Horizon Horizon Forbidden West

I'm picking the disc up at Best Buy on my lunch break but I'm not going to have a chance to really dig into it until Sunday. Still pretty excited though.

 

Really impressed to see they managed to deliver a quality experience across all 3 consoles. Blows my mind they managed to make the game look that good and run at a consistent 30fps on a console from 2013.

 

The delivery date has been delayed to Monday... I pre-orderd this months ago and yet they somehow still managed to botch it.

 

I'm sorry, that's frustrating.

 

That's annoying af. Where did you pre-order from?

 

Amazon who used to actually ship things on time or even early. Now they seem to be shipping later and later even when given ample time to process an order.

 

Eight and a half hours in, I'm loving this so far. A couple pictures from a PS4 Pro version, minor spoilers though in the form of a character announced to be in this but not seen in official footage:

Spoiler

 

Tried it for an hour and dropped. Dialogue just as mind-numbing as in the original game. Gameplay is your generic open world experience of the past 5-10 years.

 

Some of the issues I have with the game:

Aloy has the eye contact of a drunk. In every cutscene she's looking everywhere but the face of the person talking. And shes constantly moving her head like she has the neck strength of a baby. It completely undermines the cutscenes. Idk how GG looked at these scenes and thought it was ok.

There is a lot of atrocious pop in. Entire buildings, bridges, massive rock structures will pop in less than 20 feet in front of Alloy.

Climbing is disappointingly sloppy. In the first game it was very precise and Alloy moved from point to point like a pro. If she jumped from one handhold she always grabbed the next. It felt and looked like other Nora and Carja had set up efficient climbing paths around their territory. In this game in an attempt to give the player choice its a grab bag of many redundant paths and dead-ends. Alloy will miss handholds, jump in a random direction to her death, jump towards one of the surrounding 10 handholds but not the one you want, fail to grab any handhold at all, or just jump over a ledge entirely.

And I dont like that each type of elemental ammo has its own weapon. Making the player carry a fire sling, frost sling, and a lightning sling is just cumbersome and doesn't make any sense. If a sling can sling a fire grenade it should be able to sling a frost grenade. Its the same with the tripcaster and bows too. The hunter bow no longer shoots fire arrows. You need a separate fire bow, but bafflingly both the hunter bow and fire bow can shoot acid arrows. And all of these weapons have to be upgraded multiple times. It amounts to a lot of farming.

Despite these issues I'm enjoying the game. And they really weren't lying about the map being dense with things to do. I played 20 hours before I even left Barren Light and the Daunt.

 

I think it's a deliberate character choice tbh. Don't want to give anything away but I think it's a deliberate way to show her restless emotional state.

Dw that's only for starter or common weapons. As you find higher quality weapons, you'll find ones that have a wider range of ammo types etc. If I remember correctly, it was similar in the first game?

 

I never preorder physical games to be delivered anymore. One time I was in the shower when the delivery driver arrived and they threw it into my front garden but put on the delivery record that it was in my post box. I didn’t find the game for 3 days as I didn’t know to look for it there.

If I want physical I’d rather go to the shop directly on the morning of release and otherwise it’s digital for a preinstall and midnight start.

 

Did you play the whole of the first game? I wasn’t impressed at the start but it got a lot better after the halfway point.

 

Aloy Is On The Cover Of February's Vanity Fair



https://www.thegamer.com/vanity-fair-february-aloy-horizon-forbidden-west/amp/

This is really cool.

Edit 1:

The following is a big first act reveal. I just met...

Spoiler

the Far Zenith crew and the Beta clone of Elizabet.

Idk if I like the direction this is going. The world building, primitive tech mixed with machines and the ruins of the old world was really interesting. Introducing this group of scifi mustache twirling *****bags makes a joke out of the world Alloy exists in and the things I love about this world. And multiple clones of Elizabet just undermines Alloy's story.

Erik is literally a walking cliche.

I'll wait to see where this goes before I decide to hate it, but I'm a lot less thrilled about continuing the story because of how it might taint my feelings about the first game.

The facial animation in the conversation with Zo is staggering!

Edit 2:

Origin of the Strangers spoiler.

Spoiler

****, I cant believe GG took the story in this direction. I considered it a possibility but I thought it a wild card theory. Not something they would really do with the story.

So the Far Zenith starship made it to the Sirius star system, colonized a planet, and have spent the last 1000 years advancing from where humans left off in the 21st century. Now they have returned to earth to wipe out the primitive tribes, terraform the planet, and reclaim it.

They're pretty much space nazis come to wipe out the inferior natives.

Consider me flabbergasted.

 

I didn't. But I will have to suffer through the first half to get there... It's probably just not for me.

 

I'm having a lot of fun so far and I didn't even leave the first corner of the map yet.

I don't remember if it was like that with the first game, but sometimes there are just so many buttons and buttom combinations to remember that I get lost. The world can be pretty overwhelming with stuff to do, at times, that I end up straying from the main path.

I guess I need to focus more, but I'm enjoying it and it keeps getting better.

 

I'm still pretty early in the game (three hours in and only just finished the third story mission) but it pretty much picked up from where the first game left off and didn't feel as slow to start as Zero Dawn did, as video game sequels should. I'm digging it so far, can't wait to explore some different locales.

 

Some of these side quest stories are excellent. They really brought the quality up with them, which was one of my biggest issues with the first game.

 

In terms of side quest quality I'd say its only second to Witcher 3.

I love Plainsong's design and its culture. Particularly the Seed Pouch and the seeds being planted when a person dies. Their whole approach to the world around them is so wholesome and peaceful.


The level of graphical detail is praiseworthy. In the blaze sack on the back of a Bellowback there is a metal nozzle that sucks the blaze out of the sack. The metal has machining marks on it. The kind of marks that are caused when a solid block of steel is cut down to the necessary shape. Its a detail that most gamers will never see, but the devs took the time to put it in the game.

 

Yeah, the world building is phenomenal. That first time you arrive in Plainsong is pretty cool. I've just arrived in some of the more western tribe towns and the way they bring each culture to life with a bustling little town is really something else. They really do a good job of sucking you into the world building through every side quest and conversation.

Also there have been at least 4 or 5 side quests I've done that felt like they should've been main missions. I love when a game respects my time. Ubisoft could learn a lot from this game.

 

I'm more of a "story missions only in the first playthrough, side quests in the second playthrough" type but reading what you're all saying about the side missions has me rethinking that strategy.

 

I always try to do all of the side quests before the very final mission of the game.
The journey feels longer, more imersive and rewarding like this and, in the first game, it gave you more allies for the final battle. Maybe it'll be the same here.

 

Just arrived. Now to wait roughly 45 minutes for the install... then the day one patch update... then the pre-order bonus content to install... then I can play.

 

Yeah, I would say definitely worth doing that. Two side missions in particular I thought were straight forward when I first picked them up, but by the time I finished them, they ended up wrapping up and bringing closure to a small thing you encounter in the main story. So definitely worth doing, if you want to enjoy the fuller world.

Beyond that, I think you get a good sense for what side quests are probably less important (most of the ones that seem to be tied to weapon upgrades or collecting rare artefacts etc).

 

Turns out it was closer to 20 minutes to get everything installed. Just barely got the tutorial mission started. Going to get back to it tomorrow.

 

https://gamerant.com/horizon-forbidden-west-review-bomb/amp/



A person has to be really sheltered or anti social or delusional to not know that women have a layer of vellus hair on their face and most of their body.