I haven't been feeling well this weekend so I've been marathoning Horizon: Zero Dawn. I already played the best that Playstation 4 has to offer, and the second best game on the platform, so I figured I'd check out this AARPG that the kids are crazy for these days.

You guys, this game is pretty good. This is a good game. It took me awhile to fully get into it, but I'm there.

Anyway, I decide I want to upgrade my ropecaster and I don't have any Snapjaw hearts, so I gotta go hunt me some snappies. While those beasts were once pretty fearsome to me, I'm at a point where I have enough of a health buffer and enough experience with them that they're relatively trivial, so I figure this should be an easy time.

It was not an easy time.

I went to a couple of the Snapjaw locations on the map, and the first one had 0 Snapjaws, while the second only had a few, but they were all heartless, at least once I was done setting them on fire and pumping arrows into them. So I decide to hit up a third location, only I don't have a campfire near the one I want to go to, so I fast travel to the closest campfire I have and plan to hike over.

As soon as I spawn at the new campfire I see I can't save. This puzzles me, since I generally save as soon as I fast travel, but I quickly realize why. I'm in combat. With a Stormbird. I have taken down my share of Glinthawks but this is my first dance with the big boy, and he is wrecking me. I'm not used to his attack patterns, have the wrong weapons equipped, and am generally just not ready to jump into this fight.

But I roll with it.

I get my tear arrows out, use healing items to keep from dying, and I start dancing with this lovely big metal boy the best I can. And after awhile it starts to click. I tear his weapons off, knock him out the sky, Tie him down (kinky) all that good stuff. He's got a ton of health but I'm getting it done. My health stuff is kind of depleted at this point (from healing during the initial confusion) but I'm feeling in control.

Suddenly big boy takes off. He heads down the hill and I see there's another lifebar there. Some Carja DWEEB has run by, fighting with a Longlegs, and my Stormbird has decided to focus on him for some unknown reason. I pause for a moment, confused, but decide to go down there and finish my Stormbird, who is almost dead at this point. I go down the hill and...the Longlegs focuses on me. Perfect. The Carja DWEEB has traded my majestic Stormbird for a stupid Longlegs, and after everything I did for his Sun King! RUDE!

Now I'm pretty low on health and I don't have the tripwires out I usually use on a Longlegs, so even though he's not much of a threat, it takes me 20-30 seconds to sort myself out and dispose of the new machine, while also making sure the Stormbird doesn't gank me. I get it done, and turn back to face the Stormbird, who at this point just has a silver of health. I start pumping arrows into him but it's too late. The Carja DWEEB gets the last blow, and the Stormbird crumples to the ground, while I receive 0 XP or credit for my work. I get to loot the corpse but there's nothing great on it. Just a bunch of mods that are weaker than what I already have.

I played my share of EverQuest and WOW and had to deal with killstealing in those games, and all the frustrations it caused, but it never occurred to me this would happen to me in a SINGLE PLAYER game. Why doesn't the player get credit for anything they hit that dies? I guess they could cheese the game by kiting machines into guards, but who cares? It's single player. Why would you balance it based on last hit? Have the developers never played an MMO themselves?

Anyway, Horizon: Zero Dawn is an excellent game but this was a weird design choice and I AM SALTY. THERE IS SALT!

Never had ANY of my kills stolen in Knack. Knack is still king of the PS4.

Yeah, that is some garbage. Also, stormbirds are by far the robotic enemy I like least in that game, but I hate all the airborne enemies

As Jeff would say: Stormbirds are real fuckers. You loose sight of him only to have that huge, electric son-of-a-bitch fall on your head from the sky.

In some ways combat in a game is only as good as the enemies you fight and Zero Dawn has some damn good enemies. Machines still managed to wrong-foot me occasionally even after many hours of play.

Imagine my surprise upon discovering a Trampler can smash rock formations I didn't even know were destructible.

Or that a Snapmaw can barf out a heap of chillwater canisters and then hide in the water for an impromptu ambush.

Or that a Ravager has some kind of area-of-effect electrical attack that I've only ever seen once.

Or that a Stalker can climb vertical surfaces like some kind of unholy metal gecko-with-a-sniper-rifle.

Stalkers are real fuckers.