Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

The combat can be quite punishing in this game. Playing on normal difficulty, I found the balance was fine, except just how hard some of the enemies can hit. Getting hit in melee can be 60% of your health in the midgame. Graphically, the game is veeeery nice. The developers even released an update to support NVidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR just a few days ago. The facial animations are impressive too! The story...? Well, Aloy's story is kinda boring. You can recognise this early on when, as a kid, she says something about being determined to win the tribe's contest - and then TRAINING MONTAGES into her adolescence. However, she is a real character in dialogue. She acknowledges that she's a badass, and voices her exasperation when she gets sent on errands. However, the setting for the game - the faux-organic machines, the tribal factions, the gigantic ruins - is just so darn... cool! The story gets so much more interesting in the second half when you start investigating humanity's downfall and revival. Where Horizon loses a star is rewards and progression. Quests give lots of XP which is useful. But you never get any useful items from them, only generic reward boxes. The merchants have nothing worth buying, so you end up with loads of currency - then when you reach the big city about a third of the way through the game, you can probably afford a couple of the best weapons/armour in the base game. The collectibles only have generic rewards taped to them, which is sinful. Collectibles with no rewards, and rewards that are too easy to obtain, in the same game! I'm miffed. So I was very happy to see them fix it in the DLC!!! In the new area, collectibles ARE the currency and you can get unique weapon/armour modifiers from doing quests.

Honestly, I knew of this game for quite a while but only the title and that the player hunts machines that looks like animals. One day I saw a promotion and I decided to buy it (it's an open-world game and I'm a huge fan of the genere). The intro was captivating for me - a baby girl, a viking looking father figure (I'm a father of a daughter too). I didn't understand how the first four hours of gameplay passed. And that was just the beginning. Then the story hit me... I haven't felt like that since my first playthrough of the Witcher 3. Roaming the wilderness, unraveling the past and understanding why everything is as is in this universe. I didn't feel for a second that something is boring and repeating (like in Assassins Creed: Black Flag - another of my favorite games). Well, not everything is brilliant in the game and some things have old school vibe (for example - cinematics have "Witcher 2" vibe but I'm cool with that, because that's another of my favorite games). All in all - this game is worth every penny! It took me 100 gameplay hours to complete it including the "Frozen Wilds" DLC. At this moment I'm playing "New game+" and I'm having the same fun except I know the story and that sense of wonder is gone. Horizon: Zero Dawn became one of the games that I'd sell my soul to forget the story and play it once more without knowing the ending! I just can't wait the release of Horizon: Forbidden West for PC and I'm sure I'm going to preorder it the first day it's announced just because I love Zero Dawn.

just beat this game on ps4 and for those of you that doesn't have a playstation, this is your chance to play a really good game. it's been years since i played something good like that it's an action-adventure RPG game a lot of exploration, side missions, collectables, upgrades etc very beautiful enviorments, and amazing story that makes you want to keep playing all the time my recommendation - don't rush into the main story. exlore, make side missions, learn to fight better. the game will be very hard to understand in the begining but once you learn it, it becomes REALLY fun 10/10 for me.

I'm very impressed. Some games feel very console/controller-centric. You can feel it in areas like camera & character movement, aiming (and some arbitrary hit/miss), etc. - and this is one of those games. It feels like a game made to be played on consoles with a controller, which is normally a liability in my book - but dammit if it doesn't deliver in nearly every other area. The voice work, story, and pacing are all top notch. The music is exceptionally good and it looks beautiful (despite being pretty easy on the hardware - runs MUCH smoother than, say, BL3 or AC: Oddessy). But the real star here is the gameplay. I generally want firearms in my ranged combat - just not usually a fan of the archery. In games like Crysis and Far Cry I'll never use the bow - just feels like once you've mowed down enemies with a Kriss Vector or picked them off with an SA-50, throwing pointy sticks at them feels like the definition of a half-measure. But here it just works. The "thwak!" of the arrow landing right in the sweet spot of the robo-dino's special area and the subsequent "ka-boom!" when it explodes is just not something that gets old. I also can't remember the last time I liked the protagonist this much. She's the anti-Jason Brody; no whining about Lisa, no whinging every time an animal needs dressing, this girl can hold her mud. For thirty bucks? That's a lot of well-made game for your money.

This is probably one of the most fun post-apocalyptic games I've played in a while. Countless little scraps of lore, excellent if somewhat predictable story with enough twists and reveals to stay interesting (avoid spoilers; it's worth it for your own guessing and theory-crafting as the story unfolds), beautiful attention to detail and world-building, and a protagonist that is actually really likeable for once. Aloy does risk being a bit of a Mary Sue at times, but remains down to earth throughout, and the power fantasy aspect is a refreshing change from endless hobbled anti-heroes. Personally I'd suggest playing on Story or Easy to avoid the (many, many) robot battles outstaying their welcome as you level up across the tribal wasteland, but it's a glorious romp either way, with delightful little elements of skill in taking down the larger challenges. Equipment choices let you really customize and approach combat in a variety of ways, from stealth to heavy combat to more tactical hunting. The robot types are varied enough, and there's just enough sci-fi to keep the game interesting. The PC port is generally excellent, optimized pretty well, and the game well worth your time. The DLC integrates nicely into the flow of the main game, rather than feeling like some random tacked-on entry, and has some of the best terrain and animal detail I've seen. If I have any critiques, the controls end up requiring you to hold buttons down consistently to accomplish basic tasks, but aside from that, the experience was a blast start to finish. I'd have liked a bit more story and a little less open-world as the world itself does risk becoming a little rinse-and-repeat after a while, but there's just enough detail scattered around to keep exploring interesting. I can only hope Forbidden West's port is as good and makes it to GOG to complement Zero Dawn.