Game Review: Horizon Zero Dawn

In short, Horizon Zero Dawn is a brilliant gem with some tiny imperfections.

I'll admit the concept had me sold long before I even started playing the game. Running around fighting giant robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow? Shut up and take my money! Once I did start playing I was in love with the game, and a week after I've finished it my biggest complaint is that it's over and there's no date for DLC yet.

The biggest strength of this game, aside from giant robotic T-Rexs of course) is how coherent it all is. Stone Age humans co-existing with highly advanced robotic monsters is an idea that could easily have come off as cheesy. Instead Geurilla Games managed to make a world so deep and realistic that it all works perfectly together.

The story really ties everything together though, and what you eventually realize is that it's a very personal story about a woman searching for her identity. This thread ties everything together and takes the player on a journey to discover how this world works and how it came to be. The story of Aloy, the main character, is the story of our future, the destruction of the planet and it's resurrection.

It also helps that Aloy is the most perfectly badass woman in gaming. She starts off the game as an outcast, but as the game unfolds shows her true colors in how much she cares about other people and, perhaps more importantly, how little shit she'll take from anyone. Aloy's quiet confidence and sardonic humor actually left me with a minor crush on her.

Of course her confidence is bolstered by how deadly her training has made her. We're talking about a woman who can single handedly down machines that could trounce entire groups of the guards who occassionally patrol the roads. Likely a big part of this is how intelligently Aloy fights, driven by how flexible the combat system really is.

Combat in Horizon Zero Dawn is probably not quite what you're used to as a gamer. In fact, at first I found the combat system somewhat clumsy; yet once I began to actually advance in the game I realized it's perfectly suited to this game.

In short, you are armed with a spear and various ranged weapons such as a bows, slings, ropecasters and tripcasters. What you quickly realize, however, is that running into combat is a quick way to get killed. None of your weapons really do much damage, even to other humans let alone a Thunderjaw.

The real trick to combat in this game is planning, preparation and flexibility with your weapons. For instance sneaking around the battlefield and laying trip wires with the tripcaster gives you a huge advantage once enemies start running through them. This all ties into the elemental damage system as well, with various enemies being weak to fire, electricity or cold which each have different effects. Electricity stuns enemies, for instance, while cold causes them to take more damage from attacks.

One of the most effective tricks at your disposal is the ability to override enemy machines, turning them into a temporary ally. Late-game skills even let you turn a machine into a permanent ally, albeit one that won't follow you from it's territory. Beating optional dungeons also gives you the ability to control more machines, culminating in being able to brainwash the mighty Thunderjaw and have him duke it out with another!

Of course before you can use all these weapons and tricks, you need to obtain the weapons and level up to gain skills that more effectively utilize them. This is where the RPG elements start to come in with the fairly standard experience and skill tree system, plus tons of sidequests to help you get that sweet sweet XP.

The sidequests themselves are fairly in depth. Not quite as good as The Witcher 3, but many of them follow their own complex storylines and are a ton of fun to complete while ensuring you actually get out and see the world of Horizon Zero Dawn.

The graphics in this game are phenomenal, in fact, and truly bring that world to life. From the abandoned, mostly destroyed buildings of the previous civilization to the forests and mountains in the world everything in this game is beautiful. The lighting effects are also spectacular, with light coming through fog or other clouds looking amazingly realistic.

Perhaps to let players capture this beauty, Horizon includes a relatively unique feature: Photo Mode. This mode can be activated from the pase menu, and gives you control to move the camera around as well as pick settings such as focal distance and lighting. I've used this to take all of the pictures in this review, so you can get an idea of what images you can get. A person who actually knows about photography could probably do even better!

Now that we've covered everything, or at least most of what, the developers did right... let's talk about those minor flaws I mentioned.

The game could stand to be a little longer. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of content but I ran out long before I was ready and ended up just wandering around hunting robosaurs for the heck of it. This game literally made a (virtual) sport hunter out of me!

Although that random wandering around has resulted in some very fun battles, those fights actually illuminates another weakness in the game. The difficulty balance isn't quite right, the game starts off very difficult (at least on hard mode) but ends up a little too easy by the time you've mastered the combat system and leveled everything up. One of the problems is that the machines can hear combat from slightly too large of a distance, resulting in fights where you tried to kill one thing quickly only to end up swarmed with ten different machines. Again, in the end game that's fine but it can definitely kick your butt earlier in the game.

A slightly bigger issue is that some of the skills and items in the game simply aren't that useful. Traps, for instance, don't do very much damage and there's no way to actually make them stronger which results in them being nearly useless towards the end of the game. This is not to be confused with the tripcaster's trip wires which can be powered up and can be very potent weapons, which do essentially the same thing but with more flexibility!

Lastly a lot of the treasure you find or receive as quest rewards isn't very exciting. The game mostly gives out "boxes" for completing quests, which can be filled with items used for crafting. That's fine, but there's not much "rarity" in the game so frequently this means receiving the same stuff you harvested from the enemies you slayed during the quest. I've noticed this is kind of a trend in games lately though, so I can't hold this against Zero Dawn specifically. I vastly prefer finding special weapons rather than crafting components...

Overall this is an amazing game for anyone who enjoys open world RPG's, and I'd highly recommend trying it out to anyone.

If you would like to buy the game please consider buying it through my affiliate link: http://amzn.to/2r1e1Qf