one dimensional. The dialog is also pretty dry a lot of the time, but what really kept me engaged here is the world and context slowly building a meta-narrative throughout game's main quest line. There's tons of great writing and audio-logs that set the world up brilliantly and I was really griped into wanting to find out how the old world fell.

Gameplay is another major strength here; while melee combat is pretty dull... The unique weapons Aloy acquires throughout the journey along with the terrific and diverse assortment of hostile robots put this game's combat on a HAOW, NAVA, LEVO! Each new machine is it's own puzzle to figure out and you've got trip wires, ropecasters that pin enemies onto the ground, an epic assortment of arrows met with an incredibly satisfying "slow-time" mechanic, and you can even override robots to use as transportation or to turn them against each other. Aloy also finds a device called a "focus", which allows her to interact with ancient technology, scout the area for life forms and even track their movements. With this Aloy has a "detective mode" akin to that of Batman or Geralt of Rivia which plays out in certain side quests.

Crafting and the hunting of wildlife is also a necessity here and it's about as deep as you'd get from a Far Cry game but it's certainly a welcome addition. Speaking of Far Cry, I like how Guerrilla Games took Ubisoft cliches and made them interesting here; towers are now mobile behemoths that are a puzzle to climb onto, outposts are now "Bandit Camps" that have story significance, house merchants and can be cleared along side one of the game's most amusing NPCs Nil. Hunting challenges are much deeper and offer really sweet rewards, then there's mechanised dungeons called Vaults scattered around the world that are pretty fun to explore.

Biggest complaints here are with the game's dry dialog, lack of a strong supporting cast, and just that I wished mobility with Aloy was more natural. Often I was frustrated with how she couldn't climb waist high objects, climbing in general is really linear and climbing down cliffs is a pain, also she gets caught onto the environment really easily when sprinting. These complaints are emphasised for me because I jumped into this game having just finished Breath of the Wild; a game who's freedom of traversal is just in another league, still I REALLY liked overriding certain robots and riding them around the world... Felt like such a badass... Aaaaand yeah I really don't have anything else to complain about surprisingly, the game could have been a little longer I guess but the experience is so densely packed and focused that a longer experience could have spoiled it. I thought this was a really consistent, gorgeous open world game sporting fantastic combat systems and some truly creative premises. For a new IP this is really nice to see and I hope to see much more of Horizon going forward!