I kept thinking while I was playing this:
"This is a game-ass game."
I don't mind when games lean into what they are (dialogue in tutorials where characters literally state what buttons do what, Resident Evil 4's arcade-y light trails indicating ammo and money pick-ups, Deadly Premonition having collectables visible in cut-scenes) and I don't mind when games try to hide their "game-ness" for the sake of being cinematic (skipping title-screens and booting straight into game with SH2 or GTA, minimal UI, cutscenes blending straight into gameplay), but I think this is a case of a title trying to do the latter and not knowing how. Horizon seems like it wants to be scifi Uncharted, but feels more like PlayStation's own Ubisoft game (a formula Ghost of Tsushima would later perfect) and the facial animation and dialogue outside of mocapped cut-scenes really cements this. Mechanics and tasks stack in a perfectly reasonable way, but I just didn't feel that motivated to engage with them.
Beautiful to look at, pretty fun traversal, and the combat is interesting and the enemies are unique, but overall the game just felt kind of tedious to me.
"This is a game-ass game."
I don't mind when games lean into what they are (dialogue in tutorials where characters literally state what buttons do what, Resident Evil 4's arcade-y light trails indicating ammo and money pick-ups, Deadly Premonition having collectables visible in cut-scenes) and I don't mind when games try to hide their "game-ness" for the sake of being cinematic (skipping title-screens and booting straight into game with SH2 or GTA, minimal UI, cutscenes blending straight into gameplay), but I think this is a case of a title trying to do the latter and not knowing how. Horizon seems like it wants to be scifi Uncharted, but feels more like PlayStation's own Ubisoft game (a formula Ghost of Tsushima would later perfect) and the facial animation and dialogue outside of mocapped cut-scenes really cements this. Mechanics and tasks stack in a perfectly reasonable way, but I just didn't feel that motivated to engage with them.
Beautiful to look at, pretty fun traversal, and the combat is interesting and the enemies are unique, but overall the game just felt kind of tedious to me.