Beat: Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4) | 2.5/5.0
Developers: Guerrilla Games
I finally went ahead and finished this thing, but it took everything out of me to keep from throwing my controller - not out of rage or difficulty, but because I just lacked the patience for so many design choices from the “Killzone” crew. Maybe that’s the problem, really. Adjusting to a new genre is a challenge, and the market is already flooded with bloated open world titles. There are some fucking cool mechanical monsters here, but Zero Dawn is a narrative nightmare and a structural mess.
The story starts off quite strong, stealing a few tears thanks to Aloy’s rather impressionable father figure. The plot of Aloy’s origins and the creation of this world becomes a driving force for many of the main missions, and I initially ate it all up. But the method of storytelling becomes extremely tiresome after you realize most every main quest involves finding a cave and listening to audio log after audio log....after audio log to discover the truth behind these mechanical monsters and why they dominate the planet. This is by far the worst way to tell a story, sacrificing its pace and wasting so much of the player’s precious time in the process. By the upteenth audio log, I just didn’t care anymore. It’s even worse when the dialog is often written in college BS-ing fashion, always avoiding the fastest way to a point and instead opting for flowery expressions and religious mumbo jumbo to explain its secrets. I wanted to care, truly, but I found myself struggling to get through such repetitious and uninspired level structures. Slogging through the stealth just to get to these caves is another misstep, that ultimately led to me running through a lot of the finale gameplay.
The side stuff isn’t any better. Nearly every side mission falls into the tracking variety, requiring the player to follow footsteps before following fruit trails that end in following blood tracks to a place where a creature or human ambush waits patiently for you to kill. It’s all mundane and I hated all of it. Merchants stop selling new stuff about midway through the campaign, so I rarely felt like I was getting stronger. Leveling up should be fun, but I found entire trees to be useless and later unlocks to be shockingly unhelpful.
So it lacks creativity in its story and mission design, and the progression sucks, but the thing that kept me playing and returning is the way it channels Monster Hunter. Every mech has weak points and particular ammo to take them down that much faster. I found a few ammo types to be worthless and the castrated weapon wheel to be a nuisance in more difficult fights, but I liked the tearing modifications. I liked the override mechanic before It lost its usefullness. I enjoyed the weapon modifications and socket system before I realized that switching them out in the middle of and in between fights is absurdly unintuitive.
At its core, Horizon is played best as a stealth title. The problem for me is that this already bloated, repetitious game doesn’t deserve the sort of time it takes to slowly make your way through each new bloated, repetitious level design. I found myself very irritated the more I played, and I remain confounded by its praise.
Developers: Guerrilla Games
I finally went ahead and finished this thing, but it took everything out of me to keep from throwing my controller - not out of rage or difficulty, but because I just lacked the patience for so many design choices from the “Killzone” crew. Maybe that’s the problem, really. Adjusting to a new genre is a challenge, and the market is already flooded with bloated open world titles. There are some fucking cool mechanical monsters here, but Zero Dawn is a narrative nightmare and a structural mess.
The story starts off quite strong, stealing a few tears thanks to Aloy’s rather impressionable father figure. The plot of Aloy’s origins and the creation of this world becomes a driving force for many of the main missions, and I initially ate it all up. But the method of storytelling becomes extremely tiresome after you realize most every main quest involves finding a cave and listening to audio log after audio log....after audio log to discover the truth behind these mechanical monsters and why they dominate the planet. This is by far the worst way to tell a story, sacrificing its pace and wasting so much of the player’s precious time in the process. By the upteenth audio log, I just didn’t care anymore. It’s even worse when the dialog is often written in college BS-ing fashion, always avoiding the fastest way to a point and instead opting for flowery expressions and religious mumbo jumbo to explain its secrets. I wanted to care, truly, but I found myself struggling to get through such repetitious and uninspired level structures. Slogging through the stealth just to get to these caves is another misstep, that ultimately led to me running through a lot of the finale gameplay.
The side stuff isn’t any better. Nearly every side mission falls into the tracking variety, requiring the player to follow footsteps before following fruit trails that end in following blood tracks to a place where a creature or human ambush waits patiently for you to kill. It’s all mundane and I hated all of it. Merchants stop selling new stuff about midway through the campaign, so I rarely felt like I was getting stronger. Leveling up should be fun, but I found entire trees to be useless and later unlocks to be shockingly unhelpful.
So it lacks creativity in its story and mission design, and the progression sucks, but the thing that kept me playing and returning is the way it channels Monster Hunter. Every mech has weak points and particular ammo to take them down that much faster. I found a few ammo types to be worthless and the castrated weapon wheel to be a nuisance in more difficult fights, but I liked the tearing modifications. I liked the override mechanic before It lost its usefullness. I enjoyed the weapon modifications and socket system before I realized that switching them out in the middle of and in between fights is absurdly unintuitive.
At its core, Horizon is played best as a stealth title. The problem for me is that this already bloated, repetitious game doesn’t deserve the sort of time it takes to slowly make your way through each new bloated, repetitious level design. I found myself very irritated the more I played, and I remain confounded by its praise.