you know its real cool having robot dinosaurs and a humanity that has been reset with all this tech, be cool if it actually looked into it. Insane how much worse every character is in this game and how anything really engaging is drowned in a completely bloated and empty world. don't even get me started on how the combat was virtually unchanged, and how every other enemy was ramped up with no real methods of fighting back aside from melee, and that melee is really dogey against anything not human.

I believe that despite some woes Guerrilla Games really did make something special here. They may not be winning any awards for release timing, but they provided a beautiful world to explore, filled with deep lore and great enemy design

At the time of writing, only 62% of players on PS5 have made it past the opening questline. That kind of makes me sad. While the pacing is better than Zero Dawn it does still take a bit for the main plot to move forward. And I am certainly not going to pretend that all of the writing works here.

But between the incredible voice cast with the likes of Ashly Burch and the late great Lance Riddick, I think its more high sci-fi ideas are more interesting than people give it credit for. Both Horizon games are filled with unique tribes, internal myths and ideas that really do make this world feel like its own.

Traversing that world is even better. Whether swimming through the flooded remains of a sunken casino, walking across a vast desert or gliding through an icy tundra. The visual spectacle here is impressive and just walking through it is a sight to behold.

And of course the machine combat is just absolutely incredible. At one moment you'll be fighting a giant turtle that tends to burrow underground for surprise attacks. The next you will be jumped by a pack of kangaroos, wielding elemental yo-yos. New weapon types add to this experience with some tools that feel ripped right from a Ratchet and Clank game. Machine combat was the biggest strength in Zero Dawn and it is only improved here.

I am not going to lie to you and tell you that every element of this game is completely unique but its highs more than make up for its lows. If you have the stomach for another open world adventure I would say give this a go. It might surprise you.

Horizon Forbidden West's gameplay evolution in comparison to its 2017 predecessor is incredible. Climbing, paragliding, swimming, refined skill trees, enhanced combat, and more travel choices all stand out as drastic improvements and although not new for the industry, do feel like a necessary modernisation for the franchise. Horizon Forbidden West struggles with an issue that many modern sequels have, that being a larger story scope with the same length. Everything feels crammed in or out of place, and frankly, the game's story could (and maybe should) have been split into two instalments.