VideoGame So Good It's Bad
Yes, you read that right. Half the time I play this game, I get incredibly nervous — whether it be the vast, open desert making me feel incredibly lonely, or the claustrophobic depths of a cauldron giving me a weird mix of Alien and The Terminator. It's great.
The game is wonderful. The emotional story, breathtaking graphics, and tactics-rewarding gameplay all blend together to give an experience that few other games can provide. And let's not forget the musical score — how many other games can you think of that give you an emotional response just from opening the inventory menu?
Aloy is now one of my favourite characters in all of fiction, and HZD is easily on my list of favourite video games. It's my hope that this is the start of a franchise (I expect a trilogy at the least, with a few DL Cs per game). If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour — BUY IT!!
VideoGame Generic Title Unique Premise
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.
VideoGame Overshadowed by its Competitors
Horizon Zero Dawn has the misfortune of existing alongside two games with which it shares much of its DNA. The obvious one is Breath of the Wild, which released a week after HZD and outsold it by a factor of ten. The other, less obvious one is Far Cry Primal, which released a year earlier...and still outsold HZD despite its relative unpopularity and spin-off status.
All these titles are sprawling open world games with all the trappings thereof: towers/bonfires/tallnecks dot the landscape, and you can hardly make it a mile in any direction without running into an enemy camp. Fauna is abundant and hostile, and crafting materials populate the wilderness. Civilization is sparse and vulnerable, confined to periphery settlements that straddle each game's collection of diverse biomes.
The worlds themselves create an almost effortless sense of loneliness, of isolation. Bot W and Primal embrace this: they are light on dialogue, their characters portrayed more through deed than word. Quests are predominately simple, meant to guide you to new landmarks and contextualize your adventure. Neither Link nor Takkar speak a word of English the entire game.
HZD, in contrast, has a complex story and full dialogue trees. Aloy takes on errands small and large as she travels beyond the sacred land, and every bandit camp comes with a companion in the form of the sociopathic (and very hot) bounty hunter Nil. Aloy quips constantly: when the weather changes, when combat starts, and when she slides downhill. The game tries to break the silence whenever it can, leaving you little time to meditate on its environs.
The desolation of post-apocalyptic America feels further at odds with itself when paired with the game's enormous central settlement and its satellites, each populated with meaningless filler NP Cs. Machines, too, are everywhere; HZD's enemies are far more ubiquitous than either other game's. And the central story is much more ambitious and complex, almost to the point of distraction. It tugs at your attention constantly, dragging you back onto the beaten path. Explore at your leisure and an overleveled Aloy will strip away any sense of stakes, even on Ultra Hard.
Several of HZD's moment-to-moment mechanics aren't as well-contextualized or implemented, either. Bot W de-emphasizes resource gathering in favor of environmental puzzles and abundant weaponry, while Primal leans into it by depicting literal hunter-gatherer societies and a menagerie of wide-ranging animal companions to hunt and tame. Both stay light on the crafting; Bot W lets you become a culinary wizard and aspiring armorer while both games let you work to build a budding community. Primal even lets you assemble its arsenal, too. In either case, very little crafting is done for the sake of maintenance. Instead, it primarily facilitates character progression and, consequently, hardly ever feels like busywork.
The same cannot be said for HZD; you have a much greater variety of loot to acquire, and acquire it you must if you want to keep you pockets and quivers full. Traversal is a game of constant stop-and-go where you stop to slay a pack of machines every hundred yards to get special subwoofers for the single most useful ammunition in the game. If you try to take in the sights while you're out scavenging, be aware that your robo-horse won't trot for more than six seconds before coming to a full stop. This may be for the better, of course, because, without the DLC, you'll have to dismount every six seconds anyway to skin carcasses and pick herbs to stay flush with healing supplies. You'll need those turkey bones if you want to carry more than ten arrows per quiver, too, and their fatty meat is a necessity if you want to heal without burning through a dozen-dozen flowers' worth of poultices. And Robogod only knows how many boar skins you'll need to pay for a better bow or suit of armor (spoilers: at least 40 for most mid-tier equipment).
Ultimately, Bot W and Primal both demonstrate a greater understanding of what it actually means to be an open world game. The world itself is the centerpiece, and most everything else serves to accentuates it. HZD struggles with this; all too often, its world is simply where the game takes place. It is certainly a gorgeous, imaginative place, but it's not an especially compelling one.