Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is paid DLC to the original game, and continues on from the end of Forbidden West. I decided to get it because my weird OCD brain dictates if I don't finish the DLC than my time with the game isn't finished, so I picked it up for 20 dollars or so and it wasn't bad. It's smaller in scale but has some interesting new additions and a moment that actually made me FEEL something (rare for these games).

The only thing I can think of that is new for the gameplay end is that you get a new weapon, The Specter Gauntlet, which I must say fucking slaps as a weapon and is a must use for fantastic damage output. There's some new collectibles, such as using your flying dino robot to follow a set path to collect voice recordings, picking up action figures/treasure trinkets for rewards, four new dino types, some new skills (which definitely check out Specter Gauntlet gliding as well as grapple strikes for certain trophies), etc. Overall it's not bad, not mindblowing but for what the game is it's a natural step up DLC wise, you'll get some new stuff but more of the same.

The story follows after the events of Forbidden West, Sylens (RIP Lance Reddick) sends you out to kill Walter, one of the last Far Zeniths (the rich assholes who went to space in the main game) to live, and you spend your time disassembling his plans (which include starting a cult and brainwashing Quen to join him on his rocketship, which is poisonous enough to kill a whole lot of people with radiation to escape Nemesis, the big bad of the next game) before finishing him off in a giant setpiece that involves a robot tentacle monster that looks like it came out of War of the Worlds. Overall, it's not bad though seeing Lance Reddick again makes me a bit sad considering both his untimely passing and the fact that he's hinted at being an even greater part of the third game, of which I have no clue how they're gonna do that. Also, there's a potential sweet moment involving Aloy and her companion Seyka, where they could share a tender moment of romance and honestly it was one of the first times the Horizon games made me FEEL something, which is something I've been waiting for a good while.

There were a couple of glitches here and there, mostly with trying to get a Stormbird to appear (which I had to reload a save) to unlock an item for a certain area, you'll see some returning characters (one from The Frozen Wilds from Zero Dawn in a side quest, whom I didn't know because I didn't remember most of anything in the first game).

I guess if I were to finish up the review it would be with these thoughts: god playing this again reminded me that the traversal is both good in terms of ease of accessibility (I'm often able to skip certain sections because I can just jump on random stuff and climb up the wall in a way that's unintentional) as well as painful in certain ways (that last section going through the Sectoid looking thing that Walter pilots legit frustrated me because of how close the camera is to you, mixed with overshooting the jumping parkour wise), as well as the fact that the game took me about 10 hours or so to complete all of the trophies. Keep in mind, this is a shorter experience, twenty dollars or so (btw, pre-ordering a DLC is fucking ridiculous) and if you love Horizon than you'll love this. Don't go into this expecting it to change your feelings on Horizon, if you didn't care for it then you won't care for this, and if you're like me who just likes playing PS Exclusives and feel that the game is basically every other open world game with a mid plot and characters whose names aren't memorable for the most part then it'll still feel the same.