Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

Fun game with great graphics and good story. If it didn't have the spyware and were not one of those that adopted the woke trend of making player characters less beautiful and more "average" looking, I'd give it the full 5 stars. Because of those latter two issues I waited to get this until I could get it for under $20.

There are 2 good things about the game. The world design that is gorgeous with incredible environmental effect and the story about the world. Everything else is meh at best and absolute garbage at worst. Most of the main plot flows like a movie and not in a good way, there’s so many cut scenes that it becomes annoying, i want to play a game not see a movie. The initial part of the game is so predictable, all the interesting characters that the game sets up die 2 minutes after and i just don’t care about the rest. The dialog is atrocious, the voice acting is mediocre, and those facial animations are completely bland. Boring combat, boring side quests boring skills tree. Nothing feels special, no special attacks, all the weapons feel the same, there is no sense of progression or improvement. This is stealth/bow simulator with no alternative because melee combat is almost non-existent. The game is way too difficult in normal and incredibly repetitive.

the best

This game looks pretty. That's the only good thing I can say about it. Played about halfway through on PS4, and every second annoyed me more than the one before. I've seen a lot of praise of the voice-acting, but that was quite literally the thing that drove me over the edge and made me uninstall it. I gave it to a friend to play because he was interested, and he called me a few days later and said the same things. The story is about as basic as it gets, very predictable. The gameplay loop gets boring quickly. The combat is decent, but not good enough to keep doing. Sure, it's an open world with side quests - three different side quests that you repeat way too often thoughout the map. There's very little variety. Enemies are the same, very little variety. To date, the only game company that knows how to do open world is Rockstar. No one seems to be able to capture what makes their games amazing. Companies make their games open world because that's the trend, but they don't know how to make them immersive. The sidequests that exist in the game serve only to add hours to a game giving the false impression that there is value in them. I have never been so irritated by a game and the way you are treated like a moron who will just lap up any generic story under the guise of pretty graphics is pretty insulting. I would risk any paradox to go back in time and tell myself not to waste a minute with this game.

rt