For many years, only one game entered the mind of gamers when they saw the name Guerrilla Games: Killzone. And how could they not? Boasting polished gameplay and eye-popping graphics, Killzone emerged as a legitimate contender in the ultra-competitive shooter genre, solidifying Guerrilla Games as a player in the process. But after ten years and four entries across three consoles, the team decided to veer away from its established shooter and venture onto something radically different. Horizon Zero Dawn is the result of Guerrilla’s bold desire to craft a universe unlike anything they’d attempted before. A studio known exclusively for crafting first-person shooters heading up an open-world action/RPG initially sounded insane. The gamble paid off.🃏 Since its release in February, Guerrilla’s daring leap of faith has been a resounding success, garnering critical acclaim and record ꦡsales numbers.
I count myself among the fans. Horizon Zero Dawn is an amazing experience that borrows the best elements of celebrated hits such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and the recent Tomb Raider games. Combine that with a wildly imaginative premise and setting with a top-notch presentation, and Horizon truly stands as one of the year’s best. But like the seemingly unstoppable mechanical behemoths inhabiting Aloy’s world, the game does feature several weak points that keep it from achieving video game perfection. Now, compared to the overwhelming amount of things Horizon knocks out of the pꦐark, these drawbacks are relatively minor. However that doesn’t mean these nagging issues won’t irk players now and again.
15 Best: Breathtaking Presentation
One of Guerrilla Games’ strengths has always been eye-popping visuals. Horizon Zero Dawn doesn’t disappoint in that area. It’s a damn fine looking game. Character designs and facial animations are immaculately detailed, as are the cities many of them occupy. Despite the convenience of fast-travel, hoofing 𝓰it on foot offers a greater reward, letting players fully soak in the gorgeous and diverse vistas. Lush forests, arid deserts, and snow-capped mountain areas look fantastic and are accented with touches like the dynamic day/night cycle beautiful weather effects. When you're not smashing machines into scrap, simply admiring their killer designs and animations can be enjoyable in its own right.
Horizon looks stunning in standard 1080p, but playing it in on either an HDR capable display or on a 4K TV with a PS4 Pro provides a further visual face-lift. Increased color-depth, shadows, and textures breathe further life into Aloy's world. Not to mention Horizon is among the very few gameඣs that gives PS4 Pro owners possessing 4K displays a game that helps justify their investment.
14 Worst: Ultra Specific, Tacky Armor
Horizon’s harsh world boasts many hazards. Not to fear, because Aloy has a suit for every occasion. Like, literally, every possible ailment has a dedicated outfit geared towards resisting it. Aloy can rock armor that quells scorching fire or shields against biting frost. For some reason, two separate outfits exist to guard from ranged attacks and melee damage each. Those two can’t just be lumped together into one set of armor that resists physical damage in general? Having a closet full of uni-taskers means players are routinely going into the menu to change outfits and it grows tiresome after a while. The presence of armor mods, which buff Aloy with further res🐎istances, makes this approach even more baffling. I’ve gotten by fine by simply enhancing the 🎶physical damage-focused suits with elemental mods, all but eliminating the need to spend resources buying a "winter coat."
On a more subjective note, I’m not wild about many of the actual designs. Some look average at﷽ best–others make Aloy look downright silly. Whether it’s a bland assortment of browns or tacky/strange headgear, you will find yourself conflicted in the conflict between tactical advantage vs aesthetic enjoyment.
13 Best: Optional, Rewarding Tutorials
Tutorials in most games tend to be dull, hand-holding affairs that can occasionally insult the player’s intelligence. Worse of all, they’re typically mandatory. Horizon Zero Dawn eschews that approach for a more appealing alternative. Gaining a new weapon unlocks an accompꩵanying tutorial mission, which, despite being labeled “tutorial,” are more akin to challenge-style missions. Examples include killing X-amount of enemies using a certain bow or tying down a specific enemy type using the Ropecaster (oh, we'll get to that baby later). What makes these tutorials great is A) they’re optional and B) they reward experience points. Considering how simple most of them are, they function as adequate training wheels to get the hang of new gear. Perhaps more importantly, tutorials are perfect quests to have keep active during free-roaming period. Out in the world, players will undoubtedly partake in the designated activities anyway, so why not earn some extra XP and gain some mastery over a weapon in the process?
12 Worst: Slow Movement While Using Focus
Aloy’s Focus, her futuristic (or, within the context of Horizon’s timeline, ancient), information-gathering headset, performs several useful functions. These abilities include scanning a machine’s strengths and weaknesses, uncovering key environmental clues, and even revealing a target’s whereabouts across distances. Needless to say, the Focus is an invaluable gadget that sees a lot of use. Unfortunately, when the device is active, Aloy’s movement automatically slows to a walk. I understand the reasoning behind this; Guerrilla likely doesn’t want players to accidentally overlook important cues by letting them to rush through Focus-essential areas. That logic makes sense in the more linear, enclosed areas. In the open world, though, I’d love to be able to scan things while moving at a faster pace. That freedom would be especially helpful in the heat of combat, making me less likely to be shredded to ribbons by a Sawtooth because I needed to double check whether fire or ic🐠e was its Achilles’ heel.
11 Best: Scaling Tallnecks
Anyone familiar with Ubisoft open world games likely know the formula of climbing up a really tall thing in order to survey the landscape and unlock new map points. While that idea started off as fun, much of its novelty has been lost due to repeated usage and dull design (looking at you, Far Cry 3’s radio towers). Horizon borrows that trope, but freshens it up with its majestic Tallnecks. These disc-headed, Brachiosaurus-esque machinations act as moving vantage points that you must ascend and then hack to gain geographical information. Variety are the Tallneck's best friend. One may occupy Snapmaw-infested waters Aloy must battle through, another may be trapped within a camp of crazed cultists that must first be infiltrated in order to reach. Regardless, each Tallneck requires a different approach which prevents them from becoming repetitive. It’s also helps that climbing them evokes a little bit of the exhilarating sense of awe that scaling a colossi created in Shadow of the Colossus.
10 Worst: Inability to Sell/Drop Treasure Boxes
Treasure Boxes are special items that bestow several resources at once. They’re a great way to quickly accumulate many types of supplies, but what if you’re already filled up on a certain item like, say, rocks? *Note: you will ALWAYS be maxed out on rocks. Since you obviously can’t add any more of that item, the treasure box will remain in your inventory until it’s completely emptied. But what if I simply don’t want the rocks? Can I just dropജ the box or, better yet, sell the remaining contents to some sucker and get it off my screen? Nope and I can’t comprehend why that is. I’m OCD about my inventory in games, so having treasure boxes filled with leftovers of useless resources drives me nuts. Sure, I can just use up my inventory of rocks to free up space for the new ones, but why should I have to do that when it’d be easier, and more profitable, to just sell or toss the dumb things?
9 Best: Exploring Cauldrons
Cauldrons are Horizon’s take on the traditional dungeon. Like Tallnecks, these metal caverns find much of their strength in variety, both in their design and in the types of enemies inhabiting them. One Cauldron features massive rotating wheels Aloy must ride to reach platforms. Another may have an expansive stealth area filled with robots to avoid. Even the act of entering a Cauldron changes with each one. I once had to survive a pack of Stalkers guarding the front of one particular entrance, while another Cauldron tasked me with exploring the depths of a flooded cavern to locate its entrance. On an aesthetic note, their entirely sci-fi appearance provides a nice juxtaposition from an otherwise primal world. A big boss encounter acts as the Cauldron’s centerpiece and the reward for conquering it and completing the dungeon is invaluable: the ability to hack and control more types of machines. Challenging and rewarding, Cauldron’s are fun, meaningful diversions from Horizon’s sprawling open-world.
8 Worst: No Lock-On Feature in Combat
Ranged attacks are Aloy’s forte due to her mastery of the bow. She’s proficient with her spear as well, but melee combat lacks the same finesse due to the absence of a lock-on mechanic. Players must rely on the camera to manually aim their attacks. Althou✱gh less of an issue when battling larger enemies (they’re as easy to hit as swinging a bat at the Titanic's hull), smaller, more agile opponents, such as humans, can present a trickier challenge. Sometimes you’re just swinging wildly and while it works at a base level, it’d be even better if Aloy could hone in on their position. Using the slower heavy attack can be a gamble since Aloy commits to a single direction while poised, so if the target moves, she’s wide open to a counterattack. Because of this, melee attacks tend to be a last resort for me, even against melee-centric baddies.
7 Best: Piecing Together the Fall of the Old Civilization
Despite Horizon’s world appearing primitive, the game takes place one thousand years in the future. 💖Mankind was forced to restart from scratch after an ⛎unknown calamity caused modern civilization to collapse. A big part of the story’s allure stems from unraveling that tantalizing mystery.
Without spoiling specifics, Aloy spends a fair amount of time scouring “Old World” locations, such as ruined corporate buildings or military factories, in search of answers. Scattered audio files contain fascinating, out-of-context monologues that paint a picture of a utopian world on the verge of chaos. Vantage points provide literal windows, showing exactly how the landscape once appeared before hell broke loose. You'll even learn a little bit just by digging up old coffee mugs (an actual type of collectible). Horizon’s story eventually spells everything out, but a lot of the fun comes from connecting these dots while exploring the world and drawing your own conclusions. Discovering every clue and exploring every ruined structure makes the question of “What the heck happened𒉰?” burn ever fiercer, continually fueling the search for answers.
6 Worst: Overwhelming Inventory Choices Early On
Horizon wastes no time presenting players with a wealth of options once the opening hours wrap up. But there is such a thing as having too much too soon. Items are color-coded to convey quality, with green basically meaning “Meh," blue as “You’re getting better,” and purple stating “This is basically a Cadillac.” Instead of gating access to higher categories of items until you hit a certain level or story point, the game presents players with the option of buying most anything surprisingly soon. That sounds cool on paper, a♒𓆏nd it is to a degree, but it also makes knowing where to start a bit of a dilemma. Should I spend resources on buying beginning gear or save up for the better version of it right off the bat? It doesn’t help that you can get by mostly fine with your starting stuff (more so armor). As such, I survived the first third of the game with my starter-ish gear and jumped straight into advanced equipment without giving the middle tier a second glance.
