Horizon Zero Dawn

[Sprony]

Embargo is over. In short guys, Horizon doesn't do anything new, but it does everything incredibly well. It takes the best elements of open world games and mixes it together in a perfect greatest hits compilation.

Seriously, it's right up there with The Witcher 3 as far as open worlds go and that's coming from a guy who's really sick and tired of open world games.

[Deathy]

I think if someone had doubts in mind of getting a PS4, they should be convinced now.

[Sprony]

This game....

[-HP-]

Fuckin hell, are you guys playing this? The graphical fidelity feels like it comes from the future, how can a game so large be so polished and coherent. 

I'm about a third of the game in, and every hour surprised me with something, whether it's the story, environments, gameplay, etc. I went in with vaguely high expectations and the game is delivering big time. 

Haven't been this impressed with a game as a package in a while, if you own a ps4 getting this is a no brainer. 

[Sprony]

Yeah, I've been playing @(HP). What surprises me the most is the amount of story it has. Especially the first couple of hours feel like a Metal Gear Solid game with cutscene after cutscene. The beauty of it, it's all interesting. I want to know more about this world and where I normally get sidetracked in open world games, I'm so captivated by the story that I'm really focusing on the main quest.

[dux]

It certainly seems to be up there wit The Witcher 3 in terms of looks. Does it have any substance?

[AlexM]

If I'm not such a huge fan of farcry3/4 (I like them, I just didn't like them enough to play for more than 5 hours) will this game still appeal to me?

[-HP-]

1 hour ago, AlexM said:

If I'm not such a huge fan of farcry3/4 (I like them, I just didn't like them enough to play for more than 5 hours) will this game still appeal to me?

No offense to anyone who worked on both of those games, but I really didn't like neither of them, because they felt very formulaic. (Ubisoft tends to do that, specially with their open world games)

Horizon tries to embrace it's own DNA and stand by itself, I'd actually compare it more to Skyrim than to Far Cry games.

Also, there's a lot more stealth in here than I initially thought there was going to be, you genuinely need to respect every single enemy in the game, since they can all individually kill you in a couple of hits. Also, when there's packs of machines, there's a certain order you might want to kill them, for example, you probably wanna try and get the Watchers first, but if you get all of them the rest will probably just scatter or run away because they just lost their spotters. The AI is incredibly nuanced, it's a lot of fun to play around with it, specially once you unlock the posses/hack ability.

Just as in like any other open world game, you're gonna get to the point where things will start to get repetitive a little bit, this is where your playstyle should change a bit to spice things up. I completely changed my approach from stealth to hack/combat these last couple hours and it changes the minute to minute combat a lot.

@dux in terms of graphical fidelity is deffo up there with the Witcher 3, only completely different AD of course.

[Pampers]

great to see a new IP do so well

Edited March 6, 2017 by Pampers

[Guest]

I think Sprony put it best. The game really doesn't do anything groundbreaking. It just does everything with a refreshing degree of polish that you don't often see in these types of games.

The biggest thing that stands out to me is the amount of work and love they've put into building their characters and the world surrounding them. They respect the mystery of their world and leave lots of room for discovery. I explore every ruin I find, and any new information about the "old" world is genuinely exciting. I love that they are confident enough in their world design and characters to just take a step back and let curiosity drive the interaction with the game. ( atleast so far, there hasn't been any massive lore dumps in "journal entires" that I have no business knowing.)

I agree with HP also, I'd compare it to a Skyrim or a Witcher rather than a Far Cry.

Edited March 6, 2017 by nikkoship

[-HP-]

 

[-HP-]

[blackdog]

On 06/03/2017 at 7:11 PM, (HP) said:

No offense to anyone who worked on both of those games, but I really didn't like neither of them, because they felt very formulaic.

Horizon tries to embrace it's own DNA and stand by itself, I'd actually compare it more to Skyrim than to Far Cry games.

I dunno, I've seen the same "climb the giraffe-thing to unlock an area" kind of thing.

Anyway you would hope that with time passing, developers learn from others' mistakes and improve

[-HP-]

This game is fucking ridiculously beautiful, some spoiler free shots bellow, there's a few more I'd love to post but it would be major spoilers! Let's just say there's some environments on there you're not gonna be expecting.

[grapen]

That foliage..