Horizon Zero Dawn Review
A Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot
*Warning: May Contain Spoilers*
Originally Written: 10/02/2019
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 4
Genre: Action RPG
Release: February 28, 2017
Hey it's my first PS4 review, yay!!!
So I picked up a PS4 of my own relatively recently, I had gotten an Xbox One S at launch and instantly regretted it. Don't get me wrong I love my big white brick but Microsoft has absolutely shit the bed when it comes to exclusives this generation.
From God of War to Ratchet & Clank and even Bloodborne there were so many games I was missing out on and today we look at one that nobody could shut the fuck up about for the longest time.
And after playing it I can say it's for good reason, Horizon Zero Dawn is fantastic!
If you have somehow not played this game I am going to do my best to avoid as many spoilers as possible. I've stated before how I love the storytelling a good game is capable of, and Horizon has a story that while confusing at times, is really, really fun to see unravel.
This game has a mystery and a story to tell and I enjoyed every minute of it. The protaganist in this game is a young woman who was born motherless and raised as an outcast and shunned by her people for unknown reasons. I've heard this story before but I did love the characters here, her caretaker Rost and others really stuck with me.
But of course gotta nitpick here, the protagonist is named Aloy.
Aloy.
Right up there with names like Jet Brody or Stick Breitling as one of the dumbest goddamn names I have ever heard in my life.
I mean I do love the character, she is a strong, funny, and extremely versatile woman and Ashley Burch does a stellar job voicing her but jesus I can't get over that name. I mean come on Aloy? ALOY!?!
So anyway this is an open world game and I gotta admit these days when I hear that I roll my eyes. There was a time I would practically salivate at the idea of a massive open world to explore and traverse in video games but Ubisoft and so many others have damn near tainted that for me.
I heard that this game was different and took steps in the right direction to make it's open world fresh and fun again, and while I don't think it's flawless I do agree to an extent.
Let's start with a nitpick and go from there, this world is massive and traversing on foot is a pain in the ass sometimes. Not in the controls mind you, Aloy controls like a dream and I never had any major issues there, it's as you travel the world you'll want to collect items from the world itself.
Similar to say Dragon Age: Inquisition, but even more mandatory here since archery is Aloys main form of combat and running out of ammo will guarantee your demise.
So traveling upon machine horseback is sort of out of the question because you need to collect the health herbs or gather all the ridgewood you can for arrows. So it's a constant thing of travel a few feet, hop off get some material, hop on and do it again.
So traveling by steed is practically worthless as for fast traveling I don't get this thing where a game wants to limit how much you can fast travel, yes you crafted a massive open world Guerrilla Games I'm sure it wasn't easy but when I've gone to the same area before maybe don't make run across the same field again!
It takes an item in order to fast travel between different campfires you've discovered and there is a permanent pack you can purchase that you can use indefinitely but I didn't know about that until 20+ hours in and I had wasted resources on buying as many of the other packs as I could.
But the world itself is gorgeous to look at, at least this game is absolutely breathtaking at times, the game looks its best during the day admittedly anytime darkness started to fall I had to tinker with the settings so I could fucking see what the hell I was doing.
But anyway hearing the size of a world means nothing to me, what I want to know is what is in this massive world you've crafted.
Is there a Starbucks?
This is where Horizon Zero Dawn puts recent Assassin's Creed games to shame.
While you have your selection of story missions and side quests all with interesting characters and stories and will even reappear during the final mission if you aided them. There are also bandit camps with the best side character in the game, Cauldrons which are like dungeons you can explore and conquer in order to hack and override some of the various machines you encounter. This is how you can override a few to ride them although the game doesn't let you ride the ones you actually want to ride.
Let me ride a giant, flaming, metal T Rex Guerrilla Games for fuck's sake let my dreams come true!!
There's hunting grounds you can visit but my favorite are the Tallnecks.
Like your arbitrary Ubisoft towers climbing to the top of these will open up the map and allow to see more of your surroundings there, however instead of just a tower these lumbering machines are constantly moving and figuring out how to get to the top of them sometimes while avoiding or fighting enemies can be alot of fun.
At best of times it reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus and more games should remind me of Shadow of the Colossus because Shadow of the Colossus was the the cherry on top of a delicious fucking cake but I digress.
But I haven't really touched on what so many truly praise this game for, the gameplay.
It's good, it's really good. Fun, hectic and satisfying as all hell, I remember during one side quest I was doing I turned around into a giant metal crocodile and damn near pissed myself, I fought it off as best I could, firing fire arrows at it and finally killed it by aiming slowing down time and firing an arrow at the perfect place on it's body and killed it during mid lunge and I felt my balls grow three sizes that day.
There's a variety of different weapons aside from your basic arrows, I tried out the Ropecaster which wasn't my sort of thing, but tying down one monster while you deal with it's angry friend did come in handy.
I enjoyed the slingshot that i could fire different elemental type grenades from, that sure came in handy in a battle against a Thunderjaw.
I like this because you don't always have to fight these behemoths, you can simply sneak around them if you want, stealth kill them, override one and have it kill the others, there was one mission where I just stood on a perch where none could get to me and slowly picked off three different Chargers.
The variety of machines you fight is pretty wide although I will have to admit I was disappointed that the final boss was just a big machine I'd already fought before.
I mentioned crafting earlier and I was worried at first but it's really not difficult to create what you need in any given situation. And leveling up was a joy too since several of the upgrades I really enjoyed.
Like being able to call a ride at anytime whether you have overriden a monster or not or notching two and even three arrows with every shot.
There are a few more things that irritated me, there are times where you are given a moral choice or a certain dialogue option can be chosen when talking to someone. Now these are acted well as I said Ashley Burch is a goddamn treasure, but these felt shoehorned in and really unneeded.
Lip synching can be a goddamn mess if you care about that sort of thing, in full cutscenes it's fine but when getting side missions and in game scenes play, wow it's distracting.
And the loading screens man they weren't terrible but they were just long enough to be annoying especially when retrying a certain boss over and over again.
That's another thing I should say the game doesn't hold your hand I played on normal difficulty and got my shit wrecked several times, thankfully if you care about story more there is an easier setting or you can make the game harder if you want you fucking sadist.
And of course the game has New Game+ which is always a good thing, I could see myself playing this game again if I ever start streaming or something.
All in all Horizon Zero Dawn was a damn good time, there were a few headaches to be had but overall I really enjoyed my time here.
Horizon Zero Dawn receives my Silver Seal of Recommendation.
I look forward to revisiting this game again when I get around to reviewing its expansion but for now we part ways little huntress.
Seriously though, Aloy?
*Warning: May Contain Spoilers*
Originally Written: 10/02/2019
 |
| This game is metal as hell |
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 4
Genre: Action RPG
Release: February 28, 2017
Hey it's my first PS4 review, yay!!!
So I picked up a PS4 of my own relatively recently, I had gotten an Xbox One S at launch and instantly regretted it. Don't get me wrong I love my big white brick but Microsoft has absolutely shit the bed when it comes to exclusives this generation.
From God of War to Ratchet & Clank and even Bloodborne there were so many games I was missing out on and today we look at one that nobody could shut the fuck up about for the longest time.
And after playing it I can say it's for good reason, Horizon Zero Dawn is fantastic!
If you have somehow not played this game I am going to do my best to avoid as many spoilers as possible. I've stated before how I love the storytelling a good game is capable of, and Horizon has a story that while confusing at times, is really, really fun to see unravel.
This game has a mystery and a story to tell and I enjoyed every minute of it. The protaganist in this game is a young woman who was born motherless and raised as an outcast and shunned by her people for unknown reasons. I've heard this story before but I did love the characters here, her caretaker Rost and others really stuck with me.
But of course gotta nitpick here, the protagonist is named Aloy.
 |
| She's still really cool though |
Right up there with names like Jet Brody or Stick Breitling as one of the dumbest goddamn names I have ever heard in my life.
I mean I do love the character, she is a strong, funny, and extremely versatile woman and Ashley Burch does a stellar job voicing her but jesus I can't get over that name. I mean come on Aloy? ALOY!?!
So anyway this is an open world game and I gotta admit these days when I hear that I roll my eyes. There was a time I would practically salivate at the idea of a massive open world to explore and traverse in video games but Ubisoft and so many others have damn near tainted that for me.
I heard that this game was different and took steps in the right direction to make it's open world fresh and fun again, and while I don't think it's flawless I do agree to an extent.
Let's start with a nitpick and go from there, this world is massive and traversing on foot is a pain in the ass sometimes. Not in the controls mind you, Aloy controls like a dream and I never had any major issues there, it's as you travel the world you'll want to collect items from the world itself.
Similar to say Dragon Age: Inquisition, but even more mandatory here since archery is Aloys main form of combat and running out of ammo will guarantee your demise.
So traveling upon machine horseback is sort of out of the question because you need to collect the health herbs or gather all the ridgewood you can for arrows. So it's a constant thing of travel a few feet, hop off get some material, hop on and do it again.
So traveling by steed is practically worthless as for fast traveling I don't get this thing where a game wants to limit how much you can fast travel, yes you crafted a massive open world Guerrilla Games I'm sure it wasn't easy but when I've gone to the same area before maybe don't make run across the same field again!
It takes an item in order to fast travel between different campfires you've discovered and there is a permanent pack you can purchase that you can use indefinitely but I didn't know about that until 20+ hours in and I had wasted resources on buying as many of the other packs as I could.
 |
| I just don't understand these damn things |
But anyway hearing the size of a world means nothing to me, what I want to know is what is in this massive world you've crafted.
Is there a Starbucks?
This is where Horizon Zero Dawn puts recent Assassin's Creed games to shame.
 |
| RUN THE FUCK AWAY!!!!! |
Let me ride a giant, flaming, metal T Rex Guerrilla Games for fuck's sake let my dreams come true!!
There's hunting grounds you can visit but my favorite are the Tallnecks.
Like your arbitrary Ubisoft towers climbing to the top of these will open up the map and allow to see more of your surroundings there, however instead of just a tower these lumbering machines are constantly moving and figuring out how to get to the top of them sometimes while avoiding or fighting enemies can be alot of fun.
At best of times it reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus and more games should remind me of Shadow of the Colossus because Shadow of the Colossus was the the cherry on top of a delicious fucking cake but I digress.
 |
| By far my favorite side quest |
It's good, it's really good. Fun, hectic and satisfying as all hell, I remember during one side quest I was doing I turned around into a giant metal crocodile and damn near pissed myself, I fought it off as best I could, firing fire arrows at it and finally killed it by aiming slowing down time and firing an arrow at the perfect place on it's body and killed it during mid lunge and I felt my balls grow three sizes that day.
There's a variety of different weapons aside from your basic arrows, I tried out the Ropecaster which wasn't my sort of thing, but tying down one monster while you deal with it's angry friend did come in handy.
I enjoyed the slingshot that i could fire different elemental type grenades from, that sure came in handy in a battle against a Thunderjaw.
 |
| Oh. My. God. |
The variety of machines you fight is pretty wide although I will have to admit I was disappointed that the final boss was just a big machine I'd already fought before.
I mentioned crafting earlier and I was worried at first but it's really not difficult to create what you need in any given situation. And leveling up was a joy too since several of the upgrades I really enjoyed.
Like being able to call a ride at anytime whether you have overriden a monster or not or notching two and even three arrows with every shot.
There are a few more things that irritated me, there are times where you are given a moral choice or a certain dialogue option can be chosen when talking to someone. Now these are acted well as I said Ashley Burch is a goddamn treasure, but these felt shoehorned in and really unneeded.
 |
| I like dialogue choices and options but these are so infrequent |
Lip synching can be a goddamn mess if you care about that sort of thing, in full cutscenes it's fine but when getting side missions and in game scenes play, wow it's distracting.
And the loading screens man they weren't terrible but they were just long enough to be annoying especially when retrying a certain boss over and over again.
That's another thing I should say the game doesn't hold your hand I played on normal difficulty and got my shit wrecked several times, thankfully if you care about story more there is an easier setting or you can make the game harder if you want you fucking sadist.
And of course the game has New Game+ which is always a good thing, I could see myself playing this game again if I ever start streaming or something.
All in all Horizon Zero Dawn was a damn good time, there were a few headaches to be had but overall I really enjoyed my time here.
 |
| For when your name is really, really stupid |
Horizon Zero Dawn receives my Silver Seal of Recommendation.
I look forward to revisiting this game again when I get around to reviewing its expansion but for now we part ways little huntress.
Seriously though, Aloy?
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