In 2015’s E3, I saw Guerrilla’s newest project at the time’s first trailer. The game was called “Horizon: Zero Dawn” and I was instantly in love with the concept and its world. The mashing of old and new. The tribe society living humans contrasted with new and futuristic robots that populated the world. In the background, the remains of our present society, skyscrapers now ruined, cars now abandoned and rusted from the passage of time. It was a major motivation for me purchasing a ps4 and the game, and now that I got them and played it, I’ll use this review to express my feelings about this gem of a game.
The Game
Horizon is an open world adventure game and by god, it plays beautifully. You play as Alloy, a motherless child born in front of All-Mother, the diety of the Nora tribe. She was outcast by the High Matriarchs and raised by Rost, another outcast who agreed to raise her as if she was his daughter. She spent most of her childhood training for the proving, a test in which young Nora tribesmen and women would have to past in order to become a brave. This was the perfect opportunity for Alloy to return to the tribe and lose her status of outcast. She finishes the proving, even finishing it in first place, but an attack from another faction threatens the lives of everyone competing. she survives the massacre and swears to find out who ordered the attack and why and to avenge the death of her father figure Rost, who died while saving her. And so the story of Alloy and the story of Horizon begins. A truly great story That I won’t be spoiling it here, instead I just urge you to go play the game as it deserves your money, and now that the game has been out for a good time you can buy it at a good discount easily.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay, the game has the marks of a normal adventure game. There are a number of weapons to use, from a spear to a couple of bows, a rope launcher to trap monsters, a slingshot to throw bombs, etc. I found myself using mainly the hunting bow and the slingshot at times for AoE damage and status effects. Alloy also has four skill trees with about 12 skills each, from skills tailored to a more ranged playstyle to a more melee base one, controlling machines or just expanding the quantity/quality of loot. You win one point to spend on your skills whenever you level up or you can also gain points by finishing some quests. If you take considerable amounts of damage, you can either drink a health potion or eat some herbs that you can gather all around the world. You can also gather materials like wood to craft ammo for your weapons. Have in mind that crafting ammo requires shards, that are also used as currency to buy anything. Killing robots also give you loot that you can use to buy things or modifications to enhance your weapon’s and armor’s stats. These modifications come in handy to design weapon kits that exploit certain machines weaknesses or to bolster your defense against status ailments. Other than killing, you can take control of certain machines, either to serve as mounts, to help you transverse the world, or to help you fighting other foes. The kinds of robots you can take control of depends on what cauldron activities you finish. In these underground facilities, you have to override its core, solving puzzles and having small boss fights in the process. There are five of these spread around the world and each one gives you the power to override certain types of machines. There are also a lot of collectibles to collect, remnants of the old world to explore and a lot of ground to cover. I’ll talk about this more when I’ll talk more about the map and give my opinion about what it probably is my only gripe about this game.
The World
The world of Horizon is just stunning. That’s it, the end. Now really, It is gorgeous, definitely wallpaper material easily. Just like I said before, the melding of an old, nature dominated world with great forests and plains, and the remnants of modern life structures, now rotting away and being conquered by nature once more. The detail is astonishing and the graphics are top notch. The map is full of things to do and discover as I said a bit ago. From collectibles to bandit camps to liberate, this game will grant you hours upon hours of content to experience. But can too much stuff also be a bad thing? This game, just like most of the games that belong in its genre, has a fast travel feature. In this one, you can use a consumable item (Fast Travel Pack) to travel to any camp you have already visited or buy a Golden Fast Travel Pack in a shop which grants you indefinite fast travels. You see now, I’m the kind of person that usually don’t use fast travel a lot, I enjoy going around the world and seeing everything I can even when I’m mostly just backtracking. Now with Horizon, that didn’t happen. There are too many machine camps in my opinion and too close to each other. This made me tread the world at an unreasonable pace unless I just wanted to pick a fight with everyone. This is my only gripe with this game, so I think it says a lot about the overall quality of it if the only downside I can think of is a mostly trivial thing that will go mostly unnoticed especially by people that don’t mind or prefer to fast travel.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I find “Horizon: Zero Dawn” to be one of the best open world adventure games I have played so far. From the story and characters to the gameplay, world and overall amount of content. I haven’t played the DLC “The Frozen Wilds” yet but I’m definitely gonna play it without a doubt. This game gets my utmost recommendation to everyone who enjoys this type of games and has a ps4.
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