Horizon Zero Dawn
It's no secret that there are way too many open-world games on the market right now. It feels like a lot of games are open world just for the sake of being open world when in reality they'd actually benefit from being more linear. But thankfully, Sony's new IP Horizon Zero Dawn does more than most to cut down on the shortcomings and cliches of the genre.
Like the lack of fast traveling compared to most open-world games. In any Far Cry, or Assassins Creed game, for example, you can fast travel to any place you've visited within the world with zero consequences. And it's the same in Horizon Zero Dawn but it comes at a cost, you have to use a fast travel pack which like every other item in the game, requires you to explore the world and collect resources in order to craft. This gives fast traveling, and exploration much more weight than the other games I previously mentioned. This is great because the world in Horizon Zero Dawn isn't like your typical post-apocalyptic game. It's beautiful and meticulously crafted and filled with colorful plant life instead of being a desaturated mess of brown and grey, there are detailed ruins from an ancient past, and fascinating, unique looking robotic creatures and character designs and it deserves to be explored and looked at in awe.
And there's also some actual variety in the side quests too. Well, outside of the generic bandit camps, that is. In order to view an area on your map, you need to Override a Tallneck robot which is basically the same thing as climbing towers or synchronizing locations in Far Cry and Assassins Creed except each Tallneck in the world has a unique and memorable situation or challenge that prevents you from accessing it. And speaking of challenge, there is a surprisingly healthy amount of it in Horizon Zero Dawn. The Cauldrons are much better than your typical dungeon too because you're rewarded with information about the world around you upon completion and they improve you as a player and enhance your gameplay experience instead of dumping a meager amount of XP on you. With that said I, unfortunately, have to list some negatives and nitpicks.
Even though the side quests are technically better than those found in most open-world games they can get repetitive and traversing the world isn't as good as it should be because Aloy controls very awkwardly and there are a lot of invisible walls and barriers that restrict you from trying anything outside the box in terms of traversing the world. The frame rate also quite frequently dipped below thirty during combat which is a bit of a mixed bag because of Aloy's awkward controls and you're required to take down enemies in a very specific way but the silver lining is there is a lot of ways of going about accomplishing that goal depending on the type of enemy you're facing. And the story has a fantastic plot involving discovering what happened to the world around you with a badass main heroine to drive it forward and also has great themes of religion, acceptance, individualism, and humanities over-reliance on technology but it lacks a strong villain and side characters, and the facial animations and dialogue can get a little wacky sometimes. And throughout the course of my time with this game I never really felt one hundred percent engaged, I just kinda felt like I was going through the motions. And this game being released so closely to Breath of the Wild really made Horizon Zero Dawn's accomplishments feel minuscule in comparison because it was outclassed mere days later.
So realistically I could give Horizon Zero Dawn a strong 3/5 due to some complaints and nitpicks but Sony's consistent output of quality single-player games and this game in particular's contributions to the genre shouldn't go without praise.
