Horizon Zero Dawn [PS4, PC]

I have the hardest time getting into it. Played about 5 hours now and it's all so fake, bland, safe and silly-yet-oddly-po-faced. Takes about 30 minutes until I start to feel the urge to go and do the "Kill x amount of Hipsters" rampage mission with Trevor.
 
I have the hardest time getting into it. Played about 5 hours now and it's all so fake, bland, safe and silly-yet-oddly-po-faced. Takes about 30 minutes until I start to feel the urge to go and do the "Kill x amount of Hipsters" rampage mission with Trevor.
That's a shame, sounds like it's not your kind of game :( The begining is a bit twee, but once you get passed the 'proving' quest it all opens up.
 
lol, my son (hardcore PC gamer forever slagging off consoles) is addicted so much during a visit he's buying a PS4 to play it when he gets back to Uni :D

Worth it, it's probably the best first party game on Ps4 and definitely a reason to buy a Ps4 (just recommend him some other games too, buying a console for just 1 game is not very smart :p).
 
The scenery of this game is just breathtaking, I think for whatever sacrifices they made to achieve this is really worth it.
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What keeps me going back to this even though I'm still not finished with the main story is the moment to moment gameplay. It's just so satisfying to fight these god damned machines. Hope we get DLCs similar to The Witcher 3 with new areas, machines and story. I'd pay for that.
I would pay for that too and in fact I just saw some news today that GG is working on an expansion :D ! Yes !!! Make it tough as nails I say and throw that ancient armour out of the game. That shit makes me lazy in fights and takes the danger out of combat completely!
 
So I finally watched my brother play this for an hour or two. My thoughts and his thoughts.

The graphics are indeed amazing. They are not flawless but, amazing on balance. There is a camera motion blur effect right? I didn't like that. And the colors or contrast seemed off, but I'm 99% certain that was my brothers TV settings. I've always set my Tv brightness to pretty high. His was likely much lower so it was more contrast-y.

About the not flawless, well we both noted that far away areas are obscured by fog etc to help draw distance, just like any open world game. I noticed some of the effects look rough at a distance, for example those rockbearers or whatever? The little dust clouds they kick up when going in the dirt look pretty last gen from far away. In general it's the far away graphics that have issues, up close I was most impressed by the textures, amazing. Aloy's eyes also suffer doll eye in all the cutscenes, like she is not focusing right. Any youtube and this is obvious. Also, Aloy facial model looks "weird" when running toward the camera in battle. We still have some issues with hair no matter how far we advance. Aloy's is mitigated because they gave her braids so the only have to render 40 braids instead of ten million hairs, but you can still see some problems here and there.

Interiors look stunning, incredibly rich. The textures are really where they went all out. Another standout point is the jaw dropping battles and effects with big Dino's. OVERALL me and my brother struggled to think of a better looking game, even on PC. I wonder if Witcher 3, utterly maxed on PC in 4k or something, might look better. Personally I cant imagine so. Another game we came back to was Crysis, well Crysis 3 is old, it cant keep up. Overall I'm prepared to say this is the all time graphics champ, even vs PC. Maybe until GTA 6?

I asked my brothers opinion of the GAME, he was mixed. He loved the enemy designs, but he thought the game was too easy and designed for dudebros. He mentioned about difficulty he's the wrong one to ask though. Thing is he plays all his games on hardest setting. He had this one on hardest difficulty as well, and I didn't see a lot of challenge. He kept telling me he was likely to die in a certain battle (he would go fight like, a Thunderjaw just to show me) but he only died like once, ever. He mentioned the heal potions are OP because you can carry so many. Another issue he mentioned that is common to all open world games is, you can cheese most any encounter by just staying really far away and potshotting the enemy to death. He would specifically be sure not to do this to maintain challenge though. Oh he also mentioned the game seems to copy Skyrim an extreme amount, said the world map is almost ripped directly from Skyrim etc. He mentioned for an example of the "dudebro" "easy" design, that anything you can climb flashes bright yellow, rather than you having to discover yourself.

He said in any open world game he just does sidequests and things and ignores the story, just wants to see everything. Then he usually does not finish the game LOL. Did that with Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc. I asked if he thought he would finish this one, he said probably not.

For me the one issue I noticed is I did not see a lot to do. Since I was just watching, he went and sought out a few of the biggest monsters to fight, but there's only a few. It wasn't long and he just had to tell me I've seen the biggest ones.

Anyways I'm not meaning to bash the game so much, it's just fact most games are rehashes and then they add something novel. To me what Horizon adds, besides an incredibly high level of production/graphics, is RIDICULOUSLY impressive giant Dino fights. My brother mentioned there is nothing remotely comparable to those in say, Witcher 3.
 
I think the game needs a tactical difficulty mode where you get limited resources from gathering and you have a stamina bar. That'd make the game a lot more fun in terms of difficulty. It's not easy (especially the mini boss fights that are stormbirds and thunderjaws) but it could punish you a lot more. I'll do a short write up for the things i want improved either via patches or in the sequel, I'm close to finishing the game now.
 
I think the game needs a tactical difficulty mode where you get limited resources from gathering and you have a stamina bar. That'd make the game a lot more fun in terms of difficulty. It's not easy (especially the mini boss fights that are stormbirds and thunderjaws) but it could punish you a lot more. I'll do a short write up for the things i want improved either via patches or in the sequel, I'm close to finishing the game now.

I'm sure it couldn't be too hard to implement a LoU type resource spawn algorithm (having no idea if what I typed made any sense lol)

I know my son was struggling with hard (in places) and ended up having to go back and level up (he was progressing the story too quickly) and he's quite a good (PC) gamer.
 
I think the game needs a tactical difficulty mode where you get limited resources from gathering and you have a stamina bar. That'd make the game a lot more fun in terms of difficulty. It's not easy (especially the mini boss fights that are stormbirds and thunderjaws) but it could punish you a lot more. I'll do a short write up for the things i want improved either via patches or in the sequel, I'm close to finishing the game now.

Oh god no! I still have nightmares from Nioh. And Bloodborne but not son much.
 
He mentioned for an example of the "dudebro" "easy" design, that anything you can climb flashes bright yellow, rather than you having to discover yourself.

I don't think you know what dudebro means, it describes gamers who play military games like gears. Nothing flashes yellow. The surfaces that you can climb are colored differently from the background environment like every other game in existence. No game make you figure out what you can jump to or not, that would be an exercise in frustration as you continuously leaped to your death.
 
Finished the game and got the plat. Loved it and I think that's one of the best genre transitions I've seen in a studio, this is so much better than previous Killzone games! I think the story is really special, although some dialog was hit or miss(some technical things Aloy said felt like the writers were taking control over her). Although, Aloy is a well written character overall and i really thought the voice acting was very fitting, Ashly Burch did a fantastic job, hope we get to see more of Aloy in the future. I also think the gameplay is the strongest part of the game overall, it is both responsive and polished, and i've never felt that something was off in terms of controls or how I died etc. With that said, there are some things that can be improved in the next game or via dlc/patches:
  • Weapon/armor mods could offer active abilities instead of just passive stats, make those tied to the dinos you kill
  • Changing armor parts separately (this is an obvious one), and maybe offer different colors so that we can modify the appearance, also more armor variety would be nice
  • The tactical mode i mentioned above, do it. Have a mode of difficulty where you get a stamina bar and very limited resources, this will definitely make the game more challenging, and fun for experienced players.
  • Fire camps need more character, do something like the ones in Tomb Raider reboot/RoTR. Let me craft certain things only in those, let me change tod by sleeping there. FFXV is also another nice example of this (camps being more than just save points).
  • Human AI and quest rewards can be improved as well
But I think for a first try at this Guerrilla were pretty much spot on, didn't think this game would be as good, especially the gameplay and how well the machines were realized. What an experience.
 
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I finished on this at the weekend. Totally impressed by Guerillas first attempt(ish) at creating an open world game. It's one of the only games where the world itself had an almost physical presence. I would complain that it stuck to the common open world\questing\crafting trope that is so prevalent but that would be disengenuous considering that this is the first GG open worlder on PS4. If they're 2 or 3 iterations in and still doing the same stuff...

One thing that got me though was the amount of stuff to do, I tend to find the 'edges' of the map when I do open world games, ignoring the actual quests and just mapping out the game world. I thought I'd done that with Horizon and then I finish the final quest and walk straight into a new, previously undiscovered, settlement with quests to do! But still, with all the flowers, viewpoints, banuk figures, and cauldrons left to do I got plenty to fill in my time until Andromeda arrives.

But so far this is my game of the generation, it's just such a good story and a pleasure to play!
 
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