This certainly is a game!

When I got my PS4 in 2018, Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the exclusives I was most looking forward to. Having been an Xbox guy my whole life I was excited to experience all of the great things I had heard over the years about PlayStation's exclusive single-player library. For the most part, all of the great things I heard were true. Spider-Man PS4 is my favorite game of all time, Ghost of Tsushima was absolutely stunning and I loved every second of it, Infamous Second Son was a game I was looking forward to playing since watching a Let’s Play when it came out, and God of War was an unreal cinematic gaming masterpiece that felt nothing like most games I have played before. But for some reason with Horizon Zero Dawn, I just stopped playing after only putting about 5-7 hours into it. I just didn’t feel like playing it anymore. At the time I couldn’t really put my finger on what made me lose interest in the critically acclaimed PlayStation title but now after revisiting it in 2022, I think I’ve finally managed to understand what didn’t click with me about Horizon Zero Dawn.

The game feels shallow in nearly every aspect.

On a surface level, Horizon Zero Dawn seems like a game I would absolutely fall in love with. You’re fighting huge robot animals with an arsenal of primitive weapons for crying out loud. But once you get into the gameplay it doesn’t really feel like anything I hoped it would be and left much to be desired. It feels very bare-bones with hardly any engaging interactions with enemies. Fights with the humans are particularly dull partially due to the fact that the human enemies are usually quite bullet spongy. This is unfortunate because you’re fighting them with mostly a bow and arrow so it takes a considerable amount of time to kill one even if you land headshots. Using melee especially takes way too many hits to take a person down. It’s boring, repetitive, unengaging, and unsatisfying.

The robot combat is a lot better but still feels very shallow. It’s mostly just spam roll and try to get a weak point shot off before you have to spam roll again. It can be engaging but most of the fights are repetitive. It's the same thing every single robot fight. The only thing that changes is where the weak points are and what specific damage type those points are weak to. Also, the robots can typically three-shot you (the bigger ones can 1-2 shot you). So not only are you spamming roll but you're also spamming your heals.

Melee combat consists of two buttons that do slow kind of floaty attacks. Very very bare bones.

The world while it looks beautiful feels incredibly empty. There are a bunch of stunning and massive landscapes but the only thing that fills them are random robot herds, single-person vendors, and the occasional settlement/bandit camp. You can walk forever without ever seeing much of anything.

I think my biggest issue with the gameplay though has to be stealth. I really don’t see the point in this being a feature. It’s like they expect you to be able to play these engagements like an Assassin’s Creed level but most of the time the second you take one enemy out, regardless of how far away they are from their buddies, everyone becomes aware of your presence. Then it just turns into the dull bullet sponge shoot out from before. It’s the same way with robots. Stealth is bad in this game. Incredibly tedious, pointless, and annoying.

Your mount is a whole issue on its own. The mount in this game is absolute dogshit. The controls are clunky and slow, you have to continuously get a new mount if it dies, or (in my case 98% of the time) the game decides to just fucking take it away from you 30 seconds later for no goddamn reason. The ability to call a mount whenever without having to go get a new one is literally at the bottom of one of the skill trees. So fucking stupid. That should be available from the start. There's absolutely no reason the game should just take the mount from you ESPECIALLY when you are in the beginning stages of the game. Why would you make the exploration such a colossal ass ache? Especially since you're walking for miles with hardly anything to do. What an idiotic system. It's so fucking bad. I constantly found myself having to go into uncharted areas, as the open-world game template demands you do, but the game yoinked my mount a minute ago so I have to haul ass through an area where the enemies are far above my level. It’s a lose-lose as well because they punish you for fast traveling by making it cost a specific item to do so. But it’s trivial because the item is so easy to make and such a low cost that it makes you wonder why they bother making fast travel cost anything in the first place. It ruins the experience because you're spending most of your time walking from place to place anyway. This is easily one of the most frustrating and tedious games regarding map traversal.

As far as the story and its characters go I guess it’s ok? The story is anyway. It's pretty interesting but the presentation is not great. The protagonist Aloy mostly speaks in a voice completely devoid of any emotion or inflection. Except of course for if you occasionally pick the “mean” dialogue option where she just sounds slightly irritated while still being monotone. It’s not very good voice acting on her part. This is a shame because I’ve heard the actress in other projects and I think she can do a good job. Aloy is a very one-note in the voice department and as a character. All of the characters are equally as dull and forgettable. Not a single person I’ve come across is interesting which makes talking to people a complete chore.

Anyways here’s some stuff I did like:
- It’s a pretty game.
- The robot designs are cool and they have some unique moves/fighting patterns.
- Running into a new robot for the first time is when the game peaked fun-wise. Figuring out its mechanics is engaging on the first encounter but it quickly becomes stale.
- I think the arsenal of weapons you have access to is interesting but most of the ones you can carry on your person are lame or unsatisfying to use.

I’m extremely disappointed with this game. I rarely found myself engaged with anything that was happening or having any semblance of fun. As I said before this was one of the PlayStation exclusives I was most looking forward to. I’ve only ever heard people praise the shit out of this game and maybe that's part of the problem. I wanted to like Horizon Zero Dawn but it's just ok at best and unbearable at worst. Who knows maybe Forbidden West will iron some of these issues out.

Go play Breath of the Wild instead. That’s shit is fire!

TL:DR
Human combat: Bad. Incredibly boring.
Human stealth: Essentially worthless.
Robot combat: Ok but gets repetitive.
Robot stealth: Super worthless and uninteresting. It just boils down to walking between bushes or shooting watchers in the eye as they pass.
Exploration: Awful. Easily my most hated part of the game was getting from place to place. Mount system is utter dogshit.
Characters: Nonexistent. The main thing holding the story back.
Story: Fine. Would be better if there was even ONE interesting person to show up in this game.

Deathloop wasn't my favorite Arkane game but it was still a ton of fun. I think the dynamic between Colt and Julianna was great. I enjoyed listening to them antagonize each other at the start of every level. It was a nice change of pace from the other Arkane games that have stories that take themselves pretty seriously for the most part.

Speaking of Julianna, they made a Dark Souls type of invasion system where another player can come in and fuck up your world as Julianna. Which I think is cool. Even if you turn online off or don't have PS+ you'll just have a bot invade your game randomly which I thought was a nice touch because there's no way to avoid her and you don't know when or if she's coming. It can throw a wrench in your plans and can force you to play the map a bit differently than you normally would.

While there is a lot to love in this game there were a couple of things that kept me from giving it the last star. The first being the AI in this game is not great. Not even in the bad oblivious stealth game AI type of way, while that was also present. It was more in the way of being alerted by me even though I'm crouch walking on the roof and they are floors below me. There would be times when I would go to kill Aleksis at the party via the meatgrinder while trying to get the "Ghost of the Feast" trophy and stealthily killing one of the guards on the roof would trigger the whole room full of people as if I killed somebody right next to them. This was the area where I experienced this issue the most which are unfortunate because to get that trophy I had to enter the party, kill the 3 Visionaries, and leave the map without alerting anyone. So needless to say I had to continuously reload the level because it kept fucking me over. At the time of writing this review, I still don't have the trophy either. It's a real colossal ass ache.

For a shooter that allows you to play guns blazing or stealth, there aren't a lot of stealth options as far as weapons go. The only guns I came across were a super shitty nail gun that you might as well just fucking toss and a fantastic suppressed pistol that I used my entire playthrough. Only two guns are even used for stealth. The pistol isn't even in the base game I don't think. I had it because I bought the deluxe edition and it came with two guns one of which was the pistol. Just wish there were more stealth options because I found myself just playing the same way the entire game constantly using Nexus + suppressed pistol on a group of enemies. Even go so far as to snipe people from across entire areas with the pistol. Give me a bow, crossbow, or suppressed sniper, please.

All in all, it's a really fun shooter. Which is just about what I expected from Arkane. They know how to make fucking bangers over there.

How the mighty have fallen.

Zombies was almost completely butchered by innovation for the sake of change and not for the sake of improvement. Some of the maps are great though.

Blackout was always bad.

I was stuck on Genichiro for 4 years. Only attempting his bossfight a couple of times every few months. After all that time something clicked. It was like I entered the Matrix. I was finally able to best Genichiro and progress through the rest of the game. Despite how frustrating FromSoft games make me I have loved the ones I've played.

If I were to have one complaint it would be that the big beast fights don't quite fit the style of combat that Sekiro has. Needless to say a game about sword fighting and deflecting doesn't work that well against massive flailing beasts. Thankfully there are only a couple of them throughout the game.

10/10 would platinum again.

Thankfully I didn't experience any of the issues that the PC players experienced due to the fact that I played it on a PS5. So fortunately I had little to no issues in the 44 hours that I spent on this bad boy.

Jedi: Survivor is exactly what a sequel should be (minus all of the performance and technical issues that a lot of players are facing). Everything that Fallen Order did Survivor takes a couple steps further.

-The combat is better and expanded upon.
-Great new characters and great character work on returning ones.
-The plot and main antagonists I think are a lot stronger here as well.
-Good quality of life improvements across the board but most notably with exploration.
-Loads of new enemies on top of all the ones from the last game.
-Epic set pieces and moments that I feel like Fallen Order didn't really have, except for the final moments of the story and taking over the AT-AT on Kashyyyk.
-The locations are much more interesting than Fallen Order as well.

Survivor is just amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent on this game. I feel for the gamers out there who aren't able to experience it right now. Hopefully they can resolve those issues soon.

10/10 would platinum again.