• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Does Horizon Zero Dawn get any better?

F

FirmBizBws

Becomes baffled, curling up into a ball when confronted with three controller options.
qa_engineer said:
Wut
Click to expand...

It’s funny yet true. Last of us, the game with James Franco, last of us 2,horizon. They’re all these hide in the grass and wait for your enemy to come by and stealth kill them games. Same thing with a different environment.
 
H

hzsn724

Member
I feel you OP. I just started this game and it feels more like a chore of stuff I've done a million times in games.

I wish I would have played it before BotW. Not being able to climb anything and interact with everything is putting me off. I like games like this, and Aloy is a great character, but it just feels like Rise of the Tomb Raider with dino bots. I loved Rise. But I did that already.
 
J

JThird

Member
I'm actually surprised that people still play western games in 2017.
It's like they have no respect for themself.
 
R

Randy Monk

Member
Seriously, the market is flooded with these grass hiding, stealth simulators. Wish we were back to the halycon days of tree swinging, monkey melee games.
 
A.Romero

A.Romero

Member
I played it recently. Enjoyed it for what it was. Witcher was better, though.

There are some difficulty spikes and moving around can be annoying. Best bow mechanics in a game, in my opinion. Tomb Raider second place in that regard.

Can't compare to Zelda as I haven't played any Zelda games since Ocarina of time.

If it hasn't hooked you so far, you might as well leave it. I know I don't have enough time for games I'm not enjoying.
 
M

Melubas

Member
Horizon was ok, but I felt it was just like all the other open world games that I grew tired of ages ago. You get a map with stuff to do, you get some crafting missions, some timed missions, some "climb a big thing to reveal the map" missions. The world was pretty good and it was a beautiful game no doubt, and while the story had an interesting premise it failed to draw me in.
I couldn't really relate to it since I don't think I would care that much if humanity went extinct or not (on a big scale, I would care about family/friends). I would probably just accept it and make the most of the time I had left. It also lacked interesting characters save for Aloy.

Horizon is a solid 7 or 8/10 for me, with the way too familiar open world formula being what drags it down, and it makes me kind of sad that so many AAA games are open world nowadays since for me it detracts from the experience because of how hard it is to not make them feel artifical. I feel that the only game that did open world well so far was The Witcher 3. It is totally ok to like it though, I'm not shitting on anyone else's opinion, just giving my own :)
 
C

Carn82

Member
Horizon's 'lore' is much better than its story. As in, I loved reading all the datalogs and listening to the audio-parts regarding the whole Zero Dawn event; I didn't care that much about all the tribal stuff and Sun King shenanigans. But maybe thats because I'm a sci-fi fan first, hehe.

I do think that Guerilla could have made it more of a mystery. Not Dark Souls vague, but things become clear pretty soon in the H:ZD and Aloy has very little issues understanding everything. I would've liked to see the whole 'we use ancient technology but have no clue what it is or how it works' angle to be done a bit better.
 
M

Martinski43

Member
Carn82 said:
Horizon's 'lore' is much better than its story. As in, I loved reading all the datalogs and listening to the audio-parts regarding the whole Zero Dawn event; I didn't care that much about all the tribal stuff and Sun King shenanigans. But maybe thats because I'm a sci-fi fan first, hehe.

I do think that Guerilla could have made it more of a mystery. Not Dark Souls vague, but things become clear pretty soon in the H:ZD and Aloy has very little issues understanding everything. I would've liked to see the whole 'we use ancient technology but have no clue what it is or how it works' angle to be done a bit better.
Click to expand...

Yeah the tribal stuff was wholly uninteresing for me too. I had forgot about it but now when I’m reminded about it I remember how little about it I cared. Even skipped most dialogue when it come to the tribal quests. Was just a bore to listen to, no interesting characters at all.

The only characters I remember was the murderous psychopath(Nil?) and Lance Reddick.
 
O

Ocirus

Member
In my opinion: no, it never got good enough for me to want to finish. I got far too frustrated with too many aspects. I hold Witcher 3 in high regard, and this certainly is no Witcher 3. I transitioned directly into Breath of the Wild after giving up on Horizon. Very happy I did.
 
Vol5

Vol5

Member
I've never bothered to complete it. It was fucking incredible to look at on my new 4K tv, but it gets repetitive after a few hours. The crafting is hilariously bad. Pretty much everything is at your finger tips but you have craft it. May as well just us the weapons lying around...no skill to it what so ever. At least in the last of us the game pushes you to explore for crafting items.

Human settlements were terrible. Shoot a guy in the head with an arrow but he survives and does fuck all. Bad.

Guerilla Games are simply bad at making games. Kill zone was the same. Looked great. Played bad.

What's even more embarrassing was the media hype around it. They were utterly in love with it for no other reason than it looked good. The only positive out of it was a strong female lead.
 
M

Martinski43

Member
Vol5 said:
I've never bothered to complete it. It was fucking incredible to look at on my new 4K tv, but it gets repetitive after a few hours. The crafting is hilariously bad. Pretty much everything is at your finger tips but you have craft it. May as well just us the weapons lying around...no skill to it what so ever. At least in the last of us the game pushes you to explore for crafting items.

Human settlements were terrible. Shoot a guy in the head with an arrow but he survives and does fuck all. Bad.

Guerilla Games are simply bad at making games. Kill zone was the same. Looked great. Played bad.

What's even more embarrassing was the media hype around it. They were utterly in love with it for no other reason than it looked good. The only positive out of it was a strong female lead.
Click to expand...

Yeah shooting humans in the face with a fire arrow that pokes out is hilarious both in a fun and bad way.

Headshots should always be one hit kills. The same artificial stuff makes bow combat in AC origins bad too.

It shouldn’t be rocket science, but do they think these rpg elements are fun?
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
LordOfChaos said:
I'm not big on open world games that need some stealth, sounds like you aren't either. I did want to check this out though.
Click to expand...

I tried it anyways after this and I'm glad I did. A lot of wut to the OP. It's pretty easy to sneak around watchers and hunt them from the grass, you can also make the HUD dynamic to hide it when not needed.

If you were playing like a rambo game, then, well...It's not the genre, like most like it.

I dislike Ubisoft like open world games but I'm enjoying this somehow, a lot more streamlined.
 
W

wuth

Member
JThird said:
I'm actually surprised that people still play western games in 2017.
It's like they have no respect for themself.
Click to expand...

WOW. Shots fired I guess...

As for you haters, I've got to say that I'm surprised. While I don't think the game is perfect, and I actually do feel like the game often wastes time with travel and pointless side-quests, I think the core gameplay is amazing. I loved meticulously plotting my dino-robot kills and carefully skulking around in the bushes to avoid detection.

After a few hours into the game you'll soon be able to one-shot the watchers with a single crit. This will make your life much easier as trash mobs become significantly less threatening. You'll start tangoing with much larger enemies later that necessitate more planning and skill- that's when I feel the game really comes into its own.
 
M

MysteryM

Member
See I'm not one for open world games and mostly play multiplayer shooters on Xbox live. Played this before botw and loved this far more. The universe is packed and it's fun. Will pick it up again next year and play through it again.
 
IISANDERII

IISANDERII

Member
wuth said:
WOW. Shots fired I guess...

As for you haters, I've got to say that I'm surprised. While I don't think the game is perfect, and I actually do feel like the game often wastes time with travel and pointless side-quests, I think the core gameplay is amazing. I loved meticulously plotting my dino-robot kills and carefully skulking around in the bushes to avoid detection.

After a few hours into the game you'll soon be able to one-shot the watchers with a single crit. This will make your life much easier as trash mobs become significantly less threatening. You'll start tangoing with much larger enemies later that necessitate more planning and skill- that's when I feel the game really comes into its own.
Click to expand...
Wastes time with travel? You can get unlimited fast travel a few hours in.
One shotting Watchers a few hours in? I’m playing on Hard and I think you could one shot them from the beginning
I don’t know 🤷🏽*♀️ what’s happening lol
 
A

AR15mex

Member
BuddyTheBestPuppy said:
I am loving this game so much. Don't know how anyone can hate on it.
Click to expand...

It really depends, a good friend of mine lend me the game, and it is quite disappointing game in my personal opinion. I have reached the desert area and I couldn't put more hours into it. I was going to do a LTTP, but since I will not finish the game, I found it inappropriate.

First of all, I've been playing games on Hard (not master or something else) and horizon was no exception. I do this to create a sense on game durability.

First the Pros:


  • Beautiful Graphics the wow factor dies after a while.
  • Great Movement I love how Aloy moves around, everyone should take note.
  • Decent Economy System, good nothing too fancy.
  • Good Upgrade system. They kept it simple and nice, armor, weapons, and then the ability points. Easy to track on everything.

The Cons:

  • Exploration is neglected by several factors such as the inability to properly climb to explore and scout ala BOTW. To me this was the biggest gripe. The game does not push you to explore.
  • Excessive amount of enemies. OP is right too many, and the inability to efficiently combat them is more cumbersome, see next point.
  • the actual combat is boring due to fact that you have to Chicken out to kill your enemies. Effects takes a lot of time to build up even with the proper mods on the bows and other weapons. The traps are more a problem vs the benefit of using them.
  • Side Quests are boring as hell. The cauldron were ok, the bandits so-so, but the other ones just no... the hunts with the timer those were interesting I did only one though with the half sun marks.

And yeah there it is.

I could say more pros and cons but this is the general idea...
 
R

RefigeKru

Banned
the actual combat is boring due to fact that you have to Chicken out to kill your enemies. Effects takes a lot of time to build up even with the proper mods on the bows and other weapons. The traps are more a problem vs the benefit of using them.

*chuckles*

Chicken out? This game is about dominating your enemy. When you get the jump slow-mo you can murder everything pretty swiftly.
 
S

Simple Soul

Member
Carn82 said:
Horizon's 'lore' is much better than its story. As in, I loved reading all the datalogs and listening to the audio-parts regarding the whole Zero Dawn event; I didn't care that much about all the tribal stuff and Sun King shenanigans. But maybe thats because I'm a sci-fi fan first, hehe.

I do think that Guerilla could have made it more of a mystery. Not Dark Souls vague, but things become clear pretty soon in the H:ZD and Aloy has very little issues understanding everything. I would've liked to see the whole 'we use ancient technology but have no clue what it is or how it works' angle to be done a bit better.
Click to expand...
Yah, me too. I honestly loved the old world story. As someone who consumes mostly popular stuff, this was a nice and refreshing take for me on the apocalypse. I like Faro too, the only side character I remember in detail.

But when it comes to the tribal stories, the game lost me. It was cute at times, but that's about it, and it makes me wonder what can Horizon 2 offer me. It feels like the story of the old world is complete in HZD. I don't know how they can expand it in 2 without feeling forced, and if they focus on the tribes it won't interest me.

The idea of making the story more vague and the discovery of it a puzzle a la Dark Souls sounds amazing, but HZD is too mainstream for that. I'm not saying that in a disdainful way, I'm a mainstream guy myself, and probably too thick to have pieced together the story if it wasn't presented in a straightforward, traditional way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Octopath Traveler 2 is better than Final Fantasy 16 (and any Square Enix game since 2006)
2
94
5K
Poppyseed replied
Are games are better on second playthrough?
2
81
2K
marquimvfs replied
LTTP: Horizon: Forbidden West 2022 (PS5)
2
78
4K
Kupfer replied
RTTP: God Of War 3 ... a simpler and better time.
2
80
3K
Bernardougf replied
Sekiro Needs A Remake
2
92
4K
Rhazer Fusion replied
Top Bottom