Honestly, Horizon Zero Dawn had me at “hot cave girl fights giant robot dinosaurs”. Thankfully, Guerrilla Games’ first step outside the shooter genre (Shellshock, Killzone) has enough breadth, depth and and straight up fun to justify my $60 purchase based on a 5 minute video. With the skill-building and crafting systems of Far Cry, the stealth and dexterity of Assassins Creed, and map size and density that could rival Skyrim; Horizon Zero Dawn is a gigantic, beautiful and unique action RPG I’ll be playing for a long time.
The game’s setting and aesthetic is what seemed to draw most people in pretty quickly. About 1,000 years after the collapse of an advanced civilization, humanity is once again growing out of its paleolithic stage. Relics of the previous “golden age of technology” are scattered throughout the land, most prominent of which are fully functional robots modeled after various animals. Our hero, Aloy is born an outcast from her tribe; and shows an affinity for the generally feared and forbidden ancient technology from a young age.
Unfortunately so far, a few too many quests revolve around tribal politics that I just don’t have enough reason to care about. The encounters/areas that showcase and reveal more about the past technology are absolutely incredible though; sometimes even breathtaking. I’m only about 30 hours in so far, so I’m hoping the scales will shift in the other direction as the game goes on.
This is where many of the game’s strengths, as well as some of its weaknesses, are most prominent. The first things that stood out were the beautifully detailed land and skyscapes. It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed stopping to take in the scenery this much. On top of that, the creatures all look, sound and feel very different from each other.
For some reason, facial animation seemed to be the lowest, and most rushed item on their graphical list. Eyes look really amazing, but everything else looks very last-gen. Mouths are especially awkward, resembling prototype sex robots forcing somehow painful smiles.
A lot of time, care and creativity went into the sound design. Creatures have hundreds of unique sounds mixed from machinery and modified animal noises. The noises they make even change based on the state of the robots; including calm, curious, scared and aggressive. It’s also very much worth noting that Aloy is expertly voiced by Ashly Burch; best known for portraying Tina Tina (Borderlands), Chloe Price (Life is Strange), and for her YouTube series “Hey Ash Watcha Playin’?”
The music is worth a quick mention too. During combat, it’s pretty standard stuff. But when it’s in the background of cutscenes, or triggered by finding a new area, it’s out of this world. Their use of violins, intense tribal drums and ethereal vocals make for a unique, varied, and all-around epic soundtrack.
Down to the meat of the matter: how does it all play out? A lot of the combat revolves around your bow. Holding L1 brings up a radial menu to quickly change (and craft) arrow types to do elemental damage, knock armor and weapons off enemies and most importantly, blow shit up.
You have a bunch of other tools at your disposal, like tripwires, harpoons, explodey traps, concussive blast guns, and of course, your trusty spear/hacker tool thingy. Most of my experiences started out by laying a few traps, sneaky-stabbing a few baddies, getting caught and shooting fire arrows at as many robo-fuel tanks as possible.
One of the coolest experiences so far was my 3 day battle with a T. Rex. Sporting two exploding disc launchers as tall as I am, face-mounted shock machine guns and a tail whip that’ll fuck up your whole weekend, taking that bitch down was one of the most satisfying boss fights I’ve had in months.
I applaud and want to support any company with the balls to put out an original IP these days; and doubly so when they use their own game engine. Flaws are few and far between, but three full-on game crashes are about two too many, even for launch week. Their day-one patch was surprisingly small though, so I’d be very surprised if we don’t see another one very soon.
A lot of Horizon Zero Dawn is “what you see is what you get.” There have been a few really great surprises along the way. But I can safely say that if you like the trailers, you’ll like the game. Anyone into action RPGs can easily spend 50-60 hours on it, and I expect I’ll clock in over 100 before too long.
I could go on, but I’d much rather get back into The Jurassic Terminator Hunger Games.
“Beautiful graphics, top notch sound, huge and impressive world. Some weak A/I, weaker puzzles and game crashes hold it back a bit.”
4.5/5
“Great”
// Promoted Stories
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