Horizon Zero Dawn Review - 4.5 / 5 (Original-Content)

gamehouse (60)in #gaming • 7 years ago

Hey guys, this will be our first gaming review and we picked Horizon Zero Dawn because it's one of the best games of 2017.

Sure, other games like Persona 5 deserve a huge mention as well as they're one of the top games this year. We may do reviews on other games but for now we will focus on Horizon Zero Dawn.

Story

So what is Horizon Zero Dawn all about? For starters, it's futuristic. It's supposed to be set in the future when machines have taken over and human beings are primitive again.

You will be playing a female character this time, by the name of Aloy and you'll be meeting different tribes in the game. You may be wondering, why are all of them primitive when it's futuristic? The answer lies at the end of the game so I won't be revealing the reason.

A big part of the game is to find out the truth about the world as it is and what happened to it. Why did machines roam the earth? Why the heck do you use spears and arrows to fight against super advanced machines? It's probably what made the game harder. It takes some time to kill machines, unless you choose the "Easy" or "Story" difficulty.

To be honest, it reminded us of Skyrim in terms of the gameplay and the side quests. It's an open world game so you'll be able to explore lots and lots of places. You start with a young version of Aloy and you proceed as an adult in your quest to learning who your parents were. As you delve further into the truth, you'll face more and more obstacles.

I guess the fun part is that you will deal with stronger machines as you progress and you can actually override some of them. Yes, you can ride machines! The graphics are stunning as well. They're all pretty realistic and there's no doubt you'll love the game.

Gameplay

As far as gameplay goes, you basically control Aloy on a third-person view. What kind of weapons can you use?

Weapons

Bows. You will three types of bows, a war bow, a hunter bow and a sharpshot bow. You basically only deal with these three bows but you'll have better improvements of it. You have different kinds of arrows as well, such as fire arrows, ice arrows, corruption arrows (to corrupt machines), hardshot arrows, precision arrows, and regular arrows. The sharpshot bow is for long-range shots that are precise. The war bow is mainly for different elements, i.e. fire, ice and corruption The hunter bow is for regular arrows.

Spears. You only use one type of spear and you can't change it, until close to the end game where you'll be given a better version. It's for melee attacks. We wouldn't recommend melee attacks unless your armor is strong and you can dodge well.
Tripcaster. Basically, tripcasters are like traps where you put strings from one end to another. If the enemy trips on it, it will set off the trap. There are different types of tripcaster ammos, i.e. fire, explosion and shock.
Ropecaster. This one is for pinning an enemy in place. It's very useful against flying machines as it prevents them from moving around for awhile.

Slings. Slings will be used for shooting bombs, i.e. explosion bombs, sticky bombs and proximity bombs.
Tearblaster. This one can be attained from a quest and it's basically used to tear the armor of machines. It's a short range weapon.

Traveling

In Horizon Zero Dawn, there are three ways to get from point A to point B.

The first is of course to walk/run. This one takes the longest time.
Override a fast machine. If you have the skill to override a machine, you can ride them and it takes a shorter time to reach your destination.

Fast travel. This is our favorite as it saves a lot of time. You can basically travel to campfires or towns. There are campfires everywhere in the game. However, you need to unlock the campfire to actually use it. Furthermore, campfires are the only way to save the game, apart from automatic saving during quests.

Quests

This game is awesome because there are different quests. I'm not sure if we've missed any but these are what we remember.

Main quests. Without saying, this one is of course the most interesting. The main story depends on the main quests and they're often the most elaborate.
Side quests. Side quests are pretty fun as well. Make no mistake, they're not easy and often involves super strong machines. They're pretty elaborately made as well.
Errands. Errands are slightly easier and are probably related to fetch quests.
Bandit camps. There'll be lots of bandit camps in the game as there are rogue tribes. Yes, you don't only deal with machines, but evil human beings as well.

Tallnecks. Tallnecks are actually super tall machines and they are the only class of machines that can't be killed. Your job is to climb on top the tallneck and override it. It will display a small portion of the map.

Hunting Grounds. There are some machines that are more weak and these hunting grounds are time-based quests that you have to complete to earn medals.
Tutorials. Whenever you get a new weapon, you'll have a new tutorial on how to use it. Once you complete it, you get experience points as well. You will earn some experience of all of the above quests.

Are the controls difficult?

We believe PCs are always the best for shooting arrows or guns and this game is no different. It's hard to aim with a PS4 controller but it's still playable. You can actually use a skill called "concentrate" and it zooms and slows down time, making it easier to aim. This is one of the good features of the game. It actually helps those who play with a console.

Apart from that, the game is quite challenging at times. Sometimes you'll press the wrong buttons especially during combat, as it's pretty fast paced.

Scavenging

A big part of the game is to walk in this wide open world and scavenge for items. You can pick a lot of useful ingredients on the ground, such as health plants and mostly ingredients to craft weapons/ammo. They are pretty essential in the game as supply is limited. Always remember to pick up stuff.

You can also gain items by looting treasure boxes or to loot from dead machines/human beings. Stronger machines give higher level items.

One part we struggled with in the game was the limited supply of items. You can buy them from merchants but it costs a lot of money. Btw, money is in the form of metal shards in the game.

Skills

There are plenty of skills to choose from whenever you get your skill points. Skill points are obtained when you level up and also when you complete certain quests. We can't really advise on which skill to master, as we kinda mastered all of them. They're all useful in certain ways. It also depends on how you generally approach the game. Do you prefer to master skills on bows, or melee attacks, or overriding machines or even on scavenging? They all come in handy in different parts of the game.

Final Verdict

Horizon Zero Dawn is undoubtedly one of the best games we've played so far on the PS4. It has almost everything you would want on an open world game.

Deadly machines, awesome story line, cool characters, interesting non-repetitive quests, an open world that is pretty huge, big mountains to climb and a bad ass female character. What more do you want?

We give it a rating of 4.5/5 because we don't generally give a 5/5 rating for games. Play it now or you may regret it.

Thanks for reading everyone!

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