ZPage Entertainment 

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most beautiful, most intriguing, and most fun games I’ve ever played. After 30 hours of game time put in, I have finished the story along with many of the side quests, and yet I still have the itch to dive back into the world they created to explore and finish the remaining side quests. Guerilla Games’ newest creation has surpassed all of my expectations with this game, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store next.

 

As a background for any of you who know nothing about the game, Horizon Zero Dawn is set in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has turned to a primitive state. You start as a young orphan, Aloy, outcast of her tribe. She grows up with many questions about her past unanswered, as well as trying to understand the world of today where evil dinosaur-esque robots roam the world, terrorizing and murdering the humans living among them. With some help along the way, and many people trying to block her path, she must travel the lands and find answers to her questions before it’s too late.

 

The beauty of the game was what I first noticed when starting the game. From the beginning menu screen of a beautiful sunset sneaking behind the mountains in the distance, I knew that this was going to be a special visual experience. At any moment’s notice, whenever I would pause the game I could see an image that would be good enough to be used in the game advertising. From any pause screen you can go into photo mode to pull extra detail or change lighting to make the image even better. Not without faults, however, characters facial expressions actually pulled me away from the immersive experience. Their mouths and words didn’t line up, and they all usually had blank emotionless looks as they spoke.

 

Despite my high expectations, I wasn’t expecting the storytelling aspect of Horizon Zero Dawn to be outstanding. Generally this open world type of experience becomes excellent because of the exploration or gameplay/combat. With this being said feel free to take it with a grain of salt when I say I was extremely surprised when the storytelling was as intriguing as it was. After a somewhat lengthy introduction to the game where I spent a few hours as a child learning about the world and the game mechanics briefly before actually getting to become the adult Aloy, I found it hard to want to go to side missions when all I wanted to know was what happens next in the main story. After completing some side missions though, I was almost as intrigued in these side quests and storylines. This made it kind of overwhelming when I had 3 main quests, 4 side quests, a few errands on the go at the same time, and I still wanted to explore the map. Near the end of my playtime I did start to find that they may have tried a little too hard to add in some extra side missions, where they didn’t seem all that important to the story. This being said, at no point did I find quests of any sort to be repetitive or boring.

 

Exploration is an aspect of games that people always talk about as being something magical that I for some reason just didn’t get. Until now. I’ve played many open world games, but Horizon is the first where I actually wanted to explore the world for what it was, and enjoy looking around at the vast array of biospheres. Usually I would be one to explore the map simply to open up new missions and fast travel locations, so that I wouldn’t have to run from place to place. In Horizon, I unlocked these locations but instead of constantly fast travelling I would enjoy running or riding a mount, exploring and collecting loot along the way. I would like to make a special point in saying that the tallnecks, cauldrons and hunting ground trials could have been something that was repetitive and simple, and yet somehow these were all challenging, unique, and rewarding. Tallnecks became a challenge when the enemies surrounding it were powerful, leaving me the choice of trying to defeat them or trying to sneak around them to climb the tower-like robot to reveal the surrounding map. Cauldrons were much deeper and puzzle-oriented than I had expected, and once I entered the first one, I couldn’t stop myself from going to do them all back-to-back. Each one felt like a unique dungeon where the only part more difficult than finding the path and reaching the end, was defeating the boss at each one’s end. Finally hunting trials gave a unique version of a tutorial for many types of weapons and enemies. At first, I was simply using my regular bow and my spear to defeat enemies, not knowing why people would use these other weapons. These hunting challenges explained to me exactly why people would use these weapons, and how to use them effectively on different enemy types.

 

Finally, the gameplay. Video games are such a unique form of media because we control what happens through gameplay. This game was in a master class when it comes to this. The challenges of unique enemy types, the use of dodging and rolling, scaling and climbing mountains to get to new heights, and more led me to forgive any shortcoming that this game possesses in terms of gameplay. For each ledge that you jump off to your death when clearly all you want to do is jump to the next platform directly in front of you, there are hundreds of times when it works to perfection. The combat was at times almost infuriating, but not because the game was doing something wrong. As mentioned before, I spent the first part of the game ignoring my different types of weapons, since I could handle all the early enemies without them. Eventually I learned that dodging and rolling then attacking with a regular bow takes over ten minutes to defeat some enemies. Once I actually took the time to find out their weaknesses and strengths, and how to use certain weapons correctly, I was able to overcome them much more decisively.

 

Horizon Zero Dawn is not a perfect game, and I personally believe that there is no such thing as the perfect game. Everyone has different perspectives and views, and one person’s masterpiece could be another’s mediocre pile of trash. This, however, was damn close to a perfect game for me at this time. The game was exciting, unique, and left me wanting so much more, and I personally can’t wait to see what Guerilla Games has in store for us next.

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(This image was screen captured from my PS4 using the photo mode)