I don’t often rush to play new AAA titles but I enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn so much I borrowed my friend's PS5 just to play it at its finest quality.
Getting to grips with the controls again after not playing Horizon for years took a bit of time but was off full steam ahead after the tutorial section. Horizon isn’t a series of games that takes a lot of smart thinking to get from A to B but having Aloy saying what she has to do and where she has to go next spoiled it a wee bit for me. The climbing was not great but also not bad. It could get frustrating at times when Aloy would not play ball and jump to a yellow grip right next to her or jump in the opposite direction. Similar to “Uncharted” the dramatic jumps and near miss grabs got a bit too common and frustrating.
Like other open world games, as soon as I’m free to explore the world I’m all over it, getting all the side quests and collectables so that I’m well prepared for the main story. Instead of taking the Breath of the Wild approach (here is me again comparing other games to BoTW) “off you go, do what you want but you will die if you stray too far”. Horizon prevents players from accessing certain areas blocked off by item unlocks. You need to progress the story to get these items to unlock certain areas. I wasn’t too bothered about this. I’m not typically a completionist but exploring all the wee icons on the map I found very addictive, even campfires that seemed pointless as they were a stone’s throw away from each other. I finished the game around 83% as I could not for the life of me do the pit master side-quests, nor could lots of other people on the internet apparently. One of the games features I never bothered with was eating/cooking meals, I never saw the point or need so just never wasted my time with it.
Like I mentioned previously I played this on a PS5 using a 4K HDR TV and the game is absolutely stunning especially the underwater scenes. The game is not without its graphical glitches though, for example Aloy’s hair bounces about more than Medusa’s head of snakes and quite often characters clipping through scenery.
The cutscenes and motion capture are amazing in this game. I love seeing all the micro emotions on a character's face. However when it came to the side-quests I just skipped those cutscenes as the game was already taking so long to play, plus each side-quest tends to consist of the same scenario. Someone goes missing, you find them dead or alive and you have to fight machines. Some side-quests can send you pillar to post talking to different people which I felt was just wasting the player’s time. I really enjoyed the main story but all the side-quests were throwing so many names at me I lost track, similar to my experience with “Game of Thrones”.
My playstyle typically is a sniper, one-shotting enemies is my bread and butter. So I used the bows mainly in my playthrough. Besides the bows there are so many other weapons to suit other player’s needs. I never really got round to trying them all such as setting tripwires. One weapon I wish I had really clocked onto earlier is setting traps. I never realised how powerful they were until I was a bit into the game. I enjoyed searching for resources to upgrade my weapons as you could set the resources as a quest on the map to make hunting them easier. I appreciated this feature more than any other in the game as it prevents the player from having to do loads of Googling and writing down locations of each item they need to find.
I absolutely loved this game, It was going to be a 4.5 star rating from me but because of the graphical glitches (at time of writing) it brought it down to a 4 star. I am really looking forward to the DLC in 2023.
Getting to grips with the controls again after not playing Horizon for years took a bit of time but was off full steam ahead after the tutorial section. Horizon isn’t a series of games that takes a lot of smart thinking to get from A to B but having Aloy saying what she has to do and where she has to go next spoiled it a wee bit for me. The climbing was not great but also not bad. It could get frustrating at times when Aloy would not play ball and jump to a yellow grip right next to her or jump in the opposite direction. Similar to “Uncharted” the dramatic jumps and near miss grabs got a bit too common and frustrating.
Like other open world games, as soon as I’m free to explore the world I’m all over it, getting all the side quests and collectables so that I’m well prepared for the main story. Instead of taking the Breath of the Wild approach (here is me again comparing other games to BoTW) “off you go, do what you want but you will die if you stray too far”. Horizon prevents players from accessing certain areas blocked off by item unlocks. You need to progress the story to get these items to unlock certain areas. I wasn’t too bothered about this. I’m not typically a completionist but exploring all the wee icons on the map I found very addictive, even campfires that seemed pointless as they were a stone’s throw away from each other. I finished the game around 83% as I could not for the life of me do the pit master side-quests, nor could lots of other people on the internet apparently. One of the games features I never bothered with was eating/cooking meals, I never saw the point or need so just never wasted my time with it.
Like I mentioned previously I played this on a PS5 using a 4K HDR TV and the game is absolutely stunning especially the underwater scenes. The game is not without its graphical glitches though, for example Aloy’s hair bounces about more than Medusa’s head of snakes and quite often characters clipping through scenery.
The cutscenes and motion capture are amazing in this game. I love seeing all the micro emotions on a character's face. However when it came to the side-quests I just skipped those cutscenes as the game was already taking so long to play, plus each side-quest tends to consist of the same scenario. Someone goes missing, you find them dead or alive and you have to fight machines. Some side-quests can send you pillar to post talking to different people which I felt was just wasting the player’s time. I really enjoyed the main story but all the side-quests were throwing so many names at me I lost track, similar to my experience with “Game of Thrones”.
My playstyle typically is a sniper, one-shotting enemies is my bread and butter. So I used the bows mainly in my playthrough. Besides the bows there are so many other weapons to suit other player’s needs. I never really got round to trying them all such as setting tripwires. One weapon I wish I had really clocked onto earlier is setting traps. I never realised how powerful they were until I was a bit into the game. I enjoyed searching for resources to upgrade my weapons as you could set the resources as a quest on the map to make hunting them easier. I appreciated this feature more than any other in the game as it prevents the player from having to do loads of Googling and writing down locations of each item they need to find.
I absolutely loved this game, It was going to be a 4.5 star rating from me but because of the graphical glitches (at time of writing) it brought it down to a 4 star. I am really looking forward to the DLC in 2023.