Review
Played on: PlayStation 4Released: 2017
Moving away from their Killzone franchise, Horizon Zero Dawn is Sony's dutch, first party developer, Guerilla Games' first take on an open world game. With, what is perhaps, one of the worst and non-descriptive titles in years. Set in an overgrown, post-apocalyptic, landscape blended with high-tech remnants of buildings and robotic animals. You play as, red-headed, Aloy.
All the way from her childhood she's been taught by an outcast of a large tribe, which rule the lands you roam. She finds a hologram remnant device, which allows her to learn special abilities and connects her to the past technology of the ancients. Continuing in her adulthood, you learn to explore the world and the secrets it contains, not only about the present tribe conflicts, but the how significant the story and decisions of the ancient modern technology used to be.
HZD plays like a typical third person game, albeit, with a foot in many genres. Blending action, stealth and exploring adventure and many RPG elements. It's a bold change of landscape for the developer, coupled with a lot of daring ideas put into the mix. It's an almost stone age setting, yet with stealth action gameplay featuring bows against massive robotic animals. It's different, ambitious in scale with incredible visuals; does it live up to it's hype from the trailers?
The short answer is yes. A technically impressive title through and through, but the long haul of a playthrough perhaps dampens the experience somewhat. HZD delivers what it promised, breathtaking visuals and scope, plus solid gameplay. But it falls into the dangerous pit that plagues a lot of open world releases; outstaying it's welcome with repetitiveness in an empty shell of a vast landscape. Don't get me wrong here, it's one of the finest releases this year, a real PS4 system pusher.
Let's take a closer look at what I mean.
NZDs gameplay is based on a melee and bow shooting. Stealth is heavily emphasised, slowing down the pace compared to what I expected. You're forced to scout the environments, lure enemies into one-on-one fights and take them down without bringing too much attention to yourself. There's a lot of extra skills to unlock with experience points and a selection of bows for close, fast or sniping combat. Even various explosives traps at your disposal.
There are human enemies too, however, they seem more of an after-thought and work as stupid cannon fodder. The animal robots bring the much needed variation and are the stars of the show. Each robot type attacks in different ways, some are even peaceful until you engage them. Others are so huge you need to climb up to scale them, a breathtaking experience the first time you try!
There's no doubt the visuals are a treat for the eye. The engine beautifully renders extremely detailed characters and close up details of nature and robots. Wind blowing in the trees and the dense foliage makes for the most impressive parts, especially when the sun bounces it's reflections off various surfaces. It's an impressive scale to the world too, with lots of detail far into the distance.
It's one of the prettiest releases on the system, or in it's generation in general, especially considering the 1080p resolution, double that for PS4 Pro owners. Another example that exclusives end up looking a step above the multi-platform releases.
I really appreciate how detailed they've made small features like Aloy's hair and face. It looks impressively detailed up close, as do all the characters that appear in cutscenes. The only visual gripe I have, tied in with the enjoyment, is that the world looks a little barren at times. There's a lot of repetition going on, that red sneaking grass repeats itself everywhere and there's an alike desert, snow and woodland scenery repeated throughout the map.
Areas can feel a little empty with a few robots thrown in. I guess this isn't unusual in for open world titles and Far Cry 4, review here, had some of the same issues. Especially, when there's little actual interaction with the world, you sort of just walk through it to reach places. I would've preferred more climbing and exploration, like in a Tomb Raider title, to ground the sensation of a more interactive world.
Combat is satisfying to control, but challenging, quite frustratingly so. If you plan on simply brute forcing your way through, sticking only to the main missions, you'll most likely hit a wall of difficulty at some point. The enemies will be at a far to high level, but it's positive to see the player rewarded for grinding some side-missions to level up.
A tough playthrough, which thankfully can be altered by difficulty settings, but the unforgiving alertness of lots of enemies when breaking stealth becomes frustrating. It goes from satisfying sneaky kills, with bow shooting precision, to a repetitive melee mashing chaos as you desperately try to dodge roll over and over to avoid attacks and gain some distance from the enemies.
I wish the enemies were less arrow sponges too, some require tedious amounts of shooting to take down. Amidst a chaotic dodge roll fight, I found the traps and trip wires difficult to use. As such, I'd resort to take them down one standard arrow at a time, a painfully slow process. As I progressed the ability tree, it eased some of the frustration as I became powerful enough to survive even the chaotic brawls. My recommendation is to read the upgrade tree thoroughly and go for upgrades that eases combat.
The boss fights I ended up disliking. They just throw everything you learned about stealth out the window and feel incredibly unfair. I ended up having to pull down the difficulty halfway, something I rarely need to.
Overall, I really enjoyed myself. It's a game that pushes a lot of new ideas into a truly ambitious setting. A strong female protagonist and a blend of high tech futuristic elements, set in a sort of stone age era, makes for a very unique and pretty post-apocalyptic world. The story takes you across icy mountains, dense woodlands and rocky deserts with enough variation within the main missions to keep you interested, the rest of the content outstays it's welcome though.
While I did enjoy playing through the main story and looking at the stunning visuals, I found the world a little repetitive and lacking depth. Side-missions feel lacklustre and serve only as XP grinds. I never felt like I wanted to care much about the characters that weren't in the main story. There's no real exploring or climbing around the environments to actually give the world a grounded experience for the long run.
The complaints, however, don't outweigh the fact that Guerilla Games have truly developed a great new series here, which I really enjoyed playing for hours. It's unique art style, setting and enemy design really intrigued me. I really couldn't tell how the game would span out.
If comparisons are to be made, I'd slightly recommend Rise Of The Tomb Raider over this, although ROTTR is more linear and tightly structured, albeit with better variation. For this year though, I doubt any exclusive for PS4 will surpass Horizon: Zero Dawn!
Overall, I really enjoyed myself. It's a game that pushes a lot of new ideas into a truly ambitious setting. A strong female protagonist and a blend of high tech futuristic elements, set in a sort of stone age era, makes for a very unique and pretty post-apocalyptic world. The story takes you across icy mountains, dense woodlands and rocky deserts with enough variation within the main missions to keep you interested, the rest of the content outstays it's welcome though.
While I did enjoy playing through the main story and looking at the stunning visuals, I found the world a little repetitive and lacking depth. Side-missions feel lacklustre and serve only as XP grinds. I never felt like I wanted to care much about the characters that weren't in the main story. There's no real exploring or climbing around the environments to actually give the world a grounded experience for the long run.
The complaints, however, don't outweigh the fact that Guerilla Games have truly developed a great new series here, which I really enjoyed playing for hours. It's unique art style, setting and enemy design really intrigued me. I really couldn't tell how the game would span out.
If comparisons are to be made, I'd slightly recommend Rise Of The Tomb Raider over this, although ROTTR is more linear and tightly structured, albeit with better variation. For this year though, I doubt any exclusive for PS4 will surpass Horizon: Zero Dawn!
