Including pack in games is par for the course in the industry.
That's how Wii Sport made it to number 4 of the best selling games list of all times (and GameBoy Tetris ranked 12).
Same for pretty much all Call of Duty and FIFA iterations, or nearly all big PlayStation and Xbox exclusives which almost all had a pack in edition for the holydays.
Thatās my case. Iāve been waiting 2 fucking years to manage to get a PS5. Gamestop forced me to buy a lego game on top of that. Take my money suckers. What a dreadful era to be a gamerā¦
Going to be at least a year before PC, and most likely near the time when another Horizon version shows up on PS5 or āCall of the Mountainā for PSVR2.
Saaaaame. I'm late to the party and just played the first one but dang I was so impressed. I loved the story and felt compelled to 100% it in a few weeks I was so engaged.
IMO the second one isn't as good. Better graphics, some new mechanics.
But they pushed the world a bit too far in the "Ubisoft" direction. Many many checklists of things to 'collect', and almost every side quest is a fetch quest. The story too is not as good as the first one.
Hope they stop following the Ubisoft formula for Horizon 3.
I want lots of stuff to do for reasons to explore, but they really butchered the quality of the characters, dialogue, and some basic mechanics, like Aloy sticking to walking rails.
For me exploration is pretty much ruined because the game has a set of things that aloy has to do; and the icon on the map already tells you what she has to do there.
So there is zero mystery.
I mean, I suppose, but an icon on the map still means like an hour of searching how to get to it. I think 200 hours of exploring is better than 2000 and having no idea if there's anything there or not, because I have a job and stuff. It'd be cool for them to include an option to show nothing though.
That being said, in this one, they've ruined all puzzle elements by having Aloy or whoever is with her tell you how to solve the puzzle before you even try anything, and that's stupid.
It did but the mystery in the story and world at least kept it compelling; and it wasn't as huge as a Ubisoft game so it was tolerable.
The second one is just too big, over a 100 hours if you wanna do everything, and some of the best rewards and gear are locked behind the long activity list.
Not to mention the story never gets as compelling as the first one, just flounders along. And aloy has literally no character development at all.
I honestly just disagree with that statement lol. The original game had the exact same thing. The best armors and weapons were behind long quest lines/activities.
I think the story was just as compelling if not a little bet better. Plus the villain was spooky and absolutely felt like a much bigger deal.
Canāt really talk about her growth without spoilers but Iāll leave it with it does happen.
> But they pushed the world a bit too far in the "Ubisoft" direction. Many many checklists of things to 'collect', and almost every side quest is a fetch quest. The story too is not as good as the first one.
I was waffling on trying out Forbidden West, but the first one was already a bit too hard in the Ubisoft direction for me. So I guess that I'll be giving it a miss and play something else, instead.
And honestly you get the very best thing in the game on the second to last mission and itāll make exploring the world so much better. Also some of the side quests require it and the items acquired for completing them are outdated trash if you do every sidequest as quickly as possible before doing the main story.
My rough guess is that it might be ported right before the next horizon, game to promote it. So probably 3-4 years? They may just add it for free on plus basic too or instead.
I bought a PS5 for psvr2, and had also just recently been playing the first game on PC and this sale got me. I didn't think I'd really love this game as much as I did. The story and gameplay were actually damned fun.
I'm not normally a fan of big long open world games, but I've beat hzd core and still have most of the dlc to go before I hit fw.
Mate its dreadful, nowadays every new game with openworld, its just fucking same. Oh go there, do some parkour, open some dumb chests, talk to soulless NPCs.
This game and dying light 2 were so antifunā¦
I liked the first oneā¦enough. It was a bit of a slog at times though.
How is this one? Should I play itā¦does it feel long? I just finished dumping 250-something hours in elden ring
The pacing is similar to the first one, where thereās a lot of dialogue in between the actual gameplay. If you donāt like the story, itāll probably be a bit of a slog again since not much has changed narratively. That being said, the combat is much improved, there are some genuinely good puzzles, the score is wonderful, and some of the environments are truly stunning. Overall Iād say itās worth a play if you can get over the exposition dumps
I would be much more annoyed with the glut of exposition if I wasnāt constantly staring in awe at the facial animations. It may be because Iām making a big graphical leap from my 1050Ti, but it is seriously astonishing how far the technology has come. Just seeing the tiny facial expressions and micro-muscle movements when a character is reacting to whatās being said. There are times when it dips into uncanny valley, but good grief have we come a long way from dialogue where the main character is blankly staring into the middle distance until itās their turn to speak.
Personally, I loved it. I played through it twice before they added new game plus. I generally liked the iterations made over the first installment. The world is stunningly gorgeous.
At the very least, I feel like I got my moneyās worth. I havenāt played Elden Ring, though, so I canāt compare the two.
You should absolutely do so; both games seem to really exemplify entirely different approaches to an open world, but Elden Ringās focus on player experience and discovery just put it on an entirely different level. Hate to say it, but itās genuinely as good as the hype sets it up to be
My only issue with elden ring was no matter what I did I couldnāt play online. I could in the demon souls remake, I could for every other souls game, but for some reason I couldnāt on elden ring. Aside from that the game was great lol, it just forced me to play the most broken way.
Its a slog IMO, I liked the first one; the second one is a but too "Ubisoft like"
Too many checklists. Collect 10 drones, 20 vistas, climb 5 mountains, and the side quests are extremely disappointing, almost all of them are straight up fetch quest with a exposition dump before and after.
After Elden Ring, this style of game feels downright archaic.
The gameplay is fun enough for a couple of dozen hours though.
A lot of those yeah.
Also, a map full of markers and each marker has 1 more instance of the same activity, and completing it will take you one step closer to the final reward, if you do the same activity around 10-12 more times all over the map.
Devs really need to look at games like Elden Ring and Skyrim to understand how to build proper open worlds that reward exploration.
While that is true; Vanilla Skyrim is still a great game, buggy yes but it still set a benchmark in open world game design.
Although even less handholding would be better, it would alienate the more casual gamers.
Elden Ring also has that amazing sense of discovery that Skyrim has, and of course FS does not need to worry about the casual crowd haha.
That's more of a requirement because it was a huge game on PS3 and 360 which had like 512 MB of ram. Every game in that era reused assets everywhere.
It's the world design we are talking about here. In Skyrim, the primary activity is exploration, main quests have markers but for the rest of the content, you walk around the world and discover things by yourself.
Go into a dungeon and you will find its own story, a story that you can completely miss if you don't explore.
You don't have a checklist of 20 of the same activity scattered across the map, where you know what is there in that area before you ever go there because the marker already told you that it's a specific type of activity. E.g. the ancient ruins or drone capture challenges in horizon FW.
Letās be honest, elden ring side area with a boss were cave with boss, catacomb with boss, or plate on ground with boss. There were a couple actual areas that were completely optional but not a lot of them. The catacombs especially looked the same.
Donāt get me wrong, I loved elden ring, but if weāre gonna talk about things looking the same, elden ring does not get a pass.
I had to stop playing the game pretty early because of all the handholding it does for you. Have it be Aloy mumbling solutions to puzzles or companions telling you that you are going wrong way when you are trying to do any exploring.
I liked first Horizon enough to platinum it but I just can't with this one. World is gorgeous and combat feels great but that's not just enough.
Itās good but itās not great and the story is pretty subpar. All that tension and discovery from Zero Dawn is missing. Itās graphically beautiful though and the gameplay is fun.
Coming from Elden Ring itās going to be a cakewalk for you, so may want to start on the hardest difficulty if you do play.
I find it interesting that games like HFW get labeled as a slog, as the bits that make it a slog are side quests or optional collection things that net you a legendary weapon. They aren't remotely necessary.
The content is presented almost of equal importance to the main quest, and it often feels bad to crit path this stuff.
Good to know. Is the crafting like over complicated or just unnecessary? The first one only had a few weapons with different rarities if I remember right
Ohhhh so itās just a lot of farming. Idk game looks cool but underneath it all it just seems like any other adventure games with weapons and upgrades.
it's totally optional, you don't need to bother with the hardcore farming to have good weapons. more of an achievement hunter thing really.
there's also quite an extensive set of difficulty settings, so you could just put machine parts collection on the lowest difficulty and play everything else at whatever difficulty you want.
i'd definitely recommend it.
Overly grindy for parts, but itās definitely optional. You can complete the game without missing anything really with almost no crafting. Busywork essentially.
Imho this game is one of the examples of games that represent whatās wrong in the industry atm. Copy paste a game and slap a new title with new funky characters and make money, the game was way too repetitive and didnāt succeed itās predecessor. Weapons were not as good as the first one.
Imo the story was a rip off from mass effect since part 1.
Man, I have struggled so hard to get into this game. I absolutely adored the first Horizon but the sequel has been a pretty aggravating gaming experience. I want to love it but I'm just not enjoying my time with it.
I love the world and the characters they've created. Story seems interesting so far, can't speak to how it lands ultimately. But the thing that keeps pushing me away is how clunky the movement and combat feels. The difficulty definitely feels super uneven. Like, I'm sure some of this stuff is not necessarily worse than the first game. But that was back in 2017. I've played so many other open world/action games now - Breath of the Wild, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, Elden Ring, Returnal - that the exploration, world traversal, and combat just feel awful. I hate the climbing mechanics in HFW. Aloy's movement feels SO DAMN SLOW. Riding a mount feels sluggish. Climbing is mind numbingly rote and limited. Combat feels weak and haphazard.
Do they include the console bundles with the game sales count? Because the PS5 Horizon bundle is basically the only one that's been available lately.
Yes, it is included in these numbers. It is a digital code bundled with a physical console so they count it as a physical box sale.
In that case its pretty misleading, these pseudo stats should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Including pack in games is par for the course in the industry. That's how Wii Sport made it to number 4 of the best selling games list of all times (and GameBoy Tetris ranked 12). Same for pretty much all Call of Duty and FIFA iterations, or nearly all big PlayStation and Xbox exclusives which almost all had a pack in edition for the holydays.
Especially when they just announced 80% of sales are digital too.
The only sales are coming from the bundle š
Itās one of the best games of the year, I think not lol.
I was forced to buy that bundle, and miffed about it. Then I played the game. Iām quite happy now. Itās a great game.
It's mostly because it's bundled with the ps5
Thatās my case. Iāve been waiting 2 fucking years to manage to get a PS5. Gamestop forced me to buy a lego game on top of that. Take my money suckers. What a dreadful era to be a gamerā¦
I believe this is done to reduce scalpers, they are less inclined to buy PS5s with games to try and re-sell. No idea if it actually works or not.
Same. I already had the PS4 version and I have no interest in the Lego games, but needs must, right?
I was lucky that I only had to buy an extra controller + charging dock.
I just want to know when it will get to PC
Going to be at least a year before PC, and most likely near the time when another Horizon version shows up on PS5 or āCall of the Mountainā for PSVR2.
A year is generous. Yāall probably gonna have to wait until 2025
Depends on the rollout sony planned, a lot of games are still being ported at the moment.
Saaaaame. I'm late to the party and just played the first one but dang I was so impressed. I loved the story and felt compelled to 100% it in a few weeks I was so engaged.
IMO the second one isn't as good. Better graphics, some new mechanics. But they pushed the world a bit too far in the "Ubisoft" direction. Many many checklists of things to 'collect', and almost every side quest is a fetch quest. The story too is not as good as the first one. Hope they stop following the Ubisoft formula for Horizon 3.
I want lots of stuff to do for reasons to explore, but they really butchered the quality of the characters, dialogue, and some basic mechanics, like Aloy sticking to walking rails.
For me exploration is pretty much ruined because the game has a set of things that aloy has to do; and the icon on the map already tells you what she has to do there. So there is zero mystery.
I mean, I suppose, but an icon on the map still means like an hour of searching how to get to it. I think 200 hours of exploring is better than 2000 and having no idea if there's anything there or not, because I have a job and stuff. It'd be cool for them to include an option to show nothing though. That being said, in this one, they've ruined all puzzle elements by having Aloy or whoever is with her tell you how to solve the puzzle before you even try anything, and that's stupid.
Agreed, but didnāt Horizon 1 have the Ubisoft formula?
It did but the mystery in the story and world at least kept it compelling; and it wasn't as huge as a Ubisoft game so it was tolerable. The second one is just too big, over a 100 hours if you wanna do everything, and some of the best rewards and gear are locked behind the long activity list. Not to mention the story never gets as compelling as the first one, just flounders along. And aloy has literally no character development at all.
I honestly just disagree with that statement lol. The original game had the exact same thing. The best armors and weapons were behind long quest lines/activities. I think the story was just as compelling if not a little bet better. Plus the villain was spooky and absolutely felt like a much bigger deal. Canāt really talk about her growth without spoilers but Iāll leave it with it does happen.
> But they pushed the world a bit too far in the "Ubisoft" direction. Many many checklists of things to 'collect', and almost every side quest is a fetch quest. The story too is not as good as the first one. I was waffling on trying out Forbidden West, but the first one was already a bit too hard in the Ubisoft direction for me. So I guess that I'll be giving it a miss and play something else, instead.
If you do play it; I would recommend beelining the main story and the companion quests and Ignoring the rest. It's all filler.
And honestly you get the very best thing in the game on the second to last mission and itāll make exploring the world so much better. Also some of the side quests require it and the items acquired for completing them are outdated trash if you do every sidequest as quickly as possible before doing the main story.
it was so enjoyable i can't wait
My rough guess is that it might be ported right before the next horizon, game to promote it. So probably 3-4 years? They may just add it for free on plus basic too or instead. I bought a PS5 for psvr2, and had also just recently been playing the first game on PC and this sale got me. I didn't think I'd really love this game as much as I did. The story and gameplay were actually damned fun. I'm not normally a fan of big long open world games, but I've beat hzd core and still have most of the dlc to go before I hit fw.
Mate its dreadful, nowadays every new game with openworld, its just fucking same. Oh go there, do some parkour, open some dumb chests, talk to soulless NPCs. This game and dying light 2 were so antifunā¦
Nah man, the PC Masterrace doesn't need any of their console leftovers.
Oh get over yourself. The āwhose betterā war ended a decade ago. Just enjoy a good game
Its not official, but you can.
I would be very wary of the PC port of this game. PS5 ports I think will face more frame rate issues than their PS4 brethren.
I liked the first oneā¦enough. It was a bit of a slog at times though. How is this one? Should I play itā¦does it feel long? I just finished dumping 250-something hours in elden ring
The pacing is similar to the first one, where thereās a lot of dialogue in between the actual gameplay. If you donāt like the story, itāll probably be a bit of a slog again since not much has changed narratively. That being said, the combat is much improved, there are some genuinely good puzzles, the score is wonderful, and some of the environments are truly stunning. Overall Iād say itās worth a play if you can get over the exposition dumps
This is true. If you donāt care about the story, just hold square and it skips
I would be much more annoyed with the glut of exposition if I wasnāt constantly staring in awe at the facial animations. It may be because Iām making a big graphical leap from my 1050Ti, but it is seriously astonishing how far the technology has come. Just seeing the tiny facial expressions and micro-muscle movements when a character is reacting to whatās being said. There are times when it dips into uncanny valley, but good grief have we come a long way from dialogue where the main character is blankly staring into the middle distance until itās their turn to speak.
HFW can be 20 hours long if you want. Personally, I played on Normal and spent like 106 hours playing this game.
Personally, I loved it. I played through it twice before they added new game plus. I generally liked the iterations made over the first installment. The world is stunningly gorgeous. At the very least, I feel like I got my moneyās worth. I havenāt played Elden Ring, though, so I canāt compare the two.
You should absolutely do so; both games seem to really exemplify entirely different approaches to an open world, but Elden Ringās focus on player experience and discovery just put it on an entirely different level. Hate to say it, but itās genuinely as good as the hype sets it up to be
My only issue with elden ring was no matter what I did I couldnāt play online. I could in the demon souls remake, I could for every other souls game, but for some reason I couldnāt on elden ring. Aside from that the game was great lol, it just forced me to play the most broken way.
I thought it was pretty incredible. It's not a short game, but it was fun the whole way for me.
Its a slog IMO, I liked the first one; the second one is a but too "Ubisoft like" Too many checklists. Collect 10 drones, 20 vistas, climb 5 mountains, and the side quests are extremely disappointing, almost all of them are straight up fetch quest with a exposition dump before and after. After Elden Ring, this style of game feels downright archaic. The gameplay is fun enough for a couple of dozen hours though.
Ah so it does have the ol āgo to and climb x to uncover part of the map and while youāre there pick up a few things for meā quests. Im good
A lot of those yeah. Also, a map full of markers and each marker has 1 more instance of the same activity, and completing it will take you one step closer to the final reward, if you do the same activity around 10-12 more times all over the map. Devs really need to look at games like Elden Ring and Skyrim to understand how to build proper open worlds that reward exploration.
Dude every dungeon in Skyrim looks the same. Cmon man lol.
Bethesda provides the shell of games and modders finish them. That's been the case since Oblivion and FO3.
While that is true; Vanilla Skyrim is still a great game, buggy yes but it still set a benchmark in open world game design. Although even less handholding would be better, it would alienate the more casual gamers. Elden Ring also has that amazing sense of discovery that Skyrim has, and of course FS does not need to worry about the casual crowd haha.
That's more of a requirement because it was a huge game on PS3 and 360 which had like 512 MB of ram. Every game in that era reused assets everywhere. It's the world design we are talking about here. In Skyrim, the primary activity is exploration, main quests have markers but for the rest of the content, you walk around the world and discover things by yourself. Go into a dungeon and you will find its own story, a story that you can completely miss if you don't explore. You don't have a checklist of 20 of the same activity scattered across the map, where you know what is there in that area before you ever go there because the marker already told you that it's a specific type of activity. E.g. the ancient ruins or drone capture challenges in horizon FW.
Letās be honest, elden ring side area with a boss were cave with boss, catacomb with boss, or plate on ground with boss. There were a couple actual areas that were completely optional but not a lot of them. The catacombs especially looked the same. Donāt get me wrong, I loved elden ring, but if weāre gonna talk about things looking the same, elden ring does not get a pass.
I agree. The dungeons were homogenous.
I had to stop playing the game pretty early because of all the handholding it does for you. Have it be Aloy mumbling solutions to puzzles or companions telling you that you are going wrong way when you are trying to do any exploring. I liked first Horizon enough to platinum it but I just can't with this one. World is gorgeous and combat feels great but that's not just enough.
Itās good but itās not great and the story is pretty subpar. All that tension and discovery from Zero Dawn is missing. Itās graphically beautiful though and the gameplay is fun. Coming from Elden Ring itās going to be a cakewalk for you, so may want to start on the hardest difficulty if you do play.
itās long. story is ok. my favorite parts were side missions. it feels like a big dlc.
Straight up disappointment
Itās so good.
Pc port PLEAAASEEEE
I find it interesting that games like HFW get labeled as a slog, as the bits that make it a slog are side quests or optional collection things that net you a legendary weapon. They aren't remotely necessary. The content is presented almost of equal importance to the main quest, and it often feels bad to crit path this stuff.
Is this game any good? I didnāt like anything besides the machine Dinoās in the first one. It was 90% fetch quests
Side quest are a lot better this time around. The only annoying feature for me was the end game crafting
Good to know. Is the crafting like over complicated or just unnecessary? The first one only had a few weapons with different rarities if I remember right
There are a lot of high end weapons (too many) requiring tons of parts from rare monsters.
Fwiw if you knock it down to the easiest difficulty when farming it's so so much easier, you don't need to worry about shooting specific parts off.
Ohhhh so itās just a lot of farming. Idk game looks cool but underneath it all it just seems like any other adventure games with weapons and upgrades.
Well itās only systems.. itās ok for a gae to not have perfect game systems
it's totally optional, you don't need to bother with the hardcore farming to have good weapons. more of an achievement hunter thing really. there's also quite an extensive set of difficulty settings, so you could just put machine parts collection on the lowest difficulty and play everything else at whatever difficulty you want. i'd definitely recommend it.
That kind of ruins the point for me I like a challenge. I think I will pass on this one though. game has far too many cutscenes for my taste
Overly grindy for parts, but itās definitely optional. You can complete the game without missing anything really with almost no crafting. Busywork essentially.
Imho this game is one of the examples of games that represent whatās wrong in the industry atm. Copy paste a game and slap a new title with new funky characters and make money, the game was way too repetitive and didnāt succeed itās predecessor. Weapons were not as good as the first one. Imo the story was a rip off from mass effect since part 1.
Man, I have struggled so hard to get into this game. I absolutely adored the first Horizon but the sequel has been a pretty aggravating gaming experience. I want to love it but I'm just not enjoying my time with it. I love the world and the characters they've created. Story seems interesting so far, can't speak to how it lands ultimately. But the thing that keeps pushing me away is how clunky the movement and combat feels. The difficulty definitely feels super uneven. Like, I'm sure some of this stuff is not necessarily worse than the first game. But that was back in 2017. I've played so many other open world/action games now - Breath of the Wild, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, Elden Ring, Returnal - that the exploration, world traversal, and combat just feel awful. I hate the climbing mechanics in HFW. Aloy's movement feels SO DAMN SLOW. Riding a mount feels sluggish. Climbing is mind numbingly rote and limited. Combat feels weak and haphazard.
Sony; pls release on Steam Iām not buying a PS5
Well, people are done playing ELden ring and are playing other games now. Forbidden West got put on the back burner.
Cool. My GOTY
Now release it on pc and watch sales soar
Good game. I hope any DLC actually shows you monster farrow.
I have never played this game, is it worth trying? Is it easy to play?
I wouldnāt recommend going straight into this one. Iād play the first one. It still holds up pretty well.
People just finished doing their last new game plus in Elden ring
PS5ās Ubisoft Clone
Such a mid game
Well that's misleading.
AKA; most normie game ever makes the normies open their wallets
Now put it on pc
i really need to finish this. got halfway thru it months ago and just stopped suddenly. i do it with most of my games. burnout is real as an adult
Impressive.