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[Fox Mulder]

One of my favorite games this generation. The world is beautiful, the combat is deep and varied, and the underlying sci-fi lore was interesting enough and builds a sequel. The expansion fixed most issues with the base game too.

I got the platinum and enjoyed putting like 100 hours in the game.

That's just me though.

 

[A.Romero]

I really liked the story but the characters not so much.

Melee combat was so bad that I almost exclusively used bow and arrows.

 

[Lastyou1]

Great game hindered by abysmal combat and forgettable setting.



Every time you encounter a big boss, just find some isolated peak (and every boss fight has at least one) and throw fiery arrows at its weak points.
Rinse and repeat for a straight, full play session.

It's a great game, but it's not worthy of being in the same category as God of War, Bloodborne and Spider-Man.

 

[nowhat]

The lore of the "all-mother" and everything surrounding it with the matriarchs is just devoid of anything interesting.

Just a hint, the Nora are only one of the tribes in the game (and are seen as quite backwards hillbillies by outsiders). The other tribes have way different lore/beliefs.

It sounds like you're still stuck in Noraland. Continue with the main story - I'm guessing there it is suggested you go to a far-away location. Do that. Go to town, if you will.

 

[gela94]

I expected more human drama with this kind of backstory .. Alloy was pretty feisty as a kid but then when we play her .. boooooooooring only very late in the game she becomes more interesting but still a good game.

 

[GreyHorace]

Was thinking of getting this for my PS4, but hearing all the complaints here are making me reconsider. I wasn't ready to just hop in a new open world game after The Witcher 3 burned me out by being awesome, so I put Horizon on hold.

There are just so many open-world games now it becomes a question whether that world is worth exploring and has stuff worthwhile activities to get yourself lost in. As much as I liked GTA5 it's open world left me cold after the story was over. Red Dead Redemption 2 on the other hand was fantastic at keeping you engaged. Can Horizon match up to that standard?

 

[Esppiral]

Interesting story, forgettable characters, great character models, bad ingame animations, great cinematics.

As a game I find it boring as hell.

 

[Aintitcool]

I didn't like the story at first and went hard on main quest. But later when I returned into the game I got into it. But I thoroughly enjoyed the boss battles and fighting the mecha dino's. Some of the best enemy design and fighting ever in games.

 

[Greedings]

It was fine. A solid game but nothing that deserves the praise it gets.
I just wish the characters had some sort of charm.

Oh and the teeth. What was up with the teeth in that game?

 

[sol_bad]

Massive story spoiler, don't read if you haven't played.

Spoiler

When you really think about the story I do have to say that it is pretty funny that the " ancient machines" that they are digging up is what helped destroyed humanity. Considering Aloy can destroy one of them on her own with a bow and arrow. You'd think more modern weaponry would annihilate them

 

[kraspkibble]

not a perfect game. there were some things i didn't like about it but overall really enjoyed it. can't wait for the sequel.

 

[Virex]

I agree and disagree at the same time.

 

[Grinchy]

A lot of good responses. Not going to make some massive multi-quote or anything.

I will continue playing a bit more before I'd ever think about giving up on it as I actually like the combat. Another weird thing about the presentation of the story is how often the character models do split-second glitched movements. They kinda "snap" into place sometimes. Just an odd thing I've noticed.

I just think it's a shame that so much effort went into every aspect of the game, but it is held back by the way it monotonously tells its story.

 

[nowhat]

Massive story spoiler, don't read if you haven't played.

Spoiler

When you really think about the story I do have to say that it is pretty funny that the " ancient machines" that they are digging up is what helped destroyed humanity. Considering Aloy can destroy one of them on her own with a bow and arrow. You'd think more modern weaponry would annihilate them

Spoiler

The machines that existed in the old world were the Corruptors, Deathbringers - and then the Horus-class machines (aka the "metal devils", you know the ones tall as a mountain) that were both able to convert biomass into energy and create an infinite supply of new machines. I'm guessing it was just a game of numbers, even if the people back then were able to take down them individually.

The newer machines were first designed by GAIA and as such were not really designed with offensive capabilities in mind, even though some of them (like Snapmaws, Rockbreakers and Stormbirds) can be quite proficient in that department as well, unintentionally by design I'm assuming. The later purely offensive machines (like Stalkers and Thunderjaws) may have been designed with the target (cavemen) in mind - why use a nuke to get rid of a fly when a flyswatter will do.

But sure, it is still a bit ridiculous to take down a huge machine with a bow and arrow. What can I say, it's a video game. It's fun.

 

[zwiggelbig]

Side quest are 95% less fun then the witcher 3

 

[MagnesG]

Great gameplay with ubisoft story. Just little more..

 

[danielberg]

Side quest are 95% less fun then the witcher 3

For the most part its the same crap blowing up monster nests isnt exactly the be all end all and you can only pretend to be impressed by the baron sidequests so many times.

 

[zcaa0g]

Great game hindered by abysmal combat and forgettable setting.



Every time you encounter a big boss, just find some isolated peak (and every boss fight has at least one) and throw fiery arrows at its weak points.
Rinse and repeat for a straight, full play session.

It's a great game, but it's not worthy of being in the same category as God of War, Bloodborne and Spider-Man.

Or you could man up in the game and take them head on and see how that goes. You might have found the combat more interesting and challenging. Maybe.

 

[Lastyou1]

Or you could man up in the game and take them head on and see how that goes. You might have found the combat more interesting and challenging. Maybe.

If the bosses weren't one-shotting you all the times and the melee hit boxes weren't so bad, I would fight them face-front.

But considering how badly animated is the combat, how useless are melee moves against large machines and how obvious are the safe spots, I'd say that the game actually encourages you to sniping rather than fighting.

Human boss fights are atrocious for the opposite reasons... Just set a trap or unlock the one-shot takedown ability and you're free to go.


Combat in this game is abysmal, there is nothing of value in it: animations, variety, A. I., mechanics, hit boxes, bugs, etc are too many and too frequent.



The setting is so-so. The world is barren.

The only thing that keeps the game afloat is production value, the graphics (and even then, facial animations need improvement), the story and the overall aesthetic. Traversal is not bad either.
Stealth is a joke for the most part.

 

[Hendrick's]

How is it edgy?

You're not allowed to dislike PS exclusives.

 

[DanielsM]

Good:
- Combat
- Mech dinosaurs
- Environments outside of the big towns
- Overall story
- Graphics and performance are nice
- Lots of cool little technology things they came up with

Bad:
- Narrative story telling is bad with the trees and stiff animation (horrible)
- The whole pyramid thing for big towns looks horrible to me... horrible art direction there
- Too much trying to make the characters look like American Indians... its post apocalypse not Dances with Wolves.
- Horrible human AI and combat
- More variety in the environments

Solid game, I didn't think it was boring though, Uncharted 4 was boring.

 

[Fox Mulder]

The combat wasn't horrible. They gave you lots of weapons and upgrade options. I didn't even try a lot of it until the higher difficulty hunting trials. They could have done a better job at showing this early on. Lots of people probably just killed everything with a hundred arrows.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

I played it for like 6 hours last night doing side quests, getting a bunch of items and gear along with a few levels. Now I got high level gear the game is much more fun to destroy things. Fighting the T-Rex mech is savage if anything else rolls up on you however.

 

[Cleared_Hot]

Could not disagree with you more. I fucking loved everything about it.

 

[Boss Mog]

Picked up the Complete Edition for $9.99 on Amazon during the "days of play" sale. I'm curious to experience it for myself, though I doubt it will hold up next to God of War or Spider-man.

 

[yoyo67]

It was mind numbing to me. I played BotW before this game. The level of freedom was very restrictive and the combat was the only good thing. My eyes adjust to the graphics after a few minutes of playing and its the last thing I care about in games. The combat even got a bit repetitive after a while. I probably should've changed things up a bit though.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

It was mind numbing to me. I played BotW before this game. The level of freedom was very restrictive and the combat was the only good thing. My eyes adjust to the graphics after a few minutes of playing and its the last thing I care about in games. The combat even got a bit repetitive after a while. I probably should've changed things up a bit though.

I had the opposite experience. Played this and then BOTW immediately after and ended up not liking the latter nearly as much.

I hate exploring open worlds, especially huge ones with a lot of empty space and don’t like messing around in sandboxes. I’m much more into linear, story-driven things. Horizon’s open world kind of sucked too, but at least it was smaller, more densely packed with enemies and had a fuck ton of fast travel points so I could mostly treat it like a linear game.

 

[Guileless]

The story is lame and worldbuilding nonexistent, but I can live with it when the game looks and plays so great.

 

[Eiknarf]

It was good, but a one-time-play for me. Half way through I noticed I was rushing to get to the end. That means I won’t keep it in my collection. And I didn’t. I just sold it after I completed it.

Don’t get me wrong there’s something satisfying in both the visual and the audio of destroying a machine animal. But it felt repetitious after a while (it’s kinda long).

Plus now that I’m playing the older (but a little more badass) Metal Gear Solid V TPP, I realize that Horizon Zero Dawn is kinda the same/copied the layout and format. Only I don’t feel the urge to rush through Metal Gear Solid V (not yet anyway)

 

[NahaNago]

I'd say that the main character was the most boring part of the game for me. You tend to meet quite a few interesting people but you don't really get to go deep enough in to other people's stories.

 

[appaws]

I liked it. Always intended to get the expansion but never got around to it.

 

[Teslerum]

It's been two years, but I liked it overall very much with two exceptions

- Aloy herself, who wasn't very likeable to me, often displaying an arrogant attitude.

- The pretense of it being a wrpg. Specifically that in several instances the game told me how I had to feel about a certain situation and/or how I had to deal with it. This was especially aggrevating when the game did stray about a bit too far into politics, which admitingly was rare. Theres one particular sidequest though which to this day still gets my blood boiling because that was such a one sided view of a situation.

 

[DjMystix]

I really loved it. I think it is one of the best scifi stories I’ve experienced this gen. I liked the just-right difficulty of the game as well. Sure it got boring here and there but overall, it was an excellent experience. Like someone else said above, I’d buy the sequel day one

 

[Spukc]

the game is boring as fuck agreed

 

[alabtrosMyster]

I stopped playing not long after the tutorials, as soon as I saw the map open a bit and the quest markers appear, it brought back Ubisoft style check list open world ADHD memories to me... Could not stand it, I hate those with a passion.

EDIT: I forgot to mention why I bought the game, I love the setting, the style of the art and how it feels in general... I just get really bogged down when an "adventure" game tells you where to go to find the treasures, complete the quests, and where all secrets are.... I mean, in an adventure you should have the feeling of discovery and being lost from time to time is part of it.

 

[mejin]

one of the best new ip of this gen. so much potential for the sequel

 

[Nester99]

I think you should play more than 8 hours to have a fully cooked opinion on this game.

I loved it.

 

[D-Dude]

I enjoyed it, liked the story too. Completed the DLC today, after I bought it last year. I have a problem were I am always distracted by other games.

 

[juliotendo]

Let's get some of the good aspects out of the way first. The game looks great. With HDR on a nice 4K TV, this game is quite the looker. It also plays well. I'm a fan of the gameplay itself. Sneaking around and setting up traps to take out hordes of animal machines is satisfying. Hacking them to ride them is satisfying. Leveling up to upgrade skills and all the standard game mechanics are done well.

But, the game is boring as fucking AF. The story is just so bad so far. I'm about 8 hours in or so. The beginning of it where you're being brought up by Rost is done pretty well. Their relationship is interesting and keeps you invested in the early story. Once you break off from him and re-join the rest of the civilization that has shunned you your whole life, it all plummets.

Every person you talk to has nothing but boring shit to say. The lore of the "all-mother" and everything surrounding it with the matriarchs is just devoid of anything interesting. The actors read off the lines in a monotone way that makes the already boring dialog even worse. I've already gotten to the point where I just skip all the dialog and just go around killing things. While this isn't a huge problem, it's just become a pretty Ubisoft map checklist game and that isn't too appealing.

How many times am I realistically going to want to stop on the road to find someone who has a family member that went missing, only to scan the ground for a purple GPS route to slowly walk me across the map to find them? It's the same setup every time.

I had a similar feeling playing the game. I thought overall the game was pretty boring and found the world to be totally uninteresting.

The story however was cool but that’s about it for me. I only played it through because I spent money on it and wanted to see what I would get out of it.

Overall I think it’s a highly overrated game.

 

[Grinchy]

I think you should play more than 8 hours to have a fully cooked opinion on this game.

I loved it.

I think it's insane to require more than 8 hours of playing a videogame to be qualified to have developed any opinions about it yet.

 

[Spukc]

I think it's insane to require more than 8 hours of playing a videogame to be qualified to have developed any opinions about it yet.

agreed that is some next level bull
shit

 

[Stuart360]

Havent played it but i did finish watching a playthrough of it, i couldnt say the same with GOW which i gave up on half way through.
Horizon seemed good to me, i am a open world fan though. I would def get it if i had a PS4.

 

[Aidah]

Extremely mediocre game. Can't think of a single thing about it that I thought was actually good. A friend Left it at my house for me to try it after he himself gave it a try and thought it was too boring to continue playing. I blazed through the main story because everything else was even less interesting. 16 hours of mediocrity. Of course I've never played the DLC and I'd have zero interest in a sequel.

 

[Negotiator]

If there's one thing I don't like is Aloy's gender-neutral design. You could shave her hair and easily mistake her for a boy.

I don't understand extremes (West/gender-neutral and/or deliberately ugly women vs Japan/oversexualized women).

I've noticed this "strange" pattern in studios based in California, Netherlands and Sweden. Probably not a coincidence.

Thank god not all Sony exclusives are like that. i.e. Detroit Become Human had fine-looking, feminine women.

 

[Bryank75]

There is a common thread with people who wrote negatively here, they all gave up within a few hours of the start. I have this problem a lot with open world games... I had with the witcher 3. I played a few hours and thought combat was terrible and it tainted my impression of the game overall. Luckily I went back and played it and the dlc and actually ended up loving it.
Same with Horizon , the first few hours are slow but necessary and eventually everything opens up and becomes really interesting, the combat takes a bit to learn and add all the traps etc but is really excellent and fun, especially taking on bigger , more challenging enemies. The story turns out to be really very interesting but you need to stick with it to pay off.
Only let down was a boss fight...

 

[sol_bad]

The story is lame and worldbuilding nonexistent, but I can live with it when the game looks and plays so great.

World building none existent? What the hell game did you play? I thought the world was fully fleshed out.

The tribes, their religious beliefs, the history surrounding the tribes, the motivations of the people who helped destroy the world, the robot creatures and why they were made, what 5he robot parts are us3d for, the technologies that were used in the old times.
It's great.

 

[Bryank75]

Extremely mediocre game. Can't think of a single thing about it that I thought was actually good. A friend Left it at my house for me to try it after he himself gave it a try and thought it was too boring to continue playing. I blazed through the main story because everything else was even less interesting. 16 hours of mediocrity. Of course I've never played the DLC and I'd have zero interest in a sequel.

Sniff sniff, smells like bullshit to me.

 

[DerFuggler]

When I played this game it just felt like a third person FarCry Primal with a lot of similar mechanics but a much less interesting story (not to say FCP had a great one). It looked good, the enemy destruction was neat, the exploration was mediocre, but the plot was like something a PC pre-teen came up with in a mandatory creative writing class.

 

[daninthemix]

Has the PS4 fanboi defense force mobilized yet?

 

[Zannegan]

Has the PS4 fanboi defense force mobilized yet?

Could you just... not, please?