In the age of franchises, remakes, reboots, sequels, and spin-offs, it can be hard for a new property or idea to find a foothold in the market. Studio Guerrilla Games, known for their Killzone series, decided to develop such a game. It drew attention at E3 where it's unique look stood out. A video game in which the world is a blend of hyper futuristic technological wildlife, but a tribal, caveman-like civilization of humans? An open world game wherein you fight robot dinosaurs? Seems legit!
Horizon: Zero Dawn surpasses most expectations established. It is fun, interesting, engaging, and gorgeous. It's got solid music and atmosphere, and a good amount of depth to the world worth investigating. The combat is diverse and exciting, while also providing a good enough challenge that even after all the upgrades, players still need to be on their toes. Any number of enemies could do some damage!
It is easy from ads to focus too much on the "robot dinosaurs" aspect of the game. There are some in there, such as watchers and thunderjaws (who look like raptors and t-rexes), but the bulk of the enemies are based on a variety of modern day animals as well. There are some that are horses, oxen, or rams, others that are ostriches or crabs. There are over two dozen creature types in the game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Each one can kill you if you're not careful, even the low-level ones.
Perhaps it isn't even quite right to describe these creatures as "enemies" either. Sure, they can be extremely deadly if you are not careful - many are outwardly aggressive and will attack you on sight. However, these creatures really do feel more like wildlife than "enemies." In the early stages, everything is new and threatening. They do a solid job working that into the game's narrative as well, so that players and main protagonist Aloy are essentially in the same boat. When you come across that first rockbreaker, for example, that is the first rockbreaker Aloy has seen as well. As you become more familiar with the world, the game, and the combat, you start to notice behavioral patterns of certain creatures. Grazers, for example, seem aggressive when they are introduced, but you soon realize that they only really become aggressive when desperate. Most of the time, however, they are skittish and will flee if they hear noise. Striders will charge and buck if backed into a corner, but they are also not particularly keen on fighting. Meanwhile, the larger sabretooth-like sawtoothes will pounce, charge, and attack almost instantly if they spot you. And then there are some like the broadheads that can be a bit unpredictable. They are more likely to charge you if they see you, but they will also try to flee at some point.
The different behaviors and attack patterns of these machine creatures really goes a long way to making them feel like actual organisms. Even late in the game, when you're pitted against thunderjaws and stormbirds, it becomes a bit difficult to see these as your "enemies." The AI of the machines is really solid and breathes life into the robots. At some point, I noticed I even avoided killing grazers, striders, or broadheads just because I felt bad for them. The experience received for killing one of them just didn't feel worth the guilt for killing something that was no longer a thing I found threatening.
The real "enemies" of the game are the Shadow Carja, a tribe of barbarian warriors hellbent on digging up old, violent machines and potentially destroying the world. These enemies you can chop down without remorse or any thought about whether they deserve it or not. Human enemies lack the same kind of variances as the synthetic wildlife, but they do present their own challenge. There are different weapons they are equipped with, as well as armor that can protect them from silent strikes. Plus, the game has a tendency to throw a lot of them at you at one time. And I mean a lot.
The strength of the game is probably the gameplay. Combat is tight and diverse, giving players a variety of ways to approach a given combat scenario. The melee attacks and dodge rolling is comfortable enough that, for skilled players, that is a good and challenging way to go. The bow sometimes has strange tracking habits, but is overall reliable - especially within a closer range. There are a few different bow types with different strengths, so odds are you will mix melee and close-range bow attacks with dodge rolling. Alternatively, you can stick to the high grass and take out enemies one at a time in secret. Stealth is my favorite way to play a game, when given the opportunity, so this was a much appreciated inclusion. Whistling or throwing rocks can draw enemies to a desired location, ripe for you to pounce and strike from the shadows and kill them in isolation. This is especially helpful when confronted with large groups of enemies, like the herds of lancehorns, chargers, or scrappers. Additionally, you can obtain or craft traps. This is helpful for stealth, of course, but once a trap is set off, it generally gets the attention of nearby enemies who go on high alert. Often, you will benefit from a combination. Stealth gives you the opportunity to take out a few enemies while setting up traps, and then you can spring a surprise attack and send them into those traps. Action, stealth, and strategizing makes for an incredibly fun and challenging game. One most always be cautious, too. A group of scrappers can kill you just as easily as a thunderjaw!
I never had much of a problem with melee myself, but I have read some criticism of it. I can see arguments that it is a bit on the clunkier side. It does seem like the game wants you to rely more on your bow than your spear. Probably the worst part of combat is when you have to deal with flying enemies, like glinthawks or stormbirds. The problem is with the camera. In order to aim up to hit them when they're airborne (which is pretty much the entire time they attack you), the camera will often clip nearby environmental objects, like rocks, bushes, or even tall grass. This can make it difficult to accurately aim, since you can't exactly see what you're shooting at. The trick is to try shooting at more of an angle; give some distance between you and the enemies. Easier said than done, of course, as flying enables them to cover ground much faster.
One other way to approach a situation is to try and isolate one machine, then override it. Getting overrides at secret lairs throughout the world allows you to hack a machine. Doing so can be quite beneficial. Some machines, like striders, become completely docile to you, allowing you to mount and ride them. Others, like ravagers, will become hostile towards any machine in the area. Hacking these machines is often an incredibly useful option when surrounded. It can also be used to provide distractions if you'd actually rather just get away than fight.
As an open world game, it does fall into many of the same shortcomings of the trend. It is overloaded with side quests, and many of them are not ultimately that different from previous ones. You will spend a fair amount of time "tracking" people and then fighting a group of machines. There are also the same tried-and-boring outpost liberation missions typical of open world games. Those are especially tedious given how many enemies they load each area with. There are plenty of collectibles - many of which don't actually do anything at all, although some do provide some story background. And, of course, there are "radio towers," but these are actually done in a fun and unique way. Rather than just climbing towers like in Far Cry or Assassin's Creed, you will likely need to clear out an area, then climb up a special type of machine creature called tallnecks. It's a small change of pace, but one that actually does make that otherwise menial task feel more engaging and interesting. It is a bit rewarding at the end when you can see all the allies you've made by doing a lot of the side quests show up at the end to help out. It's not as satisfying as, say, being able to call in the allies you made at the end of Dragon Age: Origins, but it's still neat.
The story has some great characters, and a lot of forgettable ones. The writing is also a bit all over the place. Sometimes dialogue is fine; sometimes it feels really forced. The story is fine (even if some of the "big reveals" are as predictable as can be), but the writing of it can be considered one of the weaker aspects of the game. It wasn't bad; just don't expect a Neil Druckmann-level of writing. At its core, it does build up Aloy properly. She's such a great character, even if traditional in a lot of ways, and easily could be a new character mascot to sit on the Sony mantel to push consoles. (A lot of this might also have to do with voice actor Ashly Burch, who continues to show her worth after having given life to Chloe in Life is Strange and Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2.)
Still, once you get to the last stretch, the game does become very dragged out. Probably about the last five or six hours of the game feels like you've just got one more hour left, yet it keeps going. It gets heavy on exposition dumps and information overload, while providing little diversity in play. You essentially just run through old research stations and find out what exactly has been going on. Even the finale - which gets pretty bonkers! - does that typical RPG thing of, "boss in stages." Except the order is kind of strange. First, you fight Helis, a human baddie from the beginning, who also kind of disappears for a long time. Then, you repeal wave after wave of invading machines. Finally, you go and fight HADES, the AI program that is the true villain. It probably should have gone "waves of machines," then Helis, then HADES, but it probably doesn't make that much of a difference. Regardless, it's just another way that they manage to stretch out the final chunk of the game.
It does end on a bit of a cliffhanger ending, which seems a little ambitious for a new property that had equal potential to fail as it did to succeed. The post-credits scene actually is a little unsatisfying, but then again, the game is definitely good enough to merit a sequel - perhaps with tightening up melee combat, adding new weapons and more human enemy types, environmental hazards, and some better writing. It's just a tad unfortunate given that the game is otherwise its own complete thing.
Though it does suffer many of the issues that all open world games seem to have, the game is just fun and visually interesting enough to make up for it. Horizon: Zero Dawn might very well be my favorite game of the current generation so far. It's probably not for everyone, but its definitely worth checking out. That it has done well, selling almost three million copies to date, is a pretty good thing for the industry. Hopefully, we get some more studios going off to try and make a new IP, rather than just doing sequels or new installments of an existent franchise.
And yes, the title will make sense at some point in the game.
REDUCTIVE RATING: It's great!
Available On: PS4
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