No spoilers: After a year of drought, 2022 opens with a storm with one of the most important games of the year, Horizon: Zero Dawn proving once again the power of original games
About a month ago, something fell into the gaming world, and Microsoft announced that it was acquiring Activision for tens of billions of dollars. Many saw this as a “matte” move by Microsoft that would make huge games like Call Of Duty, OverWatch and many more good hands into Microsoft’s hands, leaving nothing for Sony’s players on the PlayStation (which has already turned out to be inaccurate, if it wants them to approve this deal). But even this deal is part of a Cold War, which has now become a world war: the content war.
Microsoft has quite a few reasons to make this very dramatic move, but the main reason is its inability to produce exclusive games that are Needle Movers. Those that can not be played anywhere else, and everyone wants to play them. Now, almost unintentionally, one of Sony’s most notable studios, Guerrilla Games, is releasing its sequel to one of the most popular original and exclusive brands for the PlayStation console (okay, and also for the PC in the last year): Horizon, and it’s proving once again that Microsoft can continue to do Muscles, but experiences like Horizon’s are experiences on a completely different scale.
The heart remains – the game has evolved
The game continues shortly after the Zero Dawn plot, which if you did not play it, Forbidden West does a very good job of updating you on everything you missed (and plays you all the twists of the previous game, which you will not say you did not know). We are still in the future after the near-extinction of humanity when humans are divided into tribes. But nature is starting to die down again and the machines that are kind of animal-substitutes are getting aggressive again – and Iloi must go to the western United States along with some new and old friends to restart the Gaia project that might get nature, animals and humans back on track. Along the way, she discovers that she’s not really the only one who wants to run the project, but for completely different reasons – and the race begins.
The heart of the original game pretty much stays the same here: you walk around a huge map (huge, but we’ll get to it soon), where hostile animal-like tribes and robots roam, when you have to sneak or attack them in a relatively clever way to survive the battles that are always big on you. . Almost every enemy has its weakness, and you have sets of different weapons of arrows, spears and slingshots with different abilities that you can and must utilize to defeat various enemies that move from humans, to robots the size of a 3-story building.
So far everything is pretty much the same in terms of gameplay, but HFW adds new layers to the familiar upgrade tree. The first addition is Weapon Stamina which adds new abilities to weapons like using multiple arrows for the same shot instead of one-on-one, and Valor, which are temporarily enhanced abilities for aloy (with really, really cool animation). But to be honest, it’s actually when it comes to Valor I could not find myself using them too much, in contrast to the new upgrades to the abilities of the weapons that I really found useful and those that add to the game’s suspenseful action.
But really not only the battles have been upgraded, but also the overall experience of your mobility on the map: Aloy gets a Grappeling Gun that allows her to climb to specific points with a few pushes of a button and saves you tedious climbing; And a broken shield that actually only serves as a glider, allowing you to soar as you descend mountains and hills and shortens your time unnecessarily; And for dessert you can also swim and dive. This last ability is quite slow, and sucks a bit because you can not use your weapons underwater, which will cause you to drag enemies to land in a rather slow and annoying process.
All of these abilities not only help your mobility and make the game much more pleasant and comfortable, but also of course take part in the various puzzles, helping you to reach certain points on the map that you could not reach before. These are pretty significant additions that within a second make the previous game look pretty outdated and slow.
In general, Horizon’s gameplay manages to be relatively complex, but not one that will deter you if you have played games that are even close to the action-RPG worlds. Aside from a few menus that are a little too tangled and messy for my liking, almost everything is at your fingertips and within a few simple combinations, so even in the middle of a battle laden with huge robots you can make a few moves that will completely change your situation.
Just stop and admire the view
But enough, I can not wait any longer and we must talk about the map of Forbidden West.
It is such a huge map and so diverse and beautiful that no words will do it justice. Combined with the lighting effects and reflections so successful, I found myself once every few minutes just stopping and admiring the view as if I was on my trek in Nepal again. There’s everything here: from huge waterfalls and breathtaking cliffs to dramatic deserts, snowy and sloping mountains and of course evergreen areas where you can almost feel the wind blowing through them (okay, you really feel the wind blowing through them because of the haptic feedback on the sign). All this with all sorts of post-apocalyptic touches of ruined buildings, machines that fell in battle, planes that crashed and quite a few surprises that just made me marvel. Really, applause to the Hart team and the environments of this game.
If you have any more friends who will play this game and they know how to play with the built – in Photo Mode, my bet is that you are going to see an impressive amount of photos in your feed that include the truly insane landscapes that this game just allows you to explore. This is a map that I suddenly did not feel like doing Fast Travel and shortening processes, but just exploring on foot. I have never seen such an amazing map in an open world game, and certainly not one that you can really walk on, and it is not just a remote decoration that can not be reached. Amazing Amazing Amazing – probably after the two closed years we’ve all experienced – a game like this makes you feel like you’re breathing fresh air, even though you’re in the living room.
If you play on the PlayStation 5, you not only gain the amazing graphics and very impressive loading speed, but also the successful utilization of the features of the fine DualSense remote: you will hear a lot of effects through the speaker of the remote, you will feel the differences in the weather through the mechanism The hefty of the sign (wait you run into a sandstorm) and of course, you will feel the differences between the different weapons in the triggers. Not only will you feel the tread of Aloy’s bow, but when you pick up a “heavy” weapon you dropped from machines, the trigger will actually harden and feel like you’re really admiring a heavy machine.
Viva Las Vegas
With a big world come big problems too
But come on, not everything is perfect here – I was quite surprised to find out how the character of the first game is in the sequel as well, with all the missions, transitions and dialogues related to the main plot fascinating and including some of the best textures and face animations I’ve seen in computer games (since Uncharted and The Last Of Us 2). But once you move on to the side missions, the result becomes the so-called Mixed Bag. Suddenly there is no investment in lip-sync, the characters’ eyes look in the wrong directions, the writing gets a little tiring and preoccupies too much with intra-tribal politics whose differences are unrecognizable (sorry if it’s Offensive towards the Osram or Tank’s tribe. Gikti’s system respects and honors you ).
This time too you have the option to expand your dialogues with different characters and ask the same questions that interest you, and this time too I found myself skipping most of these options and cutting straight to the task, which is because these conversations are repetitive and repeat information you have already heard one way or another. But what is new in dialogues is the possibility of choosing between several critical options once in a while, between a forceful response, a containing one, and an intellectual one. I must admit that here, too, I was not impressed and did not feel that there were too long-term influences in the Witcher style, but more influences from the world of Assassin’s Creed. Unfortunately, this game also has quite a few texts that you will collect along the way, and as I always say – if I wanted to read, I would open a book – so bring me more sound clips from the past (and there are some, and they are very fascinating), and less boring documents that do not shed light on is nothing. Sometimes these documents also contain codes for all kinds of doors, but if you do not read them as soon as you collect them, the chances of you finding them in the mountains of menus and documents are slim, and it’s a shame.
I know I’m supposed to be very happy that Guerrilla Games has developed Horizon: Forbidden West for PlayStation 4 consoles as well, allowing even those who can’t or don’t want to get their hands on PlayStation 5 to play this great game – but here it comes: there are quite a few Places where you can really see and feel that this game is not “pure”: textures, objects and characters appear out of nowhere like in the old days, charging screens that last seconds and you could do without them and other moments where I told myself that this game could have been a little better if it He would not carry the baggage of the past with him either.
Look, I played the game a few weeks before its release to the market, and encountered quite a few bugs: from graphic issues like distorted facial expressions (and for some reason it makes her seem impatient with anything she is told); Structures that are not charged until approached; Figures with a semi-transparent torso; To problems with mix sound that make background characters’ voices suddenly sound louder than the main character (and of course Iloy can speak in two voices if she responds exactly to something you found but also to the development that happened in the same background; menus at 60 frames per second compared to the game that can run at 30 Frames per second. But what mostly bothered me once in a while was bugs that really prevented me from progressing in the game. Today after dozens of attempts), missions that are not updated (until I restarted the console) and of course random crashes.
At the time I was told that the developer would release Day 1 Patch as usual, which should fix any serious bugs so you might not run into these issues – but I wrote this review before the game was released to stores, so I must tell you to take it into account because I learned not to rely On promises for the future but on what is there at the moment of purchase. However, one has to put things in proportion and say that this is not a CyberPunk 2077 experience that made me really not enjoy the game or one that would cause a scandal to read about everywhere, but simply a game that could probably enjoy another two weeks of QA instead of committing to a specific release date. If you want to be sure you get a smooth experience for $ 70, it might be worth waiting a few more weeks for everything to be polished.
A thousand times more open world
Although Horzion: Zero Dawn is also an open world game, Horizon: Forbidden West takes this definition and expands it several times over. Not only is HFW’s map itself huge, but the amount of content it’s crazy about: apart from collecting all sorts of documents, sound clips and more and less rare objects, this time there are also a host of activities that add to the already impressive amount of side missions: from machine racing (yes, machines , Not cars), board game in every new city (did anyone say Gwenth from Witcher and Orlog from the last Assassin’s Creed?), Hunting and fighting challenges, locating black boxes from crashed planes and a host of other distractions that you can almost completely ignore, or worry about That this game will give you many more hours of play – there is really no shortage of things to do here and 100% and Platinum fans will spend extra hours here.
The beauty is that HFW is the kind of buffet eaten as much as you can. You will choose how much you want to eat from the side missions, how much you want to go out and collect rare particles to upgrade the weapons and whether this side story is interesting enough to complete it to completion. As long as you do a few side missions along the way, you will almost always be a few steps above the recommended minimum to complete the main mission, and if you decide to immerse yourself in all the other missions and challenges – you will get a game that goes far beyond the 60 hour line. Just eat as much as you want – there is enough for everyone here.
Another trophy in the closet
Horizon: Forbidden West is a game that within hours makes the wonderful Zero Dawn feel like a prequel to the real thing – and these are the places where sequels are measured as success: when they manage to take the original formula, stay true to it, but develop it enough to feel much more Just evolution. In this respect, HFW proves to be a dizzying success, and another medal of honor to Sony’s trophy shelf that continues to prove that Call Of Duty is good and beautiful, but the experiences that really stay with the players and really push the edge of the art of gaming are the more original experiences. The ones you think about all day long and just wait for this hour of the day when you can turn on the screen and immerse yourself again in this amazing world. The end of the world has never been more successful – so do not miss it.
A good old age
Born with a joystick in hand. He has far too many gadgets and far too little free time to play with them all. An unexplained hammer holder for calibrating device batteries. When he’s not busy writing about technology, he likes to talk about it, and a lot
