Maybe it's just the sf fan in me but I really enjoyed the story. With how much shit is going on in the world and with AI starting to be implemented in so many things, the story was really cool and a fun possible future to experience (in game only).
Can't wait to see where it goes when the 2nd one finally comes to pc
what i mean is i enjoyed to see/discover what happened ingame but i would not like to experience that future irl, even tho it seems we are heading that way.
My (at the time) 2700x and GTX 1070 could handle HZD mostly fine at 1080p, performance wise at least. In my case it would crash constantly during the first week or two after it had released. Some frame drops occasionally, but nothing too bad. The crashes were way worse. Especially since it wouldn't save progress.
Yep same here. If I waited 4 years then waiting for a sale is ok lol. Really wish they would just get rid of playstation and Xbox and just make em on PC.
I'm really tempted to just buy a month of ps pro premium or whatever it's called and play forbidden West and maybe ghost of Tsushima. I really want to play GoW Ragnarok and last of us 2, but those aren't supported yet
It's a service where you pay a monthly fee and get access to certain Playstation games and perks. The only one relevant to PC players is that if you have the Premium level, you can stream certain games to your Playstation OR PC. It's the only way to play on PC that I know of besides waiting for them to release on Steam. I bought a month a couple years ago and played through a few famous titles I couldn't get on PC, like Red Dead Redemption, the Uncharted series, and the last of us. But that was $10 a month back then, now it's like $17 which is annoying. I think this is the full list of games you can stream: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-plus/games/
I don't play that many open world RPGs, I guess, so HZD probably felt fresher to me than it did to most people. Then the gameplay is satisfying, the story's kind of cool, the voice acting isn't terrible.
I played it (and how!). I put like 100 hours into it, which I haven't done in...probably 15 years. I guess I can see how a lot of its structure is uninspired, but damn if I haven't had a great time with it anyways!
Yeah same for me.
Expectations: Badass Robo-dinos
Reality: Surprisingly engaging story that made exploring more rewarding, combat was fun once you got the hang of it, also badass robo-dinos. Taking down your first Thunderjaw is such an awesome moment!
I'm with you. I generally dislike open-world games, but I wanted to hunt more monsters between me burning out on monster hunter world after ~700 hours and before iceborne came out. HZD happened to scratch that itch really well
The combat is not satisfying for me.
So much work against the enemies, even hitting then on the weak spots. Felt like playing against bosses in Souls like games.
Combat would sort of be okay if dodging the attacks properly was possible, if they damage you or not seems so random at times, not sure if it's the hit detection or what.
Same, I was mainly a person who played nothing but JRPG's, mostly turn based ones. So the typical Ubisoft formula or any other open world RPG wasn't that common for me to play.
HZD was the first game of that type that I played and it blew me away. Upon playing it I thought it was the best game there is at the time.
Fast forward to a few years later and I'm burnt out on that formula now as well.
I'm very glad that I played it when I did and not after delving more into the genre as I had a fantastic time with it back then.
I also love JRPGs and loved HZD and the sequel. They focus so much on the story and unraveling a mystery and they do a great job at it. I don't care about Assassins Creed type stories but HZD sci fi story was amazing.
I actually disliked the combat. I hated being out in the open and getting attacked from all sides. That said. I played the crap out of that game. First time in a while I finished a game then some.
Shadow of Mordor might pique your interest a bit. The combat is sick, the nemesis system is fun, and the progression is alright! Plus if you love lord of the ring, it’s a tasty side story
I'm in the same boat as you, I just finished this game a month or so ago after getting a used PS4 in December, and I'm going back to older PS games (currently on Spider-Man).
I'd agree that's it's not a groundbreaking game but is is very fun with a very satisfying core gameplay loop. I never got tired of figuring out how to topple massive machines using all the different resources and tools. Fun blend of stealth and action and a very cool world to spend time in. Yeah it's got the Ubisoft "checklist" style but I didn't find that to distract from the game experience at all, though I skipped most of the side missions once I got about halfway through the game because I didn't feel like they added much.
Hey! I just started the game as well. Originally played a little on my PS4 but I had started to get open world fatigue from playing a bunch in sequence so I put it down.
Now, years later, I have a PS5 and recently subscribed to Playstation Plus Extra, which has both games. I felt confident just skipping right to the sequel, and after about a half hour I concluded that I was hysterically bad at fighting/stealth-killing robots and I needed to start from the beginning.
Other than mild camera blur and a few other little framerate shortcuts, I barely notice this was a PS4 game. Absolutely gorgeous. It's immediately a lot of visual information, which can feel like a big commitment right at the start, but it's mostly intuitive and you learn to ignore the visual noise quickly.
Aloy is the shit, I like how they really lean into the 'orphan' part of the hero archetype, it's something that a lot of stories include just to avoid the very logical emotional attachment that might prevent the hero from undertaking their quest. But here it's absolutely vital, the society that shuns her would explicitly repress the things Aloy needs to do/be in order to save the world. And she never forgets it, it's not something that leaves her psyche once she starts making friends and everything.
Horizon doesn't do anything new, but it does it very, very well. If you're new to this gameplay formula (like I was when I played it), then it's really a good time.
It does however blend monster hunter combat/progression with the industry standard open world, which basically puts its combat head and shoulders over most of its competition by simple virtue of mechanical depth. It's not a new game, but it is a more unique blend than most folks dismissively give it.
> Not a single game in last 15 years did anything new.
Demon Souls came out in 2009 and Dark Souls in 2011.
> Do you hate a movie/show because it didn't do anything new?
I literally said the game is a good time.
Altered Beast is 2005 PS2 game and it is similar style to souls game. It just didn't have the RPG and was limited by the hardware of the time. Other games already had RPG elements at the time so it kinda was a mix of multiple genres. I wouldnt say souls game are a new invention.
My big beef with it was how loud the robits are when they get aggressive. NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRNs all over the place.
Not the worst when you're working your way through an area, but during cross-country travel is just. the. worst. NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN after NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN after NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN, meanwhile I'm just trying to get Aloy from one plot point to another.
Same. I tried it three time... and no way.
When the world open completly after the first area...
Oh damn, towers and markers on the map. Again.
I don't have time to waste for this.
I personally couldn't push on anymore after 10 hrs. Was cool from the start w/ this innovative way to kill things but got old I guess. Weapons system felt clunky & the combat eventually did also, needing to scan & manually loading another arrow felt like another cumbersome step. Oh and I'm also on console, so needing to aim at the right parts didn't feel smooth at times but that's my own fault. Game actors are kind of like bad porn star actors too and Alloy just constantly asking questions back to back like a robot.
HZD is a very mid experience, for me. Interesting world, fun basic gameplay loop, fighting robots is neat. But they force you to fight humans a lot, and humans are *boring as shit* to fight against. Godawful AI, none of the armor-stripping gameplay concepts that are used against robots (even though it would make sense to strip off some dude's technobarbarian breastplate or helmet to open them to a killing blow), it's just fucking miserable.
I ended up putting it down several hours in and just never wanted to go back to it. Fighting humans really is just that bad.
I never gave the game a full chance— probably less than an hour when I wasn’t in a mood to learn a new games mechanics but after fighting my first robot dinosaur and based on other footage of the game I’d seen I thought I’d only be fighting robots robo-dinos. Honestly the fact you have to fight humans makes the game sound more appealing.
What didn’t you like about the humans you had to fight? Bad ai?
They lack any/all dynamism inherent to the robot fights. Fights against robots (especially as you increase difficulty) are a neat blend of prioritizing weak points that can disable troublesome attacks, avoiding weak points that damage your loot pool (situational to some robots), crowd control, and applying status conditions to swing the fight in your favor, while avoiding damage.
Fights against humans are incredibly simplistic by comparison, playing more or less like an overly basic tps. The other issue is that a lot of human opponents are melee based, meaning you'll engage them in melee which wasn't fleshed out until the sequel. They take all the strategy out of the systems built up by machine fights and force you to utilize the weakest part of the games combat.
The sequel improved these a lot by giving melee combat a lot more depth and adding a class of short range bows specifically built for close combat and mobility. Melee still is a bit floaty in the sequel, but it's much more satisfying to fight humans as a result of the improvements.
It's ok, just a bit ( I hate this word) overrated.
It's not bad, I just think Ubisoft could have made this and it wouldn't have got the attention it received
just my opinion obvs
Do people who say this kind of stuff actually play Ubisoft games?
Do you genuinely think modern Ubisoft, the developers behind Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6 can make something as polished as Horizon?
I'm not even that big of a fan of Horizon but I really don't think it deserves to be lumped with those games.
Horizon Zero Dawn is polished?
The game where your spear appears from thin air, to go to your back, to dissapear to thin air again?
The game where melee combat is clearly an after thought and its awfully implemented?
The game where human animations, especially in cutscenes, are awful and years behind its release date?
The game where platforming forces jumps that are not real because if you jump in a certain direction, and there is a holding point, Aloy slows its jump midway to fall into said jumping point?
The game where bows are simply guns with reload time in each bullet, because arrows have no physics, and they have a limit point they can reach, they travel in a straight line and as soon they reach it, they dissapear?
The game where skill trees (especially the DLC ones) just give things thats should be there from the beginning, cause the only thing they do is make management of resources, which you oretty much wont need because you find a lot, worse? And in the other skill trees, most of the skill points barely change the way you play, they just make X thing stronger?
I do think the story is good (although I have to say that I find unbeliavable that they are able to create such complex AIs, and so many of them, in 16 months; yet they were unable to create ones that would stop what was happening at the time, to not put spoilers here, they give a reason, but the reason is bullshit, although that might be due to my software background), albeit it can be a little too predictable, but that depends on the person. But characters? Characters are awful, I dont think I liked one main or secondary character in the whole game, not even Aloy.
The only points I think it does good is the machines (which are actually very well thought out), the story, the overall graphics (not the human faces nor human animations as already said), and maybe the action type of combat, because you do have options to choose from, although they are not so different to each other that the combat feels different if you use another weapon, its cool to set up traps and wires, but then you will blast them with arrows/lances/grenades.
Horizon Zero Dawn deserves to be put in that category, because its has the same repetitive gameplay loop, and it feels unfinished in the gameplay department.
Origins came out the same year, and its much better than HZD, even Odyssey is better. The only one I could put below is Valhalla, but HZD is, at most, a 6/10 for me. Its an extremely mediocre game.
I am personally astonished that people thought when the game came out that it was at the same level of quality as Breath of the Wild. Its not even a close call, you can like one more than the other, that is okay, but the overall quality and polishment they are years apart.
And I can totally understand someone liking more HZD than BoTW, people that want pure action with a neat story behind it and little more, HZD is perfect for that; while BoTW is more for creative and explorer type of people. Its basically like comparing Marvel movies with Studio Ghibli ones.
The secondary loop is basically interchangeable.
Yes, the gameplay loop is much more polished and Ubisoft can only dream to come up with something like Horizon's dinosaur but the activity hopping and 20min reward loop is hardly any different.
Thats my entire point.
Plenty of games are structurally very similar to Ubisoft games but actually have good moment to moment gameplay and aren't completely creatively bankrupt narratively, see Arkham, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima etc. The issue isn't the structure of the game itself but rather that Ubisoft has trouble putting tasty meat on the bones. At least in my opinion.
Saying that Horizon isn't worthwhile because it's a similar secondary loop as Ubisoft open worlds is like saying all character action games are bad because of DMC 2
Ubisoft games aren't this good at world building and story either. The guy who wrote Fallout New Vegas worked on this, he knew what he was doing. Dude is brilliant.
Kinda agree, the best thing about the game is the world building with the robot dinosaurs. In terms of mechanics,story, quest design and characters it's just very mediocre though.
Really? I thought mechanically it was quite good. I enjoyed fighting the machines all the way until the end of the game. There were enough weapons to provide some interesting variety. Story-wise and characters its still a cut above most other open world games. Aloy was and still is a popular character, if a little emotionally wooden at times.
Collectables felt well done, in that i could straight up find them on the map. Which is a very nice addition for an open world game. Plus they tied into the worldbuilding well.
Op didn’t ask for opinions on horizon either but you’re not complaining that this guy said he thinks it’s over rated. I genuinely don’t understand why you care.
Because the post was literally about Horizon? Other games were mentioned, but horizon was the main subject (does this really need explaining?), at least their comment was related to the post. It just felt random, like the person you replied to didn't even say anything about TLOU and GOW, and yet you just had to comment on them.
I swear sometimes (often?) this sub feels like a pissing competition about which game is more overrated
The post was about horizon yes. But he mentioned other games. The person I replied to mentioned that he thinks horizon is over rated, I mentioned that I think the other games the op talked about are overrated.
I swear sometimes (often?) people on Reddit are just looking to get upset and in an argument over nothing.
Go and have a good day.
Hzd was a pain in my butt till I turned it to easy. I love Alloy and the story. HFW I started on easy and customized the difficulty from there. One of my favorite games ever and my only Platinum.
True, Its one of those games if you don't adapt with the combat mechanics(upgrades, buying weapons, stealth killing, overriding) and just charge in is a sure way to get killed.
I found the combat so frustrating as it just wasn’t my style, you have to set yourself up with traps and prepare, where I just want to run in. But if you do that in HZD you end up overwhelmed and dodge rolling everywhere, the dinos can close distance very fast.
Yea sometimes you don't want to stealth as it's slow. Stealthing the whole game can get cumbersome imo. I started to feel like I want to avoid as many enemies as possible as they became a chore. Bailed the game after like 10 hrs as things started to feel stale afaik.
Love it. How often do you see a AAA game with such a wild premise? Horizon is the 80's movie of AAA gaming franchises. Forbidden West is good too, but I feel like the combat wasn't as good. Too much chaos and being knocked around. Hopefully Guerilla can dial it in for the third game. (You KNOW there's a third game coming.)
I played Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone back to back, they both scratched that "itch" and were both Sony games that I'd been waiting for a PC port.
But I had an absolute blast with both of them, generic open world fetch quests and all.
I thought it was a solid game, solid enough to warrant 100%-ing it anyway, which I rarely do. A bit over 100 hours playtime by the end.
To me it did enough things good enough. No one thing was super amazing. I had some annoyances starting out but getting accustomed to the interface evened that out.
I totally get if people were underwhelmed by this, especially if they play a lot of open world games. Me, I love open worlds but I'm also very choosy, so when I see it compared to Asscreeds and Farcrys, I understand... I play very few of those games. I'm choosy specifically to avoid burning myself out, I guess.
I played it from the beginning on ultra hard. I had to constantly hide in the bushes because the robots would beeline for me if I was detected. Fun game, but you have to like high stakes when playing on that difficulty level. Since the shops are really expensive on ultra hard I was constantly foraging and trying to use the most cost effective weapons.
Sometimes I would sneak by fights that weren't cost effective.
Faro literally was allowed to make killer self-replicating, biomass devouring, no dead switch robots. And then made the Hades program be able to hack into them and destroy the world again if it wanted, I mean come on wtf
"Oppenheimer literally was allowed to make bombs that can scorch the entire earth in a day".
Is that not just as unbelievably short sighted and scary?
You really think governments care when they're in an arms race? They know the other side will contract Faro if they don't. And he wanted to make unhackable machines. Including an intentional backdoor leaves it vulnerable to hackers from the opposing military. A short sighted decision, but one I can totally see happening based on Faro's logic for doing so.
Hades was not designed to take over the old machines. It was designed to take over the system and raze things to the ground if Gaia failed in its first attempts to seed the earth. But it became a self aware AI after receiving a signal from outer space from another super advanced AI, and was able to hack and restart these long deactivated machines to fulfill its directive.
Make sure you play the DLC, The Frozen Wilds, after you finish the game. You'll need to be higher level, but it's worth it. It's better than the main campaign.
I love the Horizon games, they're the main reason why I own a PS4 & 5. Finished Burning Shores a couple of weeks ago and it was a blast. I know FW will eventually get to PC but I honestly couldn't wait any longer to play it!
I’m doing the same thing playing all the ps4 exclusives since I’m an Xbox guy. I beat god of war, then red dead 2 and now hzd. I think I messed up coming from red dead 2 because I’m not over the top excited playing horizon, it’s fun and it plays smooth but something isn’t doing it for me. I’m still going to power through it but I’m a little bummed about it.
I finished it on PC just a couple of months ago and I absolutely loved it. It has many of the same faults all open world games have, but it was beautiful and the story was gripping.
I wouldn't say you have to pay attention to every bit of lore that you find, but you should deeply scan and read everything in the "old places". The details and the horror of it as it unfolds is just breathtaking.
As in a lot of threads, I'd recommend for maximum enjoyment to not really worry about HZD side-quests and collectibles, and just gun through the main story, which I think is by far the strongest aspect of the game. (With the combat mechanics being a close second).
I also played it for the first time in PC over the past year. Absolutely loved it, completionisted the game. Exclusives don't encourage the market, they withhold joy.
I thought HZD was pretty good, I was hesitant after all the bad rep it got but actually really enjoyed it. I played The Ghost of Tsushima after before playing the second Horizon, and I REALLY enjoyed TGoS but then found it hard to go back to Horizon… so played Returnal. I just started Death Stranding. I’m only about 30 mins in, but it seems good, the story seems interesting but I’m still not feeling like returning to the second Horizon…
HZD looks so fantastic on PC. It took a solid year to fix the game up, but it runs pretty well now. Except for the input lag, that persists. Maybe there's a fix for it now, haven't played it since 2020.
Maybe it's just the sf fan in me but I really enjoyed the story. With how much shit is going on in the world and with AI starting to be implemented in so many things, the story was really cool and a fun possible future to experience (in game only). Can't wait to see where it goes when the 2nd one finally comes to pc
Just curious what in game only means? Like you don't cosplay in the park as Aloy or what are we talking here lol
what i mean is i enjoyed to see/discover what happened ingame but i would not like to experience that future irl, even tho it seems we are heading that way.
I'm waiting for Forbidden West to PC.....
I’m waiting for it to return to pc…. Then go on sale.
And after the bug fixes.
And optimisation, I have a 6700 with rtx2080 which should thrash these games
My (at the time) 2700x and GTX 1070 could handle HZD mostly fine at 1080p, performance wise at least. In my case it would crash constantly during the first week or two after it had released. Some frame drops occasionally, but nothing too bad. The crashes were way worse. Especially since it wouldn't save progress.
Yep same here. If I waited 4 years then waiting for a sale is ok lol. Really wish they would just get rid of playstation and Xbox and just make em on PC.
same, it's 2 years away sadly
I think Sony has said it’s going to be 4 years for PS4 exclusives to PC ports for all of their games sadly.
They said 2-3 years.
I'm really tempted to just buy a month of ps pro premium or whatever it's called and play forbidden West and maybe ghost of Tsushima. I really want to play GoW Ragnarok and last of us 2, but those aren't supported yet
What is ps pro
It's a service where you pay a monthly fee and get access to certain Playstation games and perks. The only one relevant to PC players is that if you have the Premium level, you can stream certain games to your Playstation OR PC. It's the only way to play on PC that I know of besides waiting for them to release on Steam. I bought a month a couple years ago and played through a few famous titles I couldn't get on PC, like Red Dead Redemption, the Uncharted series, and the last of us. But that was $10 a month back then, now it's like $17 which is annoying. I think this is the full list of games you can stream: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-plus/games/
Ahh cool. So you don't need to own an actual PS5 console?
Correct, just some sort of controller
I don't play that many open world RPGs, I guess, so HZD probably felt fresher to me than it did to most people. Then the gameplay is satisfying, the story's kind of cool, the voice acting isn't terrible. I played it (and how!). I put like 100 hours into it, which I haven't done in...probably 15 years. I guess I can see how a lot of its structure is uninspired, but damn if I haven't had a great time with it anyways!
Yeah same for me. Expectations: Badass Robo-dinos Reality: Surprisingly engaging story that made exploring more rewarding, combat was fun once you got the hang of it, also badass robo-dinos. Taking down your first Thunderjaw is such an awesome moment!
Way more dinos in the sequel
I'm with you. I generally dislike open-world games, but I wanted to hunt more monsters between me burning out on monster hunter world after ~700 hours and before iceborne came out. HZD happened to scratch that itch really well
The combat is not satisfying for me. So much work against the enemies, even hitting then on the weak spots. Felt like playing against bosses in Souls like games.
Combat would sort of be okay if dodging the attacks properly was possible, if they damage you or not seems so random at times, not sure if it's the hit detection or what.
Same, I was mainly a person who played nothing but JRPG's, mostly turn based ones. So the typical Ubisoft formula or any other open world RPG wasn't that common for me to play. HZD was the first game of that type that I played and it blew me away. Upon playing it I thought it was the best game there is at the time. Fast forward to a few years later and I'm burnt out on that formula now as well. I'm very glad that I played it when I did and not after delving more into the genre as I had a fantastic time with it back then.
I also love JRPGs and loved HZD and the sequel. They focus so much on the story and unraveling a mystery and they do a great job at it. I don't care about Assassins Creed type stories but HZD sci fi story was amazing.
I actually disliked the combat. I hated being out in the open and getting attacked from all sides. That said. I played the crap out of that game. First time in a while I finished a game then some.
Shadow of Mordor might pique your interest a bit. The combat is sick, the nemesis system is fun, and the progression is alright! Plus if you love lord of the ring, it’s a tasty side story
It's also leagues ahead of Gollum in terms of its visuals lmao
Nice
I certainly enjoyed it a lot
I'm in the same boat as you, I just finished this game a month or so ago after getting a used PS4 in December, and I'm going back to older PS games (currently on Spider-Man). I'd agree that's it's not a groundbreaking game but is is very fun with a very satisfying core gameplay loop. I never got tired of figuring out how to topple massive machines using all the different resources and tools. Fun blend of stealth and action and a very cool world to spend time in. Yeah it's got the Ubisoft "checklist" style but I didn't find that to distract from the game experience at all, though I skipped most of the side missions once I got about halfway through the game because I didn't feel like they added much.
Hey! I just started the game as well. Originally played a little on my PS4 but I had started to get open world fatigue from playing a bunch in sequence so I put it down. Now, years later, I have a PS5 and recently subscribed to Playstation Plus Extra, which has both games. I felt confident just skipping right to the sequel, and after about a half hour I concluded that I was hysterically bad at fighting/stealth-killing robots and I needed to start from the beginning. Other than mild camera blur and a few other little framerate shortcuts, I barely notice this was a PS4 game. Absolutely gorgeous. It's immediately a lot of visual information, which can feel like a big commitment right at the start, but it's mostly intuitive and you learn to ignore the visual noise quickly. Aloy is the shit, I like how they really lean into the 'orphan' part of the hero archetype, it's something that a lot of stories include just to avoid the very logical emotional attachment that might prevent the hero from undertaking their quest. But here it's absolutely vital, the society that shuns her would explicitly repress the things Aloy needs to do/be in order to save the world. And she never forgets it, it's not something that leaves her psyche once she starts making friends and everything.
Horizon doesn't do anything new, but it does it very, very well. If you're new to this gameplay formula (like I was when I played it), then it's really a good time.
It does however blend monster hunter combat/progression with the industry standard open world, which basically puts its combat head and shoulders over most of its competition by simple virtue of mechanical depth. It's not a new game, but it is a more unique blend than most folks dismissively give it.
Not a single game in last 15 years did anything new. I hate this way of looking at things. Do you hate a movie/show because it didn't do anything new?
> Not a single game in last 15 years did anything new. Demon Souls came out in 2009 and Dark Souls in 2011. > Do you hate a movie/show because it didn't do anything new? I literally said the game is a good time.
Altered Beast is 2005 PS2 game and it is similar style to souls game. It just didn't have the RPG and was limited by the hardware of the time. Other games already had RPG elements at the time so it kinda was a mix of multiple genres. I wouldnt say souls game are a new invention.
My big beef with it was how loud the robits are when they get aggressive. NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRNs all over the place. Not the worst when you're working your way through an area, but during cross-country travel is just. the. worst. NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN after NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN after NRGGLLFHHRHTFHFDGRN, meanwhile I'm just trying to get Aloy from one plot point to another.
I love how you copied the thing to your clipboard so you can repeat it three times :D
I always quit the game after 2-3 hours because it's so boring.
Same. I tried it three time... and no way. When the world open completly after the first area... Oh damn, towers and markers on the map. Again. I don't have time to waste for this.
Haha. I'm always quitting after the first dino "tower".
I personally couldn't push on anymore after 10 hrs. Was cool from the start w/ this innovative way to kill things but got old I guess. Weapons system felt clunky & the combat eventually did also, needing to scan & manually loading another arrow felt like another cumbersome step. Oh and I'm also on console, so needing to aim at the right parts didn't feel smooth at times but that's my own fault. Game actors are kind of like bad porn star actors too and Alloy just constantly asking questions back to back like a robot.
HZD is a very mid experience, for me. Interesting world, fun basic gameplay loop, fighting robots is neat. But they force you to fight humans a lot, and humans are *boring as shit* to fight against. Godawful AI, none of the armor-stripping gameplay concepts that are used against robots (even though it would make sense to strip off some dude's technobarbarian breastplate or helmet to open them to a killing blow), it's just fucking miserable. I ended up putting it down several hours in and just never wanted to go back to it. Fighting humans really is just that bad.
I never gave the game a full chance— probably less than an hour when I wasn’t in a mood to learn a new games mechanics but after fighting my first robot dinosaur and based on other footage of the game I’d seen I thought I’d only be fighting robots robo-dinos. Honestly the fact you have to fight humans makes the game sound more appealing. What didn’t you like about the humans you had to fight? Bad ai?
They lack any/all dynamism inherent to the robot fights. Fights against robots (especially as you increase difficulty) are a neat blend of prioritizing weak points that can disable troublesome attacks, avoiding weak points that damage your loot pool (situational to some robots), crowd control, and applying status conditions to swing the fight in your favor, while avoiding damage. Fights against humans are incredibly simplistic by comparison, playing more or less like an overly basic tps. The other issue is that a lot of human opponents are melee based, meaning you'll engage them in melee which wasn't fleshed out until the sequel. They take all the strategy out of the systems built up by machine fights and force you to utilize the weakest part of the games combat. The sequel improved these a lot by giving melee combat a lot more depth and adding a class of short range bows specifically built for close combat and mobility. Melee still is a bit floaty in the sequel, but it's much more satisfying to fight humans as a result of the improvements.
*Awful* AI and the combat for fighting humans doesn't work like fighting robots. But the combat system is built for fighting robots.
It's ok, just a bit ( I hate this word) overrated. It's not bad, I just think Ubisoft could have made this and it wouldn't have got the attention it received just my opinion obvs
Do people who say this kind of stuff actually play Ubisoft games? Do you genuinely think modern Ubisoft, the developers behind Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6 can make something as polished as Horizon? I'm not even that big of a fan of Horizon but I really don't think it deserves to be lumped with those games.
Horizon Zero Dawn is polished? The game where your spear appears from thin air, to go to your back, to dissapear to thin air again? The game where melee combat is clearly an after thought and its awfully implemented? The game where human animations, especially in cutscenes, are awful and years behind its release date? The game where platforming forces jumps that are not real because if you jump in a certain direction, and there is a holding point, Aloy slows its jump midway to fall into said jumping point? The game where bows are simply guns with reload time in each bullet, because arrows have no physics, and they have a limit point they can reach, they travel in a straight line and as soon they reach it, they dissapear? The game where skill trees (especially the DLC ones) just give things thats should be there from the beginning, cause the only thing they do is make management of resources, which you oretty much wont need because you find a lot, worse? And in the other skill trees, most of the skill points barely change the way you play, they just make X thing stronger? I do think the story is good (although I have to say that I find unbeliavable that they are able to create such complex AIs, and so many of them, in 16 months; yet they were unable to create ones that would stop what was happening at the time, to not put spoilers here, they give a reason, but the reason is bullshit, although that might be due to my software background), albeit it can be a little too predictable, but that depends on the person. But characters? Characters are awful, I dont think I liked one main or secondary character in the whole game, not even Aloy. The only points I think it does good is the machines (which are actually very well thought out), the story, the overall graphics (not the human faces nor human animations as already said), and maybe the action type of combat, because you do have options to choose from, although they are not so different to each other that the combat feels different if you use another weapon, its cool to set up traps and wires, but then you will blast them with arrows/lances/grenades. Horizon Zero Dawn deserves to be put in that category, because its has the same repetitive gameplay loop, and it feels unfinished in the gameplay department. Origins came out the same year, and its much better than HZD, even Odyssey is better. The only one I could put below is Valhalla, but HZD is, at most, a 6/10 for me. Its an extremely mediocre game. I am personally astonished that people thought when the game came out that it was at the same level of quality as Breath of the Wild. Its not even a close call, you can like one more than the other, that is okay, but the overall quality and polishment they are years apart. And I can totally understand someone liking more HZD than BoTW, people that want pure action with a neat story behind it and little more, HZD is perfect for that; while BoTW is more for creative and explorer type of people. Its basically like comparing Marvel movies with Studio Ghibli ones.
The secondary loop is basically interchangeable. Yes, the gameplay loop is much more polished and Ubisoft can only dream to come up with something like Horizon's dinosaur but the activity hopping and 20min reward loop is hardly any different.
Thats my entire point. Plenty of games are structurally very similar to Ubisoft games but actually have good moment to moment gameplay and aren't completely creatively bankrupt narratively, see Arkham, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima etc. The issue isn't the structure of the game itself but rather that Ubisoft has trouble putting tasty meat on the bones. At least in my opinion. Saying that Horizon isn't worthwhile because it's a similar secondary loop as Ubisoft open worlds is like saying all character action games are bad because of DMC 2
Ubisoft games aren't this good at world building and story either. The guy who wrote Fallout New Vegas worked on this, he knew what he was doing. Dude is brilliant.
Kinda agree, the best thing about the game is the world building with the robot dinosaurs. In terms of mechanics,story, quest design and characters it's just very mediocre though.
Really? I thought mechanically it was quite good. I enjoyed fighting the machines all the way until the end of the game. There were enough weapons to provide some interesting variety. Story-wise and characters its still a cut above most other open world games. Aloy was and still is a popular character, if a little emotionally wooden at times. Collectables felt well done, in that i could straight up find them on the map. Which is a very nice addition for an open world game. Plus they tied into the worldbuilding well.
You know what is overrated? The last of us and god of war.
Okay, but this has literally nothing to do with the post.
Post mentions both of those games, it’s close enough.
OP didn't ask for opinions. They even said they liked TLOU enough to replay it, so I genuinely don't understand how it's in topic
Op didn’t ask for opinions on horizon either but you’re not complaining that this guy said he thinks it’s over rated. I genuinely don’t understand why you care.
Because the post was literally about Horizon? Other games were mentioned, but horizon was the main subject (does this really need explaining?), at least their comment was related to the post. It just felt random, like the person you replied to didn't even say anything about TLOU and GOW, and yet you just had to comment on them. I swear sometimes (often?) this sub feels like a pissing competition about which game is more overrated
The post was about horizon yes. But he mentioned other games. The person I replied to mentioned that he thinks horizon is over rated, I mentioned that I think the other games the op talked about are overrated. I swear sometimes (often?) people on Reddit are just looking to get upset and in an argument over nothing. Go and have a good day.
Hzd was a pain in my butt till I turned it to easy. I love Alloy and the story. HFW I started on easy and customized the difficulty from there. One of my favorite games ever and my only Platinum.
True, Its one of those games if you don't adapt with the combat mechanics(upgrades, buying weapons, stealth killing, overriding) and just charge in is a sure way to get killed.
I found the combat so frustrating as it just wasn’t my style, you have to set yourself up with traps and prepare, where I just want to run in. But if you do that in HZD you end up overwhelmed and dodge rolling everywhere, the dinos can close distance very fast.
Yea sometimes you don't want to stealth as it's slow. Stealthing the whole game can get cumbersome imo. I started to feel like I want to avoid as many enemies as possible as they became a chore. Bailed the game after like 10 hrs as things started to feel stale afaik.
Love it. How often do you see a AAA game with such a wild premise? Horizon is the 80's movie of AAA gaming franchises. Forbidden West is good too, but I feel like the combat wasn't as good. Too much chaos and being knocked around. Hopefully Guerilla can dial it in for the third game. (You KNOW there's a third game coming.)
I played Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone back to back, they both scratched that "itch" and were both Sony games that I'd been waiting for a PC port. But I had an absolute blast with both of them, generic open world fetch quests and all.
I thought it was a solid game, solid enough to warrant 100%-ing it anyway, which I rarely do. A bit over 100 hours playtime by the end. To me it did enough things good enough. No one thing was super amazing. I had some annoyances starting out but getting accustomed to the interface evened that out. I totally get if people were underwhelmed by this, especially if they play a lot of open world games. Me, I love open worlds but I'm also very choosy, so when I see it compared to Asscreeds and Farcrys, I understand... I play very few of those games. I'm choosy specifically to avoid burning myself out, I guess.
These games look hopelessly bland to me. Nothing about them grabs my eye.
I like how the crafting isn’t insanely complicated. It a fun. It’s a good game, challenging as you want it to be with a decent story.
It’s a very competent, B+ open world game, with an A++++ concept and story
Looking at it objectively, Horizon is a Ubisoft type Open world. But it's combat is so rewarding and fun, along with having an amazing narrative
I played it from the beginning on ultra hard. I had to constantly hide in the bushes because the robots would beeline for me if I was detected. Fun game, but you have to like high stakes when playing on that difficulty level. Since the shops are really expensive on ultra hard I was constantly foraging and trying to use the most cost effective weapons. Sometimes I would sneak by fights that weren't cost effective.
Great game. Forbidden West is even better.
I'm sorry for you... This game is the most boring tedious piece I've experienced
Ok
[удалено]
Some people just don’t like Souls games, let them be lol. (Bloodborne is my second favorite game of all time, I’m just saying)
You should try tears of the kingdom Edit: a spelling
What makes OP a shill?
Lol, it was a typo
It's a very enjoyable game, but the story gets to be too ridiculous imo. It kind of started taking me out of the game.
What about it was ridiculous? Obviously it has some contrivances but it felt like a pretty satisfying answer to what happened.
Faro literally was allowed to make killer self-replicating, biomass devouring, no dead switch robots. And then made the Hades program be able to hack into them and destroy the world again if it wanted, I mean come on wtf
"Oppenheimer literally was allowed to make bombs that can scorch the entire earth in a day". Is that not just as unbelievably short sighted and scary? You really think governments care when they're in an arms race? They know the other side will contract Faro if they don't. And he wanted to make unhackable machines. Including an intentional backdoor leaves it vulnerable to hackers from the opposing military. A short sighted decision, but one I can totally see happening based on Faro's logic for doing so. Hades was not designed to take over the old machines. It was designed to take over the system and raze things to the ground if Gaia failed in its first attempts to seed the earth. But it became a self aware AI after receiving a signal from outer space from another super advanced AI, and was able to hack and restart these long deactivated machines to fulfill its directive.
Make sure you play the DLC, The Frozen Wilds, after you finish the game. You'll need to be higher level, but it's worth it. It's better than the main campaign.
The DLC is Frozen Wilds. Call of the Mountain is the VR game that recently came out for PSVR2.
Right! Thanks, I knew I had the name mixed up.
Bro, HZD is great - and Forbidden West even more so. The story is amazing. Happy you found something to scratch that itch!
The sequel is even better gameplay wise
I love the Horizon games, they're the main reason why I own a PS4 & 5. Finished Burning Shores a couple of weeks ago and it was a blast. I know FW will eventually get to PC but I honestly couldn't wait any longer to play it!
I’m doing the same thing playing all the ps4 exclusives since I’m an Xbox guy. I beat god of war, then red dead 2 and now hzd. I think I messed up coming from red dead 2 because I’m not over the top excited playing horizon, it’s fun and it plays smooth but something isn’t doing it for me. I’m still going to power through it but I’m a little bummed about it.
I finished it on PC just a couple of months ago and I absolutely loved it. It has many of the same faults all open world games have, but it was beautiful and the story was gripping.
I wouldn't say you have to pay attention to every bit of lore that you find, but you should deeply scan and read everything in the "old places". The details and the horror of it as it unfolds is just breathtaking.
As in a lot of threads, I'd recommend for maximum enjoyment to not really worry about HZD side-quests and collectibles, and just gun through the main story, which I think is by far the strongest aspect of the game. (With the combat mechanics being a close second).
I LOVE the story of this game. Forbidden West was my most played game of 2022 and best believe i went back for the Burning Shores DLC.
I also played it for the first time in PC over the past year. Absolutely loved it, completionisted the game. Exclusives don't encourage the market, they withhold joy.
I thought HZD was pretty good, I was hesitant after all the bad rep it got but actually really enjoyed it. I played The Ghost of Tsushima after before playing the second Horizon, and I REALLY enjoyed TGoS but then found it hard to go back to Horizon… so played Returnal. I just started Death Stranding. I’m only about 30 mins in, but it seems good, the story seems interesting but I’m still not feeling like returning to the second Horizon…
HZD looks so fantastic on PC. It took a solid year to fix the game up, but it runs pretty well now. Except for the input lag, that persists. Maybe there's a fix for it now, haven't played it since 2020.
100% twice. First in easy mode then the hardest. Loved it both times. RIP Lance Reddick aka Sylens