Quick Look: Horizon: Zero Dawn

Aloy <3

Super pumped for this one

no donuts at start 0/5

it's time

Consider learning CPR - it can save a life.

This game would look a lot better if they laid off the orange/warm filter, really takes away from the visuals for me. It bugs me quite a lot now to the point where I think the game looks a little rough.

I'm also an ass healer.

When you thought Brad's voice couldn't get any deeper.

Finally!

No more embargoes!

I already hate how she's holding and shooting the bow for some reason.

No, you're an ass-healer.

Also, been looking forward to see how this game adds up to Jeff's 5-star score!

Have my Digital Deluxe Edition just counting down on my PS4. Been kinda excited for this since the announcement.

This is such a minor thing to complain about but

the water really doesn't animated when you move in it? Felt like that was standard at this point

After first 3 minutes: "this game is preeetty good."

Rest of the video: "maybe not that good..."

Can we all please agree that this new trend of "hold button to perform action" is the fucking worst ?

"How about we make this mindless repetitive process of looting a bunch of corpses take 3 times longer for no good reason, sound good?"

@ares42: At least it is not mash button to open door..... every door!

I rarely spend 60 on games when new but between this, nier, and mass effect I won't be playing anything else for a While!

Meanwhile, 23 hours left on psn to download ... damn after 11 years of using psn speeds still miserably slow

super exited to play this game + it'a always fun to hear when Jeff really really likes a game

man the audio design in this is pretty rad.

So excited for this. I already have it pre-loaded on my PS4.

Omg how do we get out of this freakin' cave system

@steveurkel: This whole "PSN is so slow" thing is so foreign to me. I must live next door to the best servers because I currently get about 30MBPS down on PSN. I downloaded 3 games in around 2 hours last night.

Edit: That's on a Pro with 4.5 beta. I went from 2 down to 10 down when switching from the base PS4 to the pro and then 10 down to 30 down when switching to the 4.5 beta.

Oh look, another modern game with shitty AI. This game looks great in every other aspect, but that human AI is just plain bad.

@raiz265: That sideways bow thing was boggling my mind until I realized that was just the crouching+bow animation and she holds it correctly when standing.

Disappointing Quick Look. I didn't see a lot that I liked. Honestly seems a little boring. Also, that water looks terrible, the bow shot looks bad, poor collision detection for those arrows too.

Story must be great, but I am probably going to hold off on this one until it's on sale.

GOTY 2017

Normally I'm not much of a stickler about this, but good lord that lip-syncing is horribly distracting. For a game that apparently has a really good story, it was damn near impossible to focus on the actual dialogue.

Overall, if this had come out two years ago, I would have been all over it. But in the wake of spending a ton of time with Far Cry 4, MGSV, Fallout 4, AC Syndicate and Witcher 3, Horizon just looks like a tiresome "Greatest Hits" of modern open world design conventions without much fresh stuff going for it outside of the setting. I'll probably pick it up eventually, but my fatigue for that specific formula is heavy right now.

This looks like if Zelda was made in 2017. Very nice!

@ares42: "Hold button for action" doesn't even come close to the worst. It can provide additional inputs for actions, be used for things that players might not want to instantly commit to and give a buffer in case of accidential input, or as a balancing factor.

In this case, if someone didn't want to loot corpses for some reason, they won't go through the whole looting animation if they accidentally press the loot button.

So psyched to play this damn game.

i mostly agree, but it should take like a second at most to hold down for the action. there are definitely worse offenders though (*cough* no man's sky und destiny *cough*)

To my cynical eyes this looks like a generic open world game. I fail to see a meaningful difference between this and Far Cry Primal for instance. I hope it really fucking delivers on the story and lore front.

Hard to believe this is from the Killzone people.

This seems, I dunno, kinda mediocre? Open world, piles of useless trash loot, a bow, dumbass AI, that cave thing looked pretty linear and dull. It's kinda like Shadow of Mordor, where it has a couple neat ideas, a clump of stock standard game design, and maybe not much else. And Shadow of Mordor's gimmicks looked more interesting to me than anything in this video. It doesn't exactly do anything poorly, but I'd lose interest after a few hours.

I also started getting skeptical when Brad or Jeff kept mentioning things they didn't like or thought could be improved before saying, "no no, the game's really good!" Comments like that don't usually show up until a month or two after the initial excitement wears off.

@banefirelord: Also, guy's glasses clipping into his cheeks while he's talking.

@azuregale: The problem is whatever you accomplish by avoiding a few miss-clicks through an entire playthrough pales in comparison to the amount of time you waste having to hold down the button for every single action. And that's not even considering how it affects the general pacing of the game. It might not seem obvious but the fact that you can scoop up 15 items in 2 seconds in a game like Diablo is essential for that game to even be playable. Or how something like entering a fog gate in Dark Souls is an instantaneous transition completely changes how you approach runbacks.

Sure, if they actually used it to a good effect (like maybe tap open loot window, hold loot everything) it would be a good thing, but having it as a default function on almost every single action outside of core combat and platforming has way more drawbacks than benefits.

Think of it this way; think of a turn-based game like an old Final Fantasy or X-Com or something and imagine that they used this type of confirmation for every single combat action in the game. How much of a drag would that game suddenly become ? Putting it on everything non-combat in a game has the same exact effect on that part of the experience.

Yeah some of those arrow shots, especially against human characters looked off. As someone who hasn't enjoyed a Far Cry game yet, I actually would like to see some of the story for this game just to see how good it is.

Perfect timing. Just came back from my evening workout and are ready to settle down for the night with a little dose of GB.

Chloe Price got a lot less self-centered when she grew up!

@steveurkel: At this point people are starting to notice a disconnect between complaints made by Jeff and Brad during this quick look and the review, and the 5 stars given by Jeff that hyped a lot of people up. It's not hate; It's caution.

'Technical masterpiece' may be a bit strong of a phrase to use for this game, however.

This looks like modern Tomb Raider had a baby with Far Cry... ehh. I think I'll pass.

Stealth looks like a downgrade from something like a Tomb Raider or even Shadows of Mordor... as others said the story and setpiece battles must be pretty good because those sequences were not a strength

It doesn't look that impressive to me, I also hate the voice actor, something about her gets on my nerves.

@mrguffman: Yeah it's pretty bad, but even worse is the jank ass animation. When Aloy's animation is so fantastic, and the rest of this game looks so good, the awful enemy movements really ruins the vibe

Far Cry Primal 2: Zero Dawn?

@steveurkel: It is certainly graphically impressive, but I think everything about the combat looks really dull.

i'm sure the opposite would happen with a three star review: people would come out of the woodwork to defend this game's honor with their lives.

five stars doesn't mean perfection, i would say it more means a really exceptional experience on the whole, as subjectively viewed by the reviewer. the flaws seems pretty miniscule, unless you're just not into open world games at all in which case you should already clearly know to avoid this one entirely. it looks like a game that keeps most of the cool open world tropes but also manages to streamline the shit out of it (well, maybe beside the whole holding buttons down to confirm actions bits). also my tastes align well with jeff so i trust him on this one.

this does feel a bit like a more self-serious Recore, which actually didn't look too bad. i guess it was hard to convey how that game was probably unnecessarily padded out.

Is this how night strikes in this game, just sudden green, or did something special happen there? In that case, I'm not stoked about how night isn't dark as much as it's just very saturated green. Is it maybe something approaching night vision, from her UI thing? I'm used to Dragon's Dogma night, where shit's DARK and you need those light sources. Here it looks like the torches weren't significantly brighter than the surroundings, everything just turned green filtered.

Other than that, this game looks really cool.

Edit: Human enemies/camps look boring as all hell compared to the robot monsters.