Horizon: Zero Dawn Review

henriquejr

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Hi Everyone!

Some time ago I started playing Horizon: Zero Dawn, a PS4 game that you may have heard of/read about (or perhaps not :)), and I'd like to share my impressions and personal opinions about the game.

First of all, I’d like to thank my esteemed friends @Aubrielle, who promptly accepted doing the text revision, spelling & grammar check for me (you’ve been missed, Aubri :)), and @HiddenX who last year encouraged me to write an RPGWatch review for Firaxis’ XCOM 2, a daunting task I never dared to do. Consider this mini-review a byproduct of such encouragement.*

*The feeling is mutual, and I’m honored you’d think of me when writing up an article. <3 -Aubri


All plot info shared here is not that "spoilerish" since it’s available near the start of the game. EDIT: I finally finished the base game and its expansion.

PLOT INFO

The world in Horizon: Zero Dawn is post-apocalyptic: a thousand years ago, civilization as we know it vanished in the wake of a mysterious tragedy. The current residents of the region refer to the people of that long-lost society (i.e. us) as “The Old Ones”. Centuries later, the land has been reclaimed by nature and the world is dotted with primitive Iron Age tribes living in the ruins of a technologically advanced civilization. Robotic, animal-shaped creatures called “Machines” roam the countryside and have become increasingly hostile toward humans. And of course, as in every organized society, there are evildoers as well.

We play as Aloy, a young woman who was exiled from her tribe, the Nora, as soon as she was born. She was raised by a hunter named Rost, also an exile. In the game, all exiles (yes, there are some spread around the world) are called Outcasts. Rost acts as a mentor, teaching her how to hunt and how to take care of herself. Aloy’s training is focused on victory in the Proving – a rite of passage which will end her exile and create a home for her among the Nora. Who is Aloy’s mother? What terrible sins could Aloy have committed in order to get her sentenced even before she was born? Why are the machines getting angrier? These are some of the questions which will drive our red-haired huntress forward on her journey.

GRAPHICS/ENVIRONMENT

Please, don’t let the aforementioned expression “post-apocalyptic” draw you away from the game. No, there aren’t forests of blasted trees, or mutants, or a perpetually cloudy sky. Instead, small animals like foxes, boars, and rabbits dot the land. The flora is incredibly detailed: the landscape is vivid, lush with trees, grasses, bushes, cacti. There are rivers, low hills, tundra forests, snow-covered mountains, barren deserts, city ruins, and the game sports a dynamic weather system as well as day & night cycles. It’s a colorful world, definitely not the gloomy visions of post-apocalyptic hell we’re used to. The environments are amazing; the vistas, breathtaking.

Clothing and skin textures are high resolution, all of Aloy’s animations are fluid and nicely done, and her body reacts in a natural way to the terrain. I’m playing the game on my PS4 Pro coupled with a non-top model 4K HDR TV and graphically the game is outstanding, a real treat for the eyes. If there’s one problem I have, it’s the water rendering; it’s not on par with the rest of the game, and it really could be better.

The FOV is restricted, maybe a tradeoff in order to get some increase on performance, and the game has no FOV slider. Regarding performance, the game runs without hitches or hiccups. You’ll see loading screens only when you either boot up your game or die or do a fast travel. Aside from that, you can go from one end of the map to the other pretty smoothly.

GAMEPLAY

We start in a part of the map – the Embrace – which is an area of Nora territory nestled in a narrow mountain valley with gates at both sides. At the game’s start, Aloy cannot leave the Embrace, but make no mistake: upon completion of the Proving, the map will completely open up. Though I can’t say for sure what size it is, it’s big (note: I have The Frozen Wilds expansion installed, which adds a new map region). There are map icons representing villages, campfires, merchants, bandit camps, machine sites, among others, and the map depicted in the map screen is 3D rendered, a very nice touch.

Aloy can roam the land either by walking, running or mounting a machine, an ability she receives fairly quickly. Thank God there is no stamina bar that depletes when you’re sprinting, so if you need to chase a rabbit or flee from a pack of deadly machines, or if you just wanna move across the world more quickly, you can do that indefinitely.

The campfires you find scattered across the map act primarily as save points. Don’t worry, there’s a lot of them around, and this compensates well for the lack of a “save anywhere” feature. Campfires also serve as fast travel destinations: from the map screen, you choose the campfire you want to fast travel to and press R2, but you need a consumable item called a “fast travel pack” in order to travel. I know that’s annoying; if we only had an “infinite travel pack” item… ;)

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Campfire. A place to save the game.

The game’s crafting system doesn’t require you to find or buy recipes, have a minimum crafting skill, or mix ingredients on a workbench: if you have enough components, you can automatically make potions, arrows, traps, and increase the various inventory spaces you have (quiver’s size, potion pouches, satchels). The same is true if you run short of ammo in a battle: just make them on the fly. You collect ingredients by harvesting plants, hunting the wildlife animals for their body parts and destroying the machines for their metallic components. Yes, the crafting system is that simple and, given the game’s proposal, it works like a charm. I like it that way.

The machines are one of the sources of “metal shards”, a metallic item which serves as both currency and ingredient for making ammo. Speaking of currency, merchants can sell or buy armors, weapons, potions, and so on, much like any RPG. There are also a few “special merchants” who can exchange sets of collectibles you find with special treasure boxes. But don’t expect to enter any merchants’ storehouses: the game almost has almost no enterable buildings and the merchants do their trading in the open, come rain or shine (as a general rule, you can only enter a building if its door is already opened). It means you won’t have to enter anyone’s basement looking for rats to kill. :)


Overring a machine and using it as a mount.

The game doesn’t seem to have a proper daily schedule for NPCs; if you meet a person in a village, he’ll likely be in the same place when/if you ever meet him again. As for the creatures, they keep repeating the same walking path until they see an enemy and attack. Funny thing - I’d wandered far beyond the relatively safe Nora territory when I spotted one of the game’s largest, most dangerous machines. I quickly hid in the bushes, far from its sight. I was still thinking about what to do when I saw a patrol of five guards calmly walking down the road, right into the monster. It was the size of a dinosaur, the guards could definitely see it, and yet it was the beast that started the fight. I can’t say if this was a scripted event or if those guards were on a kind of scheduled routine (like TES IV Oblivion’s patrols) but all of them fought bravely - and stupidly - to the death.

Leveling up nets you both an increase of hit points and one skill point. The base game has three skill trees: Prowler, Braver, and Forager, while The Frozen Wilds expansion adds a fourth one, called Traveler. The Prowler tree focuses on stealth; Braver mostly consists of damage and accuracy improvements; Forager skills aim to improve resource gathering/efficiency as well as some machine overriding skills; and finally the Traveler tree has skills related to mounts and resource usefulness. And here I make a criticism: both Forager and Traveler trees have some skills that would make better sense, in my humble opinion, if they switched places. Why not place all machine- and mount-related skills into only one tree while putting every resource’s collecting/saving skills into another? I’d personally do that. For instance, the Forager skill tree has Combat Override, Combat Override+ and Call Mount+ that could fit well in the Traveler category, while Traveler’s Shard Salvager, Expert Carver, and Hoarder are somewhat related to the ones in Forager. Far from being useless, the new tree has much-needed skills but all this misplacement (again, in my opinion) I believe has been introduced by the expansion and that should have been better thought out beforehand.

The main quest is compelling and well-written, always sending you deeper and deeper into the world. In the same vein, I also found the side quests engaging; they cast an extra light on the world and allowed us to better understand the people who live in it. The questgivers have their motivations fleshed out and, more often than not, their requests feel genuine. There are tales of treachery, revenge, love, despair, sadness, and not every quest will have a happy ending. In addition to the main and side quests, there are a bunch of other activities to undertake, like clearing out bandit camps, destroying all machines in a corrupted area, exploring Cauldrons (a machine-building underground facility reminiscent of the former civilization), climbing up Tallnecks, and doing hunting ground challenges. These activities are entirely optional, though some of them may give you special rewards, like enhancing your overriding ability so you can use it on more powerful enemies. With few exceptions, you do the quests alone. And even when you don’t, there is no a proper party for you to manage: you don’t have access to anybody’s inventory or the ability to give orders.

And before anyone asks, Horizon: Zero Dawn has no multiplayer content. What for? Simply put, the game doesn’t need it.

U4UFyZj.jpg


Let me introduce you the Tallneck, the tallest machine around. Don’t fret, it doesn’t bite!

COMBAT

Each different machine you find has its own behavior, weakness, resistance and attack method and must be approached accordingly: some of them rely only on physical attacks while others can add beams of light or elemental projectiles. There are many types of robots: some of them prowl the rivers, like the alligator-like Snapmaw, some are airborne (and a pain in the ass to fight against), while others can project energy shields or even turn invisible.

Aloy can attack with both melee and ranged weapons. As for melee weapon, she is restricted to using only her non-throwable Spear, since the game doesn’t include knives, swords, axes, or polearms for her to use. Melee attack is kinda simple, it’s only a question of doing either a light (fast attack, does less damage) or heavy blow (slower, may knock enemies down for a while). Of course, in order to make melee attacks you need to get close to your enemy, so beware - the RPG’s #1 rule regarding enemies says “the bigger they are, the harder they hit”. Although there are some skills which allow you to do more damage with your spear, bigger enemies in RPGs also tend to obey the #2 rule: they have lots of hit points. And there is also a third, more infuriating factor to be taken into consideration when doing melee combat - the camera often gets in the way. I lost count of how many times I’ve hit a tree, a rock or simply nothing at all because the camera is placed so firmly on Aloy that it’s difficult to see what’s around her, especially in the middle of combat. I believe a “lock-on” feature could be a possible solution here.


Doing a stealth kill.

But it’s in the ranged department that the combat truly shines. There is an assorted array of ranged weapons capable of firing not only typical ammo but also elemental ones; if combined with a given creature’s weaknesses, these can do considerable damage. You can set a trap with your tripcaster, so when your enemy trips over it, things go boom; you can use a ropecaster to fire cables that will pin a creature to the ground for a while; or you can use a sling to fire a elemental charge to an area, affecting everything in it. We can also use bows to shoot arrows to a specific target or, better yet, to a specific part of the target in order to inflict greater damage. All in all, I think the ranged combat is great when compared to melee, which I think is a little underdeveloped.

Most armors and weapons have slots where upgrades can be added, thus improving our defenses or increasing a weapon’s damage. As for defensive movements, the only maneuver available to Aloy is a defensive roll.

ALOY

Last, but not least, Aloy deserves her own section, not because she’s the protagonist but especially because Guerrilla Games made her a great one. Her Brazilian dubbing is top-notch, and while I can’t properly comment on the original English voice-acting, the overall internet opinion says it’s top quality as well.

You can’t customize Aloy in any way, yet you’ll like her the way she is. She has no attributes other than hit points, she isn’t S.P.E.C.I.A.L., and yet, she is very special. I consider Horizon: Zero Dawn’s Aloy one of the strongest female protagonists in video game history, if not the strongest, and I’m not saying that in a masculinized or voluptuous way. She isn’t a muscled woman and she doesn’t need to resort to sexy innuendos to handle the situations she faces. One might say that her strength derives from the fact she was born in a tribe ruled by matriarchs and great matriarchs (funnily enough, in the game you may find a book passage where the author remarks about this and other Nora “eccentricities”), but that is not true. Not the entire truth, at least. Aloy sets out on a journey of self-knowledge. “Who am I? What’s my role in the world?”. If knowledge is power, then to know oneself is also to strengthen oneself.

We see her born and growing up not only in size but as a human being as well, with all characteristics that define us. She can be curious, caring, passionate, ironic, harsh, angry. Every tale of loss she hears also touches her heart deeply because she knows very well what loss is. She’s not portrayed as someone devoid of emotions or feelings. She has them, in profusion, good and bad. She’s human, after all. In one quest, after some twists and turns, Aloy is tasked with some slaves free from their captors. At the quest’s end, with the slave’s ring leader seriously wounded on the ground, one of his now former captives approaches and thrusts a spear in him. Aloy just watches the whole scene without saying a single word, not even to stop the slave from getting her revenge by saying things like “Don’t do this, don’t be like him!” or “Revenge won’t bring you any happiness!”. Instead, she quietly watches the slave kill her captor, only to say “You gave him a quicker death than he deserved.” Yes, just like that. Definitely, Aloy is not your everyday comics hero and that’s great!

CONCLUSION

The Triple-A video game market is filled to the brim with sequels, prequels, remasters, and rehashes, so I congratulate Guerrilla Games for bringing us a brand new IP. The game is beautiful and Aloy is a great protagonist; she really benefits from the well-crafted writing. I also give credit to the developers for breaking a specific market trend here, which is making a game this size with no multiplayer mode, meaning it can be fully appreciated alone. Granted, the game is not perfect, especially the melee combat and the sometimes confusing camera positioning. Even so, I tried to look beyond these imperfections and I liked what I’ve seen. While I won’t advise anyone to buy a PS4 solely to play this game, I can fully recommend playing it if you already have the console (though I must confess Horizon: Zero Dawn was one of the reasons I bought a PS4 Pro). I came for the prettiness, and I stayed for the great game it is.

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When I told her that Joxer would read this review, she struck a pose for him. She loves you, Joxer!

PROS
Stunning graphics
Great protagonist
Excellent writing

CONS
Melee combat could be improved
Camera can be awkward in melee combat

RATING
9
out of 10.
 
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Nice review, thanks. It's one I'll be grabbing when I finally succumb to buying a PS4.

Awaiting Joxer's drive-by.
 
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Thanks. I think that was the last step/point for me to get this game (even although I don't own any PS4 yet).
I think I should get it better sooner than later.
 
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Stellar and in-depth review! If I owned a play station four, I might have run right out and grabbed this product. Should I ever obtain the console, I'll have to take a close look at getting this particular game.
 
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Awaiting Joxer's drive-by.
Not sure what do you expect exactly from me to say. :D

Awsome review but I'll probably die before the game gets ported on PC. Which is a shame - it's the a consoles exclusive I'm interested in.
As it happens, I'm not paying for garbage hardware only to be able to play HZD and Yakuza series. Nothing else on that platform interests me.
I've also pointed out in some other post that I cannot believe HZD wasn't crowned as GOTY on consolecentric sites that found childish crap like new Switch Zelda with Ubisoft towers more fun. How can cooking be more fun than nailing dinos? Beats me, perhaps I got too old. But even if someone adores Ubisoft towers, HZD's graphics and style is so much better than silly jagged Zelda.
I think I should get it better sooner than later.
No you shouldn't. Buy the PC version when it appears. Support devs, not a discriminating business scheme.
 
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No you shouldn't. Buy the PC version when it appears. Support devs, not a discriminating business scheme.

I really don't know when this will happen. There still is no Mario game for the PC, and no Zelda game, either.

On the other hand, Nintendo managed to grab one of the very few truly iconic non-violent PC platform characters or their own console : The Rabbids.
Now, with them left towards consoles as well, the PC platform is left only with violent iconic characters.
 
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Garbage console hardware, mushrooms, that sort of thing. :p
Cmon, can't come in a thread about this game and state only the obvious. ;)

Honestly, my opinion is that this product is similar to VC. A pure gold not respected on it's original platform because most of it's (potential) audience is on PC. I'm so optimistic I dare to say that if it ever gets ported it'll outsell the silly GTA5.
 
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This game gets me the closest to buying a PS I've ever been.
However I'm still quite far away. Give me two or three more and I'll consider.
 
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(...)
Honestly, my opinion is that this product is similar to VC. A pure gold not respected on it's original platform because most of it's (potential) audience is on PC. I'm so optimistic I dare to say that if it ever gets ported it'll outsell the silly GTA5.

I wouldn't dare to compare both games, Joxer. I wouldn't dare that much. The games (H:ZD and GTA V) are way too different one from another. Way too different, believe me when I say this.

GTA is a more established IP. It's on its 5th iteration while H:ZD, like I wrote in the text, is a brand new IP. GTA V sold 10 million copies through Steam, 90 million if we include all platforms (PC + consoles). Ok, one can say GTA V has been on the video game market for almost 5 years now, while H:ZD recently completed its 1st year. Horizon Zero Dawn sold more than 7.6 million sales worldwide ahead of its 1st birthday and Guerilla Games seemed very happy because of that mark.

Let's say we magically stop GTA V from being sold, and we give both PC and XBOX magical versions of H:ZD right now. In the next 4 years, will it sell 83 million copies, all platforms considered? Hardly, let's be honest. Very hardly. Both games target different audiences, and H:ZD audience is narrower than GTA V's. Additionally, H:ZD has no multiplayer content, nothing, nada, zilch, and this may turn people away from it.

Yes, I believe there is market for a PC H:ZD, and I believe many fellow watchmembers here would buy such PC version. But let me politely disagree with you when you say it would outsell GTA 5.
 
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True but still. AMD hardware supports TressFX. Consoles cannot pull it as"fluid" as PC can (both nVidia and AMD cards), but there is no excuse a decent console developer doesn't use it at least on the main protagonist.
I wouldn't dare to compare both games, Joxer. I wouldn't dare that much. The games (H:ZD and GTA V) are way too different one from another. Way too different, believe me when I say this.
I believe you they're different. GTA5 is overrated different vehicles racing sim with horrible helicopter controls. HZD is everything that GTA5 is not. That's one of it's beauties. And one of reasons I think HZD could outsell a simple racer.
But then it's not only you who disagrees, Sony is also on your side. ;)
 
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This game gets me the closest to buying a PS I've ever been.
However I'm still quite far away. Give me two or three more and I'll consider.

How about "The Last of Us 2" and "Red Dead Redemption 2" ? :)
 
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How about "The Last of Us 2" and "Red Dead Redemption 2" ? :)

Yep, once those two arrive, there's going to be a visit to the toy shop.
 
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How about "The Last of Us 2" and "Red Dead Redemption 2" ? :)
I haven't played TLoU, but from all I've read it's not my cup of tea.
RDR2 on the other hand… that's indeed the second one on the list. :|
 
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