a5c7b9f00b In a primitive tribal world where strange, monstrous, animalistic machines roam the wilderness, a brave young female warrior goes on a quest to learn the truth about her mysterious origin and the state the world is in. OK let's get this out of the way first, Horizon Zero dawn is an insanely good looking game, the graphics and sound design are probably the best on the PS4 to date.<br/><br/>The open world is massive and there's lots of fun to be had here.<br/><br/>However, there is far more wrong with this game than some people are making out, controls that don't always work properly, I've found myself in the heat of battle several times and had to wait a second for my button press to translate to the screen. This might not sound like a lot but this is one of those games where timing is the key and every second counts. That seconds pause between you pressing the buttons and your character using a trap or potion or taking a swing at an enemy, is often the difference between you getting through a battle or being killed.<br/><br/>You have to light fires to save your game and quite a few times I've found myself putting in over an hours play, collecting and building my carry pouches etc, only to walk right into a herd of machines and get killed. It then re-starts you at your last save point, stripping you of all your collectables and upgrades. This wouldn't be a problem if you were allowed to save your game spontaneously like most games these days, but no, you have to find a camp fire to save, no matter how many hours work you've put in, and sometimes, these can be miles apart. This just does not work in an open world setting.<br/><br/>Enemies, now I'm all for a challenge but some of these groups of enemies come in large packs and take a hell of a lot to put down. You can barely walk in any direction for more than 10 or 20 seconds before walking into another group of enemies. And as soon as you kill them in one area, when you leave that area, they just re-spawn. They do this over and over and so you never really get a chance to explore anything, as soon as you start to look around or you want to stalk and hunt an animal for the materials to upgrade your carry pouches, you're thrown head first into yet another fight with the exact same enemies you've just killed 30 seconds ago. This can get really repetitive.<br/><br/>Water and swimming are a real chore in this game, if you find yourself having to swim for any reason, then prepare for a struggle, the controls are sluggish and even trying to climb out of water is a bind. You literally have allow your character to stop swimming and then jump just to get out, this can be tragic when you're being chased by robots that don't seem to suffer from this problem. <br/><br/>And don't even get me started on the invisible walls, they're awful. The game will force you to travel miles around in a complete circle rather than let you take the most logical route. Half of the invisible walls are not even there to keep you in the sandbox area, they're actually scattered around the wilderness to force you into making unnecessarily long winded trips to get where you need to go. It's infuriating at times.<br/><br/>Bugs, yes there are quite a few, most of them are minor but there are a few that literally break the game. In one mission, you are meant to follow someone into a set of ruins, but if you leave that area to stock up on a few supplies first or to take on another quest, once you get back there, the game glitches out and you can't get back into the ruins to complete the mission, this completely kills the game as it's one of the main quests. Your only option is start the game from scratch or wait for Guerrilla to bring out a patch to fix this so you can continue.<br/><br/>Even the story, missions and quests are getting rave reviews but I have no idea why. The story so far has been quite bland and uninteresting, the missions are the exact same you'll find in every other open world RPG, please help me, can you fetch me this, can you please help me defend that, can you fetch me some more of that, you get the general idea.<br/><br/>The game is getting a lot of praise because it doesn't hold your hand and lets you discover, well yes, it does do this and it can be a deep and rich experience, however, half the time you don't even know what things in your inventory are for, there's almost no explanation of anything to do with in game mechanics and things like modding your weapons with stats such as "handling" mean nothing. There's no explanation of what the handling stat is and so applying this to a slingshot or a ropecaster gives you, errm, I'm not entirely sure. I agree with games not holding your hand too much and making things too easy but come on, an explanation of what items, mods, game mechanics and upgrades are, is essential, need to know information.<br/><br/>Seriously, do not believe the 10 star reviews and people claiming this is the best game ever. It's a good game, don't get me wrong and there's plenty to like if you can get past the bugs and game play mechanics but there's a shed load wrong with it at the same time. Barring the awesome graphics and sound (which are stunning), there's really nothing new in terms of game play that you haven't seen before if you've played, Far Cry 4, Fallout 4 or Mass effect. <br/><br/>I'm hoping patches, as and when they're made available, will fix some of these issues but this really is the very last time I buy a game on launch day. They're just not worth the hassle. After Witcher 3 this is my favourite game. Great story line, the side- quests and errands are all unique and very enjoyable. What I enjoy with the game most is the amazing combat system which is very balanced and intriguing. That's why I'm rating this 10/10, lots of high quality game play.
landcenbimo Admin replied
367 weeks ago