How much you enjoy Horizon: Zero Dawn, a post-apocalyptic open world game where you shoot arrows at robot dinosaurs, is decided mostly by whether you've played any other open world game recently. In your first hour, you'll immediately recognise all the other bits from all the other games you've already played; oh look, I can pick herbs and craft carrying bags like in Far Cry. And just look at that icon strewn map and those Assassin Creed climbable towers. It's not a promising start.
Playing a bit longer, you start to realise how it surpasses a lot of its obvious inspirations. For instance, whereas a typical ubisoft game would have you climb 20 or more towers across a map, Horizon only has five, so it doesn't get tedious. And each one is unique situation, to make it memorable. And each tower is actually a giant robot sauropod wearing an electric sombrero, which is cool as shit. Horizon knows that repetition is the killer of fun in all open world games, which is why it aims to avoid making you repeat any particular task too many times and any actual repetition is disguised by clever level/scenery design.
On top of that, Horizon has a pretty damn good story by the standards of most mainstream video-games. The protagonist is this ginger warrior brave, picking through the ruins of our civilization, trying to figure out what happened and also how to stop the robot mega-fauna from ending all life as we know it. There actually is a highly elaborate and detailed explanation as to what the hell is going on, and I admire that it actually goes to so much trouble to justify a game that is chiefly about fighting robots.
The fights themselves are reasonably fun. It revolves around scrambling around a fearsome war machine, trying to shoot bits of it off with a puny bow and arrow as it shovels boulders, missiles, lasers and all manner of killamagigs your way. Learning how to take the suckers down is usually fun, but unfortunately some of the fights can be a bit drawn out, with you plinking tiny bits of health off of the game's metal alligators and t-rexes. You can never take the bigger beasts down with one especially well aimed shot - it requires dozens. I never got bored of killing robots, but once you figure out the best way to smash them then the bigger fights become a test of patience rather than skill.
Horizon is a cut above the rest. It's a scrumptious gourmet feast of a game, but it comes after we've been stuffed with insipid, triple A big macs. Give yourself a break from these things before trying it.
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How much you enjoy Horizon: Zero Dawn, a post-apocalyptic open world game where you shoot arrows at robot dinosaurs, is decided mostly by whether you've played any other open world game recently. In your first hour, you'll immediately recognise all the other bits from all the other games you've already played; oh look, I can pick herbs and craft carrying bags like in Far Cry. And just look at that icon strewn map and those Assassin Creed climbable towers. It's not a promising start.
Playing a bit longer, you start to realise how it surpasses a lot of its obvious inspirations. For instance, whereas a typical ubisoft game would have you climb 20 or more towers across a map, Horizon only has five, so it doesn't get tedious. And each one is unique situation, to make it memorable. And each tower is actually a giant robot sauropod wearing an electric sombrero, which is cool as shit. Horizon knows that repetition is the killer of fun in all open world games, which is why it aims to avoid making you repeat any particular task too many times and any actual repetition is disguised by clever level/scenery design.
On top of that, Horizon has a pretty damn good story by the standards of most mainstream video-games. The protagonist is this ginger warrior brave, picking through the ruins of our civilization, trying to figure out what happened and also how to stop the robot mega-fauna from ending all life as we know it. There actually is a highly elaborate and detailed explanation as to what the hell is going on, and I admire that it actually goes to so much trouble to justify a game that is chiefly about fighting robots.
The fights themselves are reasonably fun. It revolves around scrambling around a fearsome war machine, trying to shoot bits of it off with a puny bow and arrow as it shovels boulders, missiles, lasers and all manner of killamagigs your way. Learning how to take the suckers down is usually fun, but unfortunately some of the fights can be a bit drawn out, with you plinking tiny bits of health off of the game's metal alligators and t-rexes. You can never take the bigger beasts down with one especially well aimed shot - it requires dozens. I never got bored of killing robots, but once you figure out the best way to smash them then the bigger fights become a test of patience rather than skill.
Horizon is a cut above the rest. It's a scrumptious gourmet feast of a game, but it comes after we've been stuffed with insipid, triple A big macs. Give yourself a break from these things before trying it.