Horizon Zero Dawn

I’m going to start this off by stating that I didn’t have the massive hype for Horizon: Zero Dawn that everyone else seemed to have. In fact, when the game was first shown at E3 2015 I remember remarking: “That looks cool, but can Guerilla Games pull that off?” Flash forward two years and yeah, they totally can.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is probably as close to a masterpiece as we are going to get in this eighth generation of consoles. And while yes, there have been some really truly terrific games this generation, it’s been mostly a disappointing generation that started out with not much creativity from big budget titles, and more of the indie scene pulling in some great games. Otherwise it’s boiled down to disappointing sequels and an orgy of remasters, some needless, others welcomed. I’ve always asked myself at the end of each year, which game was the best of the year, and will it be remembered as a defining moment for this generation. Horizon: Zero Dawn easily tops that list now. Horizon kind of brings the promise of Playstation 4 to gamers. Sony promised a device that would bring new and unique experiences to gamers back at that February 2013 unveiling, and well the system has had some good exclusive games, this feels like the first truly great one.

You jump into the shoes of Aloy, yes, her name is Aloy and it’s kind of a terrible name. I got over it within the first hour though. The nice thing about Horizon is that it takes its time setting up the story, rather than rushing you through the nuences of going from childhood to adulthood with this new character (something that reminds me of how bad that was pulled off with Connor in Assassin’s Creed 3) You get to see Aloy grow up, and that’s a welcome breath of fresh air for games in 2017. Her path is an interesting one, as she is raised by “Rost” (everyone in this game has an awful name), a hunter who found her as a child and raised her as his own. Nothing is known of the circumstances of Aloy’s birth, and you will spend a good chunk of the game’s narrative answering those questions.

To be honest the first hour didn’t grab me. Aloy’s backstory is interesting, but it wasn’t until the world first opens up and you are allowed to explore that my jaw hit the floor. This game is absolutely gorgeous. It is one of the rare times that I’ve actually used the Ps4’s photo taking abilities to take multiple screenshots of the world.

So what exactly is the gist of Horizon: Zero Dawn? It’s simple: The world isn’t ours any more. The game takes place about a 1000 years from now, and the world is overrun with robotic dinosaurs. Yeah, the premise sounds nuts, and sadly yes, it does borrow very heavily from popular films and we’ll get into that, but I found myself interested in the story up until a point. Hell, let’s just discuss that right now, and this is massive spoilers and I’ll tag it so skip ahead if you don’t want to know:

Essentially this game is Terminator but replace Skynet with Hades, which is part of a bigger computer program that was created to create life again, called Gaia. Yes, the bad guy in this name is a computer program named Hades, and yes, that made me roll my eyes quite a bit. Once this is revealed to you about 2/3rds through the game, I have to say I was a bit taken aback by it. How is it that this game that has been so critically well-received continue to be praised for its rich narrative when in reality it just boils down to the plot of Terminator? This was my biggest gripe with the game.

Ok, end spoilers. I want to make it clear that while yes, the game’s story disappointed me, it overall doesn’t detract from my fun with this game. The world is so rich and so vibrant that you want to keep coming back time and time again just to explore different parts of it. And man, what a detailed world it is. From the lush and vibrant forests to the dry and hot looking deserts, this game has more detail than many games I’ve played this generation. Every time I reached a new area it only brought out the wow factor that much more.

And then we have the robotic dinosaur designs and types, and there are several. The most challenging to face are easily the Stormbirds, which are huge and daunting eagle’s that are quite huge, and you only face maybe three or four of them during the game. There are 26 different enemy types in all, and there are also human enemies as well. I also really enjoyed the Thunderclaw’s, which are essentially giant T-Rex robos. They were always the most fun and provided enough challenge to take down.

One of the most promising aspects of Horizon is that it takes the open-world concepts that have popularized themselves in Ubisoft releases within the last five years and does them just that much better. Here rather than twenty-different enemy camps to take down there are six. Instead of twelve different towers to climb there are four. Oh and did I mention those five towers you have to climb to unlock parts of the map are giant robot dinosaurs? I actually wish there were more than five of them in the game, that’s how much I enjoyed those. There’s also quite a bit of inventory management in this game, something that I didn’t expect going into it. You do have to do a lot of arrow crafting and loot a ton of items, but it’s all done so well and so fast that you can do it on the fly. It never really felt like a chore in my 50 hours with this game.

Let it also be said we should praise both Sony and Guerilla Games for releasing a game in 2017 that isn’t dependent on microtransactions, and doesn’t have any sort of season pass attached to it at all. In fact there aren’t any known DLC plans for this game whatsoever as well. I feel like I paid $60 for a full product, and I got my money’s worth.

In fact I walk away from Horizon with only one major complaint and that was the story. It just didn’t live up to my expectations, yet I didn’t really have that many expectations going into it. It’s just that after all the high critical praise, I expected something a bit more original in its story than what I got. That being said, I can honestly say that while I wouldn’t quite call it the best game of this generation yet, the generation isn’t over (and probably won’t be anytime soon), it is easily the most important game of this generation because it proves that new original IP’s aren’t dead. I’m glad Sony took a chance on publishing this game, and I loved and enjoyed every minute of everything else in the game, even if the story let me down a bit. And while I’m surely excited for a Horizon sequel (they do set one up nicely at the end of this game), I walked away from my 50 hours with Horizon extremely satisfied.