Quick Look: Horizon Forbidden West

EDIT 2: SPOILER WARNING for the ultimate reveals of Horizon: Zero Dawn's story in this video. I assumed that would be a given, but (looking at a comment below) it doesn't hurt to caution others just in case we have some curious newcomers to the... Horizon-verse? World of Horizon?

Journey to the Forbidden West.

EDIT: I wonder if this game will be a case of the "Forgotten West" as similar to what happened with Zero Dawn with Jeff's recollection.

Hearing Jeff comparing the early game post-post-apocalypse politicking to Star Wars Prequel politicking actually has me more interested to get the game as soon as I can secure a PlayStation 5. I enjoyed the details and motions of the new cultures and nations that built up, no matter how tropey or simple it could get.

@eribuster: I've yet to play H:ZD, but some of the descriptions of the grander backdrop of its narrative were intriguing to me. It's certainly one of the franchises I look forward to eventually getting into. Maybe when I eventually get a nice PC or PS5 (ha.. haha... good luck to me).

Edit: Ok well, this is 100% on me, but for whatever reason, I didn't expect so many open spoilers about the end reveals of H:ZD in the first 10 minutes of this. And now I wish I didn't click this hahaha. Hmm.... well, guess it's too late for me. Save yourselves! (None of you are stupid enough to do this, but you know.. it makes me feel better.)

Edit2: Huh. This is a weirdly negative tone for two people playing a good video game that they enjoy playing haha. But I kinda understand what they're saying. I have actually been really interested in the reaction to this game after the Far Cry revolt last year, since a lot of the descriptions of this game could be applied there (even though they clearly like HFW more) - even including HUD and world immersion options and even side quests with stories and dialogue. Will be interesting to see where everyone else comes down on it, I imagine most will be quite positive.

Unlike Jeff G, I liked a lot of the characters and the overall world of Horizon, and I believe there is enough in that world to tell a good, interesting story outside of the reveal that happened in the first game. It also helps that Aloy is such a likeable character for many reasons and it seems like she is still in her element in this sequel. Jeff G, saying the rest of the game is just as good as the first, but prettier with lots of gameplay options is great. I will be playing this, but that 70 dollar price will have me waiting to do so.

Edit: Just remembered I can get the PS4 version and upgrade to the PS5 version for free, as it's the last game of free upgrades Sony agreed to before the 10$ upgrade price. Still going to wait though.

I fell off the first game hard. Seeing this is pretty much exactly the same, it's a hard pass for me.

I hated, hated, HATED Horizon: Zero Dawn. I finished it, basically, thanks to a combination of the sunk cost fallacy and spite. Long, boring and full of same-y activities repeated ad nauseam. I felt I must be crazy since people seemed to love it so much.

Anyway, fool me once, etc. etc.

Is that John Cena with a top knot?

It took a while for me to warm up to the first game, I really agree about the overdose of colored loot though, regardless of love for characters. the first game benefits in the whole coming of age arc as tutorial, otherwise I really wouldn't feel invested in Aloy at all.

This game seems to "fix" very little of what I didn't like about the first one, and the backstory was literally the only story-aspect I enjoyed, and that part is done and done, like the Jeffs are saying. So this is a definite "wait-and-see" for me.

EDIT: Lol that wall-puller is just straight stolen from the first Tomb Raider reboot game. And Jeff has to use it 3-4 times in a row for absolutely no reason (not a puzzle, just a bunch of walls in a row you need to pull with the same overlong animation). TB used it better 9 years ago. Worst part seems to still be the terrible loot system and management.

Does this game actually have a good reason to hunt robots if you already have the purple weapons, unless the first game?

After seeing this and the Digital Foundry tech review, there is no denying that this is a gorgeous looking game.

Its not something i feel like i need to play, i was pretty satisfied going through the first one and the DLC, and I'm kind of still full of that experience. The combat in the first one was very hit and miss, the melee felt bad, dodging and jumping felt so stiff. And judging by the videos it doesn't seem great still.

Shooting the bow and the various arrows was fun though, but once you have relied on that for 40-60 hours it kind of looses its appeal.

I appreciated that the story in the first game took some pretty wild swings and yet everything felt well thought out and I'm very curious if/how the loose threads may come into play.

So much negativity in all quick looks nowadays... Especially the ones with Mr. Gerstmann.

I really enjoyed the first one. But new console games are $80 bucks in Canada and with no shortage of games to play ill wait for a heavy sale for this game. It looks decent but $30 Decent.

Why does Jeff g play Playstation games. He is bias and has said as much

I suspect its a good video game, but the story is not going to be as tight as the original, which I liked a lot. I realize this is a first look, but from what I've already heard and read about here and on other web sites makes me want to wait until it's available on PS Plus or take advantage of a price cut.

@psykodoughboy:

Does it hurt to be so wrong?

What they're saying doesn't seem negative, it seems realistic. Also, it's similar to what a lot of others have said so far too. https://twitter.com/tamoorh/status/1493262161816141824

horizon getting Double Jeff'd

Honestly Gerstmann's takes on the first game were spot-on with mine. Inclined to maybe give this one a pass - at least for now.

@matthewgm: nope don't even a ps console, but he has said he hate the 1st ps games

No one is buying this game based on this video.

I never got over the weird appropriation vibe of the first game. They seemed pot committed to it based on their response to critique the first time around and the existence of this game. Looks about the same on that front too.

First one ended up being one of my all time favorites even after not being sure about it at first. Glad the new one is on PS4.

"ZOMG u r bias." Holy crap, a time traveler from the internet of 2002!

I’ll never understand how people who lost their mind over BotW with archaic AI, an empty world, and a whole lot of wasted hours moving from place to place for nothing can call Horizon or any game with it’s quality bad. I just don’t get it. Nintendo gets away with lifeless worlds and outdated gameplay, but games with intricately connected events and incredibly smart AI don’t get the proportional accolades that Zelda gets. I know Jeff didn’t enjoy BotW and he was my hero during GotY, but interviewers giving the obligatory 10 to Zelda and the stupid nitpicking they did to zero dawn was infuriating. Only Zelda can get away with 100 hours to complete where the game is only actually 20-30 hours of content and the rest is wasted traveling empty fields.

I finished the first game because I felt like I had to. To me, it was just another game with a map of things to check off a list. The combat was fun, but other than that I just couldn't see why it was so well received. It's kind of my same thoughts to Ghost of Tsushima. Anyway, now that I have a kid, I have to be more selective with what games I play, and I think I'm going to pass on this despite probably having a teeny tiny sense of FOMO.

If its more of the same this could be a hard game to finish.

AAA games were a mistake

I'm so happy that all these critics who've played 30 or more games like this thanks to their need to cover Ubisoft are saying everything I, who's only played 9 or 10, want to hear. You're telling me that this game is of a similar quality in both production value and gameplay to perhaps the 2010s' game of the decade while the two things that were roughest about that first go, the traversal and the side quests, have been markedly improved? And you're bored by it just because you have no choice but to encounter this type of game design over and over again whereas I give it to myself once, maybe twice a year?

Sounds like a fuckin' win, guy!

digital foundry did a nice analysis of the visuals-

tl;dr is- i think given how good the decima engine looks on the various platforms it inhabits, it's easy to overlook the fidelity increases on current gen (ps5) hardware.

Thanks y'all!

I enjoyed the first game a lot, so I'm on board with this one too. The combat options are fun, and the world they built is interesting. I hope the sequel also has intriguing story bits stashed around that these Jeffs haven't gotten to yet.

I wish her hair interacted with the weapon on her back instead of just clipping through it though. That's how I remember it from the first one.

Great QL. From what they're describing in how it keeps a lot from the previous game, I'm excited for it. Sound like it'll hit the spot for what I'm looking for lately. Just need to get a PS5 ... looking forward to it eventually

Horizon: Forbidden Snore Fest

You clearly misunderstood my post. I never said Jeff G thought the game was bad and full of bugs. I was pointing out his issue with the story and how he believed the first game told a good enough one and doesn't have any feelings for the Horizon world outside of the past reveal or any of the modern world characters to care about a modern story. I'm saying I disagree with that point. While, the reveal in the first game was epic, in terms of revealing what happened in the past, the characters of the modern world were also fine IMO. And I believe a good story could be told using those characters. I could be wrong, I haven't play it yet. As far as the negativity, I feel very positive about this game. It was one of the best games to come out during the PS4 era, and I like Guerrilla Games in general. And Jeff G overall, wasn't nearly as negative about this game as most people in the comment section seem to be.

I'm very much with Jeff on this one and think everything apart from the tech storyline and reveal was fairly weak and uninteresting. I would go as far as to say that the grand reveal of what happened was also handled very poorly and for all the mystery was a very clumsy info dump led by stiff holograms. I think I was mainly rooting for Guerilla because they were bogged down with Killzone for so many years that it was really nice to see them come up with this incredibly colorful and unique world. That said the game had it's fair share of problems, some of which are just personal nitpicks and some which obviously stemmed from a studio making a third person open world game for the first time. Forbidden West to be incredibly reductive looks like more of the same so I'm ok with waiting a while. The fact that I don't own a PS5 nor will I be able to easily purchase one in the coming months doesn't help either.

Does everyone on the internet these days have some sick need for their fake internet friends to love everything they're interested in or something? Yes, Jeff G is jaded after 50 years of working in games but if the things he says help form your expectations of the game then he's doing his job. If he says "This is basically the same as the first one and I think that's kinda boring now that the market is flooded with copycats" and you think "I love the first one and didn't burn myself out on copycat games" then why would you waste your time commenting about how Jeff made you sad by not gushing about how amazing you think it is? He informed you accurately about the game and is doing nothing to stop you from playing it. Watch some 17 year-old jagoff on Youtube wet himself with joy in between product placements and screaming if you want relentless confirmation of all your prior opinions.

Damn, I was wishing they would've gotten a bit farther to show off a lot more gameplay stuff, such as the glider and all that. This video isn't bad but feels a bit basic for such a big marquee release.

@joehogan: This is what I always wonder when people talk about how BoTW was amazing when compared to other open world games. I haven't played it but I've watched a lot of it and...I don't get it. Yeah, the hang glider is pretty cool and more games should have that. But other than that, I don't see how it's special compared to other games. The gameplay itself actually looks awful. Item degradation in a single player game always sucks, but I've never seen a game where it happens so frequently that it will happen multiple times in the same combat encounter. Plenty of games have the "walk in a direction and find cool shit" thing going on. The only difference is whether or not someone likes the world/setting of the game.

I was really looking forward to this game but something about the coverage I've seen just makes me think...why? It just seems so inessential and boring. And I really liked the art direction in the first game but I don't like the way this game looks, even though it more or less looks the same. Probably says more about me than the game, really.

@topcyclist: it had a ton of cool stuff, definitely! But to make it out to be game of the generation with such a barebones everything. Like reactive stuff with items being struck by lightning. No ones really done the you can get struck by lightning, but those mechanics have been around, and the fire was done in Far Cry 3.

And enemies reacted to stuff for sure, but the AI still felt dumb and simple. I’m definitely not going to say it’s easy, but I work at an indie studio and just seeing some of the gears in motion like the avoiding hazards and dodging, the AI just seems basic. Like my point is you’re talking about the minimum viable AI any $60 game should have. It was the way people had to pick their jaws off the floor and I’m over here like what, that?

Like any other game would have lost a point for how slow the climbing was. And the rain! What an awful mechanic that no one really complained about in reviews lol. Like Red Dead’s main criticism was how slow everything felt!

I liked the game, I’m just a little sick of seeing perfect scores for games that feel old just because they are from a nostalgic Nintendo IP.

That said, Metroid Dread f***ing rocked. Give me old Metroid every year lol.

@bladeofcreation: I just think games get undue credit because of the title on the box while games (like this one) which yea is similar to Zero Dawn, get hammered for nonsense and things that barely effect the overall product. I appreciate that at least Jeff is consistent in his criticisms, and his opinions is obviously valid. Zelda for me would have been a completely different experience if they took the recent assassins creed model of choosing organic or narrative where you could play like BotW is now, but if you idk have a job and don’t enjoy wasting the little free time you have running around and making no progress, maybe a nice approach for those people would have at least been if not a marker, a radius for next objective.

I tried really hard to see what other people saw, I just couldn’t lol. I hate-played it after the discovery phase wore off. It’s a good game, but no one should have given it a 10. Those scores were ludacris lol

he was reaaall positive when it came to halo infinite despite its flaws just sayin... if you cant tell jeff g is an xbox fanboy by now youre delusional. my man goes off on a tangent cause you have to hit an extra button to reveal trophies lol

The first game actually kind of killed the open world detective vision mechanic for me.The moment I had to activate the google glass to make Alloy and the dude with her realize that a smoking fireplace ment someone had just been there... Fuck off.