Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

The good: The protagonist of this game is one of the best written characters I've ever seen. She's full of personality, and while still selfless and kind, her heroic traits never flatten her or make her less compelling to follow. Her story maps perfectly into the themes of the world and both come to very satisfying conclusions by the end. The game is full of hunter-gatherer-inspired mechanics that make the world feel distinctly neolithic at the same time as apocalyptic. The animal-shaped machines all help maintain that combined atmosphere and the many hunting tools at your disposal invite you to plan and prepare ahead. The bad: Unfortunately all those excellent mechanics are either completely neglected or abused to the point of exhaustion. Time and time again the game shows the developer did not trust the playerbase. They did not trust the players to sit with a sparsely populated valley, because every two feet there are machines that will overlap with other machines so that you're always fighting a swarm. They also did not trust the player to be enjoy cracking a challenge with guile and cleverness because every other mission ends with a cutscene in which the protagonist stands in the middle of a field to be surprised by an army of machines and/or humans. So much for preparation. And finally they did not trust the player enough to handle scarcity, but also to be normal about crafting and looting. So you end up with a gigantic inventory full of crap that's way more than a human could carry, but somehow not enough to make what you need to survive in the wild. Every battle you churn through more material than someone would find in a lifetime. The economy of the game collapses in the first act. I can't help but lament how the dumb genre requirements (huge map, infinite enemies, tons of crafting and lots of action combat) prevented the world to feel as alive and real as the story and the invididual mechanics promised.

The story is bland, the characters are uninteresting. The combat and graphics are nice, but get tiring. After a while, you realise it is just a very long game in which nothing holds your intrigue and playing it feels like a chore.

This is doubtlessly a great game. Fantastic graphics, imaginative and varied world, excellent sound-work, good tension arc. I'd peg it more as an action-rPG with a minor 'r', because you, as a player, have very little choice in shaping the story. Occasionally you get to pick among 3 options (which are always 'angry/forceful', 'clever/deflecting', and 'empathetic/nice'), but that's all. The game is extremely combat heavy with some storytelling cutscenes, so don't expect building/using any social skills. Stealth gameplay is decent, but you will starve yourself of XP and mats and you will end up in forced (boss/arena-style) fights anyway, so... meh. Exploration feels quite thin, with collectibles too sparse to make for enjoyable hunting, yet if you get the maps for them, the 'hunt' deteriorates to 'run to map marker to pick up stuff'. That said, some of the vistas in the game are the most beautiful I've ever seen, so it's still worth it to stop and sniff the roses, as it were. The story captivated me, I loved all the hidden texts and holos you could collect to learn about the lore. But... I cannot avoid mentioning one thing which really did annoy me in the end, despite me trying my best to just ignore it: The game is extremely heavy-handed in communicating the general feeling of 'men = evil, stupid, or weak' vs. 'women = good, clever, and strong'. I prefer female protagonists and I do love well-written characters of either gender, but this game could have done with a bit more balance.

I'm so happy to now have a DRM-Free version of the game. I launched it yesterday on PC. My PC has an old GTX 970 GPU and an equally old Intel i5-6600 CPU, and I can run the game exactly like it runs on PS4 Pro. Knowing the game will now follow me as I upgrade my PC is why I love PC gaming. Uh... About the game: Well, I obviously loved it since I give 5 out of 5. 😀 I mostly played for the story and I'm happy to report that it's a very accessible game for beginners (I don't know about traditional "Accessibility" though...) The story is great, the visual are great... Even at full price, it's a good value!

You've seen all of the tropes and story beats in a game like this before but it all comes down in execution, which is something this game happily succeeds in. A particular blend of post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi, Fantasy and adventure propells this Hero's Journey, with Aloy herself (voiced by the lovely Ashley Burch) being an immensely likeable and plucky heroine. Not to mention what a genuine stunner this is too; You will definitely need to fine tune some settings to get it at the framerate you want but once you do, the ruined world of Horizon can be something to genuinely behold. Gameplay is also pretty solid too; Typical smash and grab against giant monsters and bandits n stuff, with an impressive difficulty cruve to master. Honestly, playing this gave me the vibes of not only something like Dragon Age Inqusition (ironic that Gureilla put out a better Bioware game in 2017 than the actual studio did) but also another Sony classic, the Jak & Daxter franchise. I'd say that's good company to be in.