Horizon Zero Dawn

Release: 2017
Platform: PS4
Genre: Open-world, RPG, Third person, Action
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Guerrilla Games
Gameplay Stats: 21 hours, 83% completion, no DLC

Horizon: Zero Dawn is the first game in a new series from the developers behind the Killzone series. I waited far too long to write this game up, so let's jump into the review.

Visuals: This game looks beautiful! I love all the colors and how full of life the world seems to be. I dislike the old/new aesthetic with metal plates tied together with rope, but that's definitely me knit picking. The animations of the humans as well as all of the robots is very good. I didn't notice as many collision issues as I normally do which was a pleasant surprise. The action in the combat is pretty fluid as well.

Audio: The music in this game is pretty! Sticking with the trend lately though, it is quite sparse. I didn't really like the sound effects though... they were serviceable, but not varied enough to be good. Nothing was bad per say, but enemies had very few vocal lines and only a couple readers so they got stale quickly. The voice acting for the main character, Aloy, was good! A couple of the other main characters were good as well, but like many games the side cast was lacking. The vendors and a few of the side quest givers were very flat.

Plot: The plot here was pretty rote. It's been done before. It was carried out pretty well, but I didn't really care about the characters. I'll get into this later, but I don't think I am who this game was made for.

Gameplay: I think I'll start with what I did like. I enjoyed the combat and I especially liked how I could dismantle enemies to remove certain parts/weapons. I didn't use the item very often, but I also thought it was neat that you could anchor enemies to walls or the ground. I didn't really like how much of the game felt like a checklist. The exploration was in chunks and buying a set of items early in the game showed you all relevant points of interest. Having semi-random loot drops also bugged me a bit.

I haven't played a Farcry game, but to me this is what it would be like. I've heard rave reviews about this game, but I really just don't think it was made for me. I can't say that I disliked this game, I think it was pretty okay, but I can say pretty well that I don't like this genre. This is apparently one of the better games that's like this, but I didn't really like it much. I'd recommend it if you were already a fan of the genre. [7/10]