Horizon Zero Dawn

Haggisman said:
Is this still worth getting? Had it on my wishlist for a while and it's on sale atm, but considering it's essentially a 6 year old game, does it feel dated?
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I actually started playing it again over the weekend after getting the lego tallneck (stopped about a year ago after 16 hours as got open world fatigue).

It looks fantastic, stands up against modern games easily and the gameplay experience is very fluid and well thought out.
 
So, I have finally finished Horizon Zero Dawn and the Frozen Wilds. something around 99% completion. I am glad I did all the side missions before doing the main story missions. Going back to do the side missions would have felt hollow. The story is great. The characters are all done so well. Really got into it and felt a bit emotional at spots. It looks amazing too.

However, I did find the combat a bit janky to be honest. It all felt very samy. And over use of the Focus's vision mode.

I did enjoy my play through. The story made the game. Now I know the story, I can't see myself playing it through again.
 
Oh, sorry, one thing I forgot. The climbing!! I mean why bother? The only hard thing about climbing in this game was finding the starting spot. At the start I used to try and aim where I wanted to go with each jump. I did this until I realised that it didn't matter, just grab the first ledge and hold the up button and off Aloy goes up the side of the mountain or whatever with no problems at all. And then there is the dramatic slowdowns as you jumped certain gaps. Why? It's not like you were going to fall or that you were in any real control anyway.

There is one in the Frozen Wilds that made me laugh. It's at the top right of the map in the almost closed off section where you fight the Rockbreaker in the Claws Beneath mission. There is a V-shaped crack between two mountains and bottom of the V is blocked off. To get into this area you have to climb up the two handholds on the outside and then make a jump across to the inside. It makes one of those dramatic leaps each time. Which is funny, because you are barely off the ground as the lump of stone that's stopping you from just walking through is lower than the handhold you just jumped to. Aloy could have just as easily jumped up on the stone and jumped down the other side.

Which is my personal bugbear in some of these games. Aloy is this amazingly athletic person, who has been trained all her life to climb, hunt, swim etc. etc. She can scale up the highest mountains with ease and fly through the air when jumping across wide gaps. Yet she gets stumped by a small rock in other places. At the very least you should be able to jump or climb up on rocks, tables, buildings, ledges etc that are around the same height as the character.
 
opethdisciple said:
Recently completed this.

It wasn't bad but equally didn't enjoy it much either.

I found the combat very hard and frustrating and had to lower the difficulty just to get on with the game.
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I found the combat in this game great, it was tough to start with but once you unlock the better weapons and learn to use them and get to know your enemies it's easy. I played on the hardest setting.
 
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Yeah you lot have twisted my arm, I'm def replaying it on the pc haha! It's annoying the sequel isn't on there yet? Why so slow to release it? I loved the 2nd one especially the beginning bit with the shuttle ;) that was hilarious!
 
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Found this game mundane if I'm honest.

The story line was not engaging. I was reaching for my phone during the cut scenes it was that boring.

And the combat I had on normal, and had to put it on easy as it was too hard!
 
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opethdisciple said:
Found this game mundane if I'm honest.

The story line was not engaging. I was reaching for my phone during the cut scenes it was that boring.

And the combat I had on normal, and had to put it on easy as it was too hard!
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I loved it and combat was easy after a while even on normal I found. It had the right balance. Started of challenging and as you got better gear it became easy.

I enjoyed it so much I did everything the game had to offer. The game that was mundane was returnal :p
 
TBH, I got really sucked into this game when I tried it for the second time but I know why:P

It's the thrill of fighting huge robot dinosaurs, upgrading gear/picking loadouts and the decent bow combat paired with the graphics, not some outstanding systems or multilayered story and characters. The game itself had quite a few flaws, the on-rails climbing was terrible, the chars were mostly rather flat and the story, while solid, was fairly predictable so you could see where it was going after a couple of hours.

Regarding combat, I felt it was actually too easy even on hard TBH, you didn't really need a lot of strategy after a while and the machines were easy to dodge.

I'd still rate it around 8/10, was pretty addictive for me, very good graphics, enjoyable combat and still an above average storyline overall. Also loved the running animations.

In comparison, the sequel is significantly worse and skews the balance of the first game in favour of more pointless upgrades, lots open world clutter and a story that's ploddy and rather uneventful even after 20-30h after which I took a break from the game. Found it hard to care.

It looks fantastic and improves on some of ZD's shortcomings when it comes to movement (paraglider, a bit better climbing etc.) but that's about it. Also, it's significantly harder (for bad reasons) so if someone had a hard time on lower difficulties in ZD, they're in for a fun ride:P
 
Amatsubu said:
Regarding combat, I felt it was actually too easy even on hard TBH, you didn't really need a lot of strategy after a while and the machines were easy to dodge.
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He also found returnal super hard (it ain't easy to be fair) and I think took him double the time it took me to complete it :p


Kelt said:
The opening scenario hooked me in, simply awesome.

Great game, and looking forward to the sequel, if/when it gets released for the PC.
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Agreed. For me it was a 9/10 and I am looking forward to the sequel to hit steam.
 
TNA said:
I loved it and combat was easy after a while even on normal I found. It had the right balance. Started of challenging and as you got better gear it became easy.

I enjoyed it so much I did everything the game had to offer. The game that was mundane was returnal :p
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Dude, please pick up Sekiro. Its such a wonderful game.

One of FromSoftware's best.

Its better than Elden Ring.
 
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