Still one of the all time greats. Stellar writing across the board - both a sweeping epic and a fantastic revenge tale all in one go. In an era where video game writing was all over the place, this was a clear standout and it still holds up.

Gameplay holds up too, unsurprisingly. Difficult but extremely rewarding once you know what you are doing, and the plethora of options here makes things impossible to resist. The quality of life improvements are a godsend to boot, and the new companions are very well done. Classic from top to bottom.

There's this inexplicable phenomenon in cinema where an undeniably horrible film will end up being loved by a devoted following in part because it's so terrible. It's what's responsible for the old saying "so bad, it's good," and might be the only medium of entertainment where such a thing is truly possible. The closest approximation we've had in gaming is Deadly Premonition, which managed to overcome its various faults and deficiencies to earn itself a strong reputation as a well-respected flawed masterpiece due to the strength of its charmingly quirky vision and writing. That's what was I hoping to get out of NightCry, but while seemingly all the right (wrong?) elements were in place they never came together to create something as endearing.

At first glance this looks like an old-school PS2 era horror throwback what with its fixed camera angles and awkward controls (O is select and X is back for some inexplicable reason), but in reality it's more of a point-and-click adventure title. Which makes sense when you consider that it's coming from Hifumi Kono with the intention of serving as a spiritual successor to his legendary Clock Tower series. In a similar manner to the games it is taking direct inspiration from, there are a lot of unique ideas in regards to how players can influence the narrative and its outcomes. Unfortunately, the apparent lack of technical proficiency from the team at Nude Maker prevents any of them from ever taking off, and I'm not just talking about how the graphics are ugly as sin or the whole thing is riddled with bizarre, frustrating bugs and glitches either. There are some genuine issues with their actual implementation that don't allow them to live up to their interesting potential.

Case in point, you do ANYTHING to deviate from the path of key actions that lead to the true conclusion and the story will come to an abrupt, anticlimactic end out of nowhere. You'll be left baffled on top of unfulfilled when this happens since the expectations placed on you in this regard are sometimes painfully undefined. Entire crucial processes can be missed completely because you didn't somehow magically intuit that you, say, needed to loot a cash register near the start of the game for quarters to use at a very specific vending machine in order to collect the wedding ring off the severed hand that comes out in place of a soda (yeah, a lot of weird stuff happens...) so that it can be given to a character hidden away in the back of a previously visited room several chapters later. The flowchart style screen you'll visit to pick up where you left off or revisit an earlier section that chronicles your progress offers vague hints on what the main tasks necessary to stay on the right track are, but no insight on what must be done to actually accomplish them. How anyone was supposed to figure any of this out without resorting to a walkthrough I have no idea, and I'm fully convinced that most of the people you'll see with a more positive outlook on NightCry only have such an opinion because they used one to bypass experiencing the inherently irritating aspects of its design.

Flaws don't only put a damper on the developer's loftier, more ambitious mechanics however, but the moment-to-moment gameplay as well. There's a ridiculously awful element of trial and error to things. Hope you enjoy instantly dying upon entering a room because you didn't know you were supposed to turn on your phone's flashlight or make a post on the in-game social media app (an action that's required of you maybe only twice, if that) beforehand. The chase sequences that comprise the majority of the action sequences outside of the occasional QTE are exciting in theory as you have no traditional means of defending yourself, forcing you find a hiding spot or tool to temporarily fend off your pursuer, but do little to instill an air of tension once you realize the killer's appearances are entirely scripted after the first level. By far the most tedious problem though is that you often have to interact with people or objects multiple times in a row to progress. I get that's not unheard of for this genre, but I bet the majority of them didn't force you to sit through a loading screen following every click.

Going back to the analogy I began this review with, when it comes to cult classic disasterpiece movies you'd be hard pressed to find one of more renown than Tommy Wiseau's The Room, which lives on in a sort of ironically celebrated infamy that still drives rowdy crowds to midnight screenings for a bit of energetic mockery during the viewing. NightCry may just be the video game equivalent. Like the aforementioned cinematic travesty, it's too bad to legitimately recommend, but if you were to pick it up regardless you'd certainly uncover plenty to laugh at. The plot is so full of holes and missing information that it makes an almost comical lack of sense, and you can be killed in a number of absurdly hilarious ways (death by flying babydoll, anyone?). The save system, sadly the best feature, even makes it relatively easy to witness every goofy, jank, or downright broken inch of this mess for the platinum trophy. The hours it will take from your life however, are likely better spent elsewhere.

4/10

I like Horizon Forbidden West less than I liked Zero Dawn. It adds quite a few cool monsters and interesting variations on the monsters from the first game, but many of the systems are expanded in a way that detracted from the experience for me and the narrative is significantly more clumsy.

I think combat in Forbidden West is strictly worse than in Zero Dawn. The traps and arrow combat still work well and can be used to get through the majority of the game without much issue, but there are a number of changes to other systems that make things more complicated, but have a pretty negative effect on the gameplay.
Melee combat is expanded, with more moves and combos. The simplicity and power of melee was one of the complaints I had with the first game, but the additions here don't work for me. Melee moves make Aloy feel out of control, and the combo strings are arbitrary and require some pretty frame-perfect inputs. It skews a bit too hard into some sort of fighting game-inspired system, which I don't really think the game needs or supports. It doesn't make an argument for itself or work better than just shooting enemies.
Relatedly, human enemies seem to have been designed to be the melee enemies in this game. Unlike the original, they wear extreme amounts of armor and the small size of these pieces and the portions of their body that get exposed make arrows very hard to use. Human fights either feel arbitrarily long (because you are shooting them forever) or just bad (because you are trying to use the hard to control melee combat).
In the Zero Dawn, the fact that status effects don't stack doesn't matter so much, because there were only about 5 of them. It was only a slight annoyance and most enemies didn't have multiple weaknesses. With all the extras added in Forbidden West, it feels like the game is telling you to stack up all the effects you can, but punishes you for doing so, since they overwrite each other. It just makes the system feel worse to engage with, since it feels like you cannot actually utilize all your new options.
Ropecasting is nerfed into the ground for some reason I cannot fathom. It is one of the more unique aspects to combat in this series, and this change destroys it for reasons that aren't clear to me. It takes an extreme amount of ropes to lock down a robot and they break out almost immediately. Every other CC status effect is more effective.
The new weapons are interesting, but I found them all to be strictly worse and less fun than the bows.

The weapon system in Zero Dawn is coherent and understandable, with different weapon types having different strengths and weaknesses and pushing you towards different playstyles and options. War Bows apply status effects, Hunter Bows are all-around plus fire arrows, and Sharpshot Bows are for high damage and part removal.
Forbidden West throws this away in favor of offering all the arrow types with each of the bow types. This muddied the choices for me extremely -- the pool of weapons is varied and unpredictable, so there is nothing to work towards and no clear upgrades. This undermines the weapon upgrade system, removing any clear throughline of weapons to work towards. It also undermines the status system, removing your ability to count on finding the status bows you need.

Forbidden West's narrative is all over the place. There are about two and a half overarching plotlines which are vaguely connected. Most of what Aloy is trying to do sort of makes sense and tries to pull in the side plots and characters, but I never really understood why it is of any consequence given the problems Aloy is trying to solve (much like the first game). There are a lot of tangents to recruit people from each of the tribes you meet in the Forbidden West, but this feels more like a tour of the different groups than steps it makes sense for Aloy to take given her main goal.

The game looks great and the new robots are really cool. Fighting them is the highlight and the game is at its best when it is sticking to that, though there are unfortunately quite a few bosses that are just humans, which aren't very fun at all!

I had a good time with Horizon Forbidden West and the actual combat still holds up for the most part. I was definitely disappointed with most of the iteration that took place here, unfortunately, but this game is definitely fun. If you haven't played Zero Dawn, play that instead. If you have and you liked it, then this is worth playing.

this little shitfaced monkey has the audacity to, first off, be so curious it became his identity. which i just find ridiculous. curious about what? he's not smart enough to understand anything anyways. but secondly this little ape has the worst double jump in all of gaming. you gotta press the jump button twice before it registers, you can't double jump at a point during the first jump you gotta commit immediately. I'm sorry everyone but curious george on ps2 isnt that good. i know that's hard to take in and im sorry