If you read my review of Forbidden West, you'll find a man who enjoyed himself quite abundantly yet struggled to figure out why that spark of joy he felt during Zero Dawn never quite resurfaced. In the months since the game's release, if I've found any words to explain that feeling it's these: the Horizon franchise has a bloat problem.
That extends from everything, from the story it's telling to the graphics it's presenting to the gameplay it's offering. Each piece of the puzzle has become so layered and intricate that I can't help but worry abundance has overtaken coherence in the design philosophy of this franchise.
Speaking strictly in terms of gameplay, Burning Shores honestly doesn't offer much. Its new enemies only serve to emphasize the combat's flaws, as they all either fly or jump astronomically while delivering area of effect elemental attacks that seem to coat the entire play field. For the eleventeenth time I can't stress enough that I find Zero Dawn, as well as its DLC Frozen Wilds, at the peak of its powers playing on Ultra Hard. I am definitively NOT a "hard mode guy", but for me that game just WORKS.
Forbidden West, with its density of mechanics and an armory intent on quadrupling that density, mucked up the bullseye Guerilla Games had hit previously. Burning Shores doesn't even pretend to acknowledge that criticism, instead doubling down with even more new mechanics. Paired with new enemies that, again, are purely pieces of shit that can get wrecked, by far the greatest sin this DLC commits is something I never thought I'd say about Horizon: I just wanted the combat to be over with.
In other words, I played on Normal, and I sometimes fantasized about Easy.
That being said, the DLC is so short and ultimately lacking in normal combat encounters it never came to that. Still...in comparison to Frozen Wilds, it's odd that Burning Shores ultimately amounts to a boss rush, shoehorning tried and true boss mechanics into a game that was always about improvisation on an open battlefield. The worst of these is the pair of final bosses, who in tandem do a titanic job of kneecapping one of this franchise's great terrors. Turns out, it's just a bunch of glowing red dots - some world eater.
So why three stars? Despite a brevity that's honestly shocking considering how laborious Forbidden West's storytelling could be, the new characters are interesting and/or likable. Complaints that everything moves to fast are warranted, because without the pull of goofing around on side quests and taking on machines just because they're there to be fought this story can be completed in what feels like three or four hours. This means we get an older style of video game story, with characters asking players to fill in some blanks in terms of their hows and whys. In terms of gameplay (or trophies) this also means you'll encounter plenty of vendors with new equipment, strangers with new tasks they can't handle on their own, even a new cauldron to delve into...but nothing about the DLC motivates the player to care about these things. Even a special new weapon introduced by the story can be entirely ignored - it's all so much, and for what?
As for where that ultimately takes us...which is controversy of the most inane order...the player is met with perhaps the first choice they can make for Aloy that has some actual stakes to it. Granted, it's the final moment of a DLC, so there's no use presuming which if any Guerilla will choose for themselves in the inevitable third part of this story, but I understand the impulse. This is a DLC with an extended nod to The Last of Us Part II's museum scene, after all - it's fan service, clunky and enthusiastic as this sort of thing tends to be.
I made the choice that felt right for Aloy. Others will make the choice that feels right for their Twitch streams. Others won't even play the game and hate it on misguided principles. To which I say that's a real shame, because there sure are lots of concrete reasons to be worried Horizon as a franchise is a little lost at sea.
That extends from everything, from the story it's telling to the graphics it's presenting to the gameplay it's offering. Each piece of the puzzle has become so layered and intricate that I can't help but worry abundance has overtaken coherence in the design philosophy of this franchise.
Speaking strictly in terms of gameplay, Burning Shores honestly doesn't offer much. Its new enemies only serve to emphasize the combat's flaws, as they all either fly or jump astronomically while delivering area of effect elemental attacks that seem to coat the entire play field. For the eleventeenth time I can't stress enough that I find Zero Dawn, as well as its DLC Frozen Wilds, at the peak of its powers playing on Ultra Hard. I am definitively NOT a "hard mode guy", but for me that game just WORKS.
Forbidden West, with its density of mechanics and an armory intent on quadrupling that density, mucked up the bullseye Guerilla Games had hit previously. Burning Shores doesn't even pretend to acknowledge that criticism, instead doubling down with even more new mechanics. Paired with new enemies that, again, are purely pieces of shit that can get wrecked, by far the greatest sin this DLC commits is something I never thought I'd say about Horizon: I just wanted the combat to be over with.
In other words, I played on Normal, and I sometimes fantasized about Easy.
That being said, the DLC is so short and ultimately lacking in normal combat encounters it never came to that. Still...in comparison to Frozen Wilds, it's odd that Burning Shores ultimately amounts to a boss rush, shoehorning tried and true boss mechanics into a game that was always about improvisation on an open battlefield. The worst of these is the pair of final bosses, who in tandem do a titanic job of kneecapping one of this franchise's great terrors. Turns out, it's just a bunch of glowing red dots - some world eater.
So why three stars? Despite a brevity that's honestly shocking considering how laborious Forbidden West's storytelling could be, the new characters are interesting and/or likable. Complaints that everything moves to fast are warranted, because without the pull of goofing around on side quests and taking on machines just because they're there to be fought this story can be completed in what feels like three or four hours. This means we get an older style of video game story, with characters asking players to fill in some blanks in terms of their hows and whys. In terms of gameplay (or trophies) this also means you'll encounter plenty of vendors with new equipment, strangers with new tasks they can't handle on their own, even a new cauldron to delve into...but nothing about the DLC motivates the player to care about these things. Even a special new weapon introduced by the story can be entirely ignored - it's all so much, and for what?
As for where that ultimately takes us...which is controversy of the most inane order...the player is met with perhaps the first choice they can make for Aloy that has some actual stakes to it. Granted, it's the final moment of a DLC, so there's no use presuming which if any Guerilla will choose for themselves in the inevitable third part of this story, but I understand the impulse. This is a DLC with an extended nod to The Last of Us Part II's museum scene, after all - it's fan service, clunky and enthusiastic as this sort of thing tends to be.
I made the choice that felt right for Aloy. Others will make the choice that feels right for their Twitch streams. Others won't even play the game and hate it on misguided principles. To which I say that's a real shame, because there sure are lots of concrete reasons to be worried Horizon as a franchise is a little lost at sea.