Horizon Zero Dawn Review
Played on: PS4
Available on: PS4
Developer: Guerilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Time played: ~40 hours
Horizon Zero Dawn is a risky game. As a AAA console exclusive and new IP with no established fan base, it’s tough to know if it will resonate with players. Plus, Guerilla Games is best known for their ultra realistic first person shooter series Killzone, so this is a new genre for them. Based on the amount of support it has received from Sony, it’s clear they want this game to be to be their console exclusive shinging star. However, in a time where open-world fatigue is a real thing, Horizon could easily drown amongst the waves made by a sea of similar games.
Does it? I decided to find out.
Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world action RPG that takes place in an apocalyptic future. Humans were on the brink of extinction and reformed into a tribal society. However, hi-tech wild animal machines roam the earth attacking humans, but nobody knows why or where they came from. It’s very clear that humans are struggling to survive and make sense of this new world.
You play as Aloy, a young woman who has lived as an outcast from her tribe her whole life. Raised by her outcast father, she finds a small augmented reality device called a focus, which allows her to scan items and see things in the environment that others can’t. Eventually she enters a rite of passage competition to rejoin her old tribe, but the competition is attacked by a gang of ruthless bandits who have their sights set on killing Aloy. As Aloy you start by investigating questions like who are they and why do they want to kill her, and eventually expand into larger ones like where did the machines come from and what happened to life on Earth. All the while you’ll feel the tension as Aloy attempts to save a world that rejected her in the first place.
Combat is easily the best part of this game, and it starts with the robust arsenal you’re given. There’s a variety of weapons at your disposal like arrows, grenades, tripwires, and bombs. There’s also a plethora of elemental damage types you can inflict against enemy strengths and weaknesses, and if you’re not happy with projectile attacks you can always use your spear for close quarters combat.
With so many different ways to attack you’re never pigeon-holed into one style of combat. If you’re feeling stealthy you can lay tripwire traps to stun the enemy, and then rush in with your spear to override and take control of the machine. If you’re the guns blazing type you can charge in with fire arrows to shoot the explosive canisters on their backs and deal massive damage. Or, if you find yourself overpowered you can use tear arrows to dismantle the machine’s weapons system and give it one less way to kill you. There’s always multiple ways to take down the same enemy, and with over 2 dozen enemy types with unique sets of weaknesses, it means combat stays fresh and fun the entire way through. My combat creativity was still being challenged 25 hours in, and I was never able to settle into a one-size-fits-all approach that many games allow.
It’s not just weapon variety that makes combat fun. Each machine you face has the capability of killing you in only a few hits, so combined with their aggressive nature it means every fight matters. There were many tense moments where I frantically aimed at the weak spot of a charging beast, and many more moments where I didn’t dodge in time and was flung painfully to the side. Combat was so fun and varied that I even enjoyed farming machine parts for upgraded gear I wanted, which is a task I typically hate in games. I played on Hard difficulty and highly recommend it to get the most out of the game. Playing on anything less would weaken the strongest part of it.
Horizon Zero Dawn attempts to create a vibrant wilderness and world, and it largely succeeds. For starters the environment is stunningly beautiful. I looked forward to every peak I climbed simply for the view, and even just running across the land looks great. Beyond aesthetics another big contributor to the wilderness feel are the machines themselves. They aren’t simply enemies in the environment to eliminate. They look and behave like predatory wild animals, so combined with the detailed landscape it really does feel like you are running through a wild jungle. The only place where the immersion falls over is in the towns. Although they’re a sight to behold as you approach, inside they are lifeless and bland. They are barely populated with people, and most of them you can’t even engage. I tried talking with everyone I could, but talking to anyone who didn’t have a quest icon over them quickly felt like a waste of time.
The main storyline is engaging and well told. The tender moments in the beginning get you to care about Aloy early on, and the gravity of the major conflicts are an excellent motivator to push forward. There were an appropriate number of twists and turns that had me wondering what will happen next, and the excellent voice-acting, writing, and facial animations helped punctuate every meaningful moment. Also, Aloy as a character was particularly interesting to me. It’s great to see a female lead in any video game, especially one who is as badass as her. She is determined and capable, but also holds a certain likeability and charm that that rounds her out and makes her relatable. I’m happy they didn’t sexualize her in any way, as it would have severely detracted from her as a genuine character. There is also a very solid group of supporting characters that surround Aloy, with one or two being particularly memorable.
There’s a wide variety of activities to complete in the world besides the main story quests. Clearing bandit camps of human enemies was fun at first, but compared to fighting machines it just doesn’t hold the same excitement. Infiltrating and defeating enemies within Cauldrons, which are areas buried within mountains, are much more rewarding in terms of challenge and actual rewards. The mini bosses at the end of each Cauldron provided some of my tensest fights, but they also grant your spear new override abilities that are critical for later encounters. You also have tallnecks to climb to reveal new areas of the map, and although it’s a straightforward task I always looked forward to the view from the top.
Outside of all that you have a wide variety of character driven side quests, but unfortunately they are all bad. Not all side missions need to be exciting for them to be worth doing, but at least a few of them do. After completing around 15 of them with no rewards in the form of significant XP, rare items, or interesting story or characters, I stopped doing them. I kept hoping I would encounter an interesting twist or task that makes it just as fun as a main mission, but that never happened. Once I was leveled up enough I skipped the rest and never looked back.
Upgrades are important come in the form of skills, gear, and modifications. The skill tree lets you upgrade Aloy in areas of stealth, attack power, and resource collection, and I was happy I optimized for stealth. Skill upgrades are spread out far enough to where they feel meaningful each time you get one, but eventually you do get enough points to max out almost all of them. Outside of skills you can upgrade your weapons and armor with more powerful versions or by applying modifications.
There are a lot of collectible items in the world you can trade with various merchants, but they aren’t particularly interesting to track down and the rewards for doing so are unclear. I ended up skipping most collectibles and didn’t feel like I missed out on anything in the game.
The disparity in quality between main and side missions is large, but as I mentioned earlier the major story arcs always kept me coming back for more. However, they aren’t perfect and I have a few knocks against how you experience them.
The first are the dialogue portions where you are given 3 options of how to respond. A fist symbol represents an aggressive response, a brain symbol represents a clever response, and a heart symbol represents an emotional response. Making them so clearly labeled removes the fun and nuance of figuring out how to respond, but that’s not the main problem with it. The problem is that it feels like a tacked on mechanic that affects nothing in the game and comes with no consequences. It wasn’t clear to me how one response would yield a different result than another, and the stakes were never high enough for me to worry about it. It also didn’t happen often enough for me to impart a particular personality on Aloy, so it ended up feeling unnecessary. They should have left out the half-baked system, but instead they left it in and it detracted from the game.
Second, although the story is good the storytelling gets very lazy toward the end. It relies heavily on reading data entries and listening to audio logs, which when done well can really expand a world and enrich a story. The data entries were rarely interesting and the audio logs were uninspired and flat. A lot of the end game story was told with rooms filled with a bunch of audio logs and documents, and it ended up feeling like a cheap and boring way to tell the story.
Lastly, I feel like Horizon Zero Dawn missed out on a huge opportunity with set piece action sequences. The one in the middle of the game was a particularly high point for me, but for some reason there is only one of them. It’s especially unfortunate since the dangerous wilderness the game created is a perfect setting for unpredictable action sequences. Getting chased by a pack of wild machines through a valley or executing a set of high risk maneuvers to take down a monstrous machine could have added another level of excitement to the game.
It’s tough not to compare Horizon Zero Dawn to other open world games. There are so many good ones that it’s easy to wonder where this one sits amongst them. However, Horizon Zero Dawn is not trying to be any of them and it doesn’t need to. It delivers a much different experience and I am extremely grateful for that. Its excellent combat system is its biggest differentiator and main reason to play this game, but there is also a very strong foundation underneath it to make it more than that. The main story will keep you engaged the entire way through, you’ll grow to love Aloy and some of her supporting cast, and you’ll get completely immersed in the wild jungle you navigate. Horizon Zero Dawn is absolutely worth playing as it stands today, and it has me excited for where it can go from here. With some improvements the next installment could easily be a contender for game of the year.
+ Combat is exhilarating, unique, and varied
+ Visuals are fantastic and the wilderness is immersive
+ Main story is interesting and supported well by the characters, specifically Aloy
- Side quests and collectibles are a waste of time
- Half baked storytelling systems detract from the experience
