Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

In one sentence: excellent story and setting! Wait, what, this is on GOG? First the PC release and now this? This is epic. I never played the PlayStation version so I cannot compare to it. If your PC is fast enough to run this then this is one of the most epic games you can play. I recommend going spoiler free into the story. It will unravel itself very well and will get your imagination going. They have really thought it well and the presentation is excellent. There are great twists along the way. If you are like me and like to use a bow in almost any game that has one, then this is definitely for you. The fighting is interesting and using the environment is very important to win some of the bigger robots. You will struggle in the beginning and will also end up totally overpowered towards the end. I have completed the main story and the expansion on normal difficulty, and if I could give you one good advice to help you out: buy a better bow!

The privacy issues a number of others have already pointed out are bad enough, but at least you can solve that by blocking the game in your firewall. You shouldn't have to, and GOG shouldn't allow this crap on their store in the first place, but since there is a way around that I wasn't going to let that stop me playing a game I already spent a fair few quid on. The game starts with a 5 minute unskippable cutscene which, since you can't alter the graphics settings beforehand, may run at rather a low frame rate for you as it did for me. This is irritating, but par for the course with Sony's usually poor PC ports I suppose. What killed it for me was the fact I couldn't get my Xbox One controller to work with the game, despite the game being so heavily designed around using a controller as so many other reviews have pointed out. I don't have room for a desk, so my computer is hooked up to my TV, so I can't even try playing with a keyboard and mouse anyway.

One of the best games that I've played in a long time! I found it thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end with only a few minor quibbles that hold it back from perfection. Pros: +Epic story with just the right mix of sci-fi thrown in. +Perfect voice acting. +Fantastic soundtrack. +Gameplay can be challenging but is also rewarding. +Suits different styles of play. You can sneak around and take out enemies with stealth or bypass them completely. Or you can rush in "guns blazing", so to speak. There's no wrong way to play. +Most character abilities and upgrades are useful, with only a few being filler. +Graphics are great. Weather, snow, and lighting effects all impress. +It's really well optimized. The difference between playing on my gtx1080 and rtx3070 wasn't much. +There's a ton on content. I did every quest except two and collected most items and it took me 80 hours. +Huge open world. I could go back now even after 80 hours and still find spots that I never visited. Cons: -Sony wants to spy on you. You can choose whether to send them basic data or allow full data collection, but you can't opt out. That's BS and the sole reason why I removed a star from my rating. -The writing is hit and miss. They don't exactly hit you over the head with the "girl power" hammer, but this game definitely has an agenda. Unfortunately, the writers follow Hollywood's lead by making their female characters look strong by surrounding them with weak male characters. Almost every male character is either an incompetent moron or an insufferable jerk, just to remind us how awesome the women are. Also, every time that Aloy speaks to a female character, you can expect the female equivalent of a circle jerk to ensue. -Some of the dialog cutscenes go on for way too long. Just get to the point! -A few minor bugs. Fell through the world once. Got stuck on a tree once. Enemies spawned in a weird place once. -The DLC is an oddly huge leap in difficulty.

and then read about the data collection of the game. Clearly a no go, so i seek my adventures elsewhere. Sad to see that buyers are no customers - rather data-milkcows meanwhile!

I own this game on PS4 as well as GOG now, and I've been quite enjoying replaying so far (I have the game up and running as I'm typing this review) You should definitely pick this game up on GOG, to support not only the DRM-free-ness of it, but also the wonderful 59.99 CAD Pricepoint. Props to Guerrilla for many many things. HOWEVER there are some specific issues about the PC port that you MUST be aware of. FIRST, the load times... they're genuinely unacceptable, even after optimizing the shaders (I have good faith this will be patched, but it's worth noting. If in the future this gets patched I will adjust my review to a higher rating, but regardless this section will remain.) This isn't a HUGE deal, since the game has barely any loading screens. Second of all, performance is wildly inconsistent, when this game runs, it runs WONDERFULLY, but very often it will randomly slow down to a shocking degree (think 1080 Medium Settings running at 30fps on an RTX 2070, while the 2070 USUALLY runs in the high 50's at 4K.) (Again I will adjust my score if this gets patched) This may be subjective, but... this port is VERY buggy, pop-in is akin to that neighbour that always bothers you, Aloy clips and stutters around obstacles, when on mounts at walking speed she jitters and twitches around like she's on... well, speed. Finally, and perhaps this is my gamer skillz failing me, playing this on normal difficulty feels... oddly brutal compared to my experiences on ps4 (And yes, I was playing on Normal there as well) I'm not confident this has anything to do with HZD, so I'm not going to let it colour my opinion of the game, I think it's worth pointing out though, in case anyone else wants a sanity check. Pick it up, if only to support the developers AND GOG. If this is your first time playing HZD I wish you the best of luck on PC, and caution you of the potential inconveniences that may occur. None of these are deal breakers and this game is worth working around them.