The AAA game of AAA games. Everything works and looks fine and dandy, but nothing here is interesting nor innovative. I tried to let this game impress me, I wanted to explore the visually stunning world and see the full potential of its solid combat. But everything the game tasked me to do felt so incredibly pointless.

Alloy is dull as a piece of paper and every interaction is awkward as fuck and has a weird blend of seriousness and wit where you can't tell if they're trying to be funny or intentionally unlikeable. Every task consists of following a trail, kill the enemy in front of you, suffer through an awkward conversation, kill an enemy with more health than usual and so on.

The quests, the world, the crafting, the dialogue choices; everything feels so pointless and only exists because it can. All of it felt like a chore and none of it felt fun.

2017 game that would have been revolutionary in 2007.

The entire art team deserves some awards for their achievement on this, the game is still beautiful and a lot of effort went into tiny flourishing details.

The rest of the teams who worked on this just made a by the book gamey game for gamers.

You climb on yellow stuff, you talk in worthless dialogue trees, you unlock basic gameplay through skill trees, you craft shit, you buy gear with colorful rarity, you slowly farm nonsense off of the ground, you go on dumb side quests. You do it all in a giant open world filled with icons. It's a game and all those things are there because that's what you do in games like these, and I'm so tired of it.

I think I would've appreciated a straight forward, linear, 10-20 hours experience a lot more, maybe I just want to play Enslaved again.

The fact that this game is put on a pedestal as not only one of gaming's flagship titles but was nominated for multiple game of the year awards and has a sequel on its way that is one of the most anticipated releases of 2022 is something that I feel sums up everything about modern gaming.

Let's start with the positive - Horizon is a stunning looking videogame. I've gone back to my old save file - one I bailed on back in 2017 - on PS5 and I can't quite believe this is a five year old game and not a native PS5 title. The smooth 60fps upgrade is likely doing a bit of heavy lifting but even in the many screenshots I have taken from my playthrough, it is an undeniably good looking game, right up there at the very top of the pile.

That's it. That's the positive.

Christ, where do we start with the negatives? What Horizon: Zero Dawn offers is little more than a visual treat. As an open world game, it is doing nothing more than the stuff we got bored of on the 360/PS3. As an action game, it feels awkward with all of the attacks feeling far too over-animated and taking far too long to give you a snappy sense of control. The stealth elements are basic, barebones, nothing special but certainly not bad. Most of the sidequests are fetch or kill quests. The characters are all generic tropes, from the father figure who dies to give you a motive to the villain you remember from your childhood - there's not a single original character arc in the entire thing. The overall lore of the world of Horizon comes dangerously close to being actually interesting but then spaffs that up the wall by only revealing itself to you via an insulting amount of audio logs or, in two hilariously bad sections, unskippable exposition dumps.

Open world games are extremely popular and everything about this feels so fucking cynical. Skill trees lock away basic abilities because heaven forbid you have too much freedom from the word go. Yellow fucking objects show where you can climb and you better not get any ideas about climbing on anything other than these obvious climbing markers! From the lead character, sub-Netflix "box set" show storyline and game mechanics that are so well-worn that you basically know exactly how this game plays and feels before you've even started it - and this is all entirely by design. You're supposed to know exactly what you're getting in to and that is one of the main reasons behind its success. It's a game for the lowest common denominator. It's a game that doesn't want any friction whatsoever. It's the gaming equivalent of wall painted in magnolia white with a Live, Laugh, Love framed poster on it.

It is the most basic of basic bitch stuff.

I think it speaks volumes that this - the absolute fucking DEATH of the old style of open world game that Ubisoft and their ilk have been milking since the first Assassin's Creed and has been begging for death for over a decade - came out only a few weeks before Breath of the Wild showed up and instantly made anything that treads the same boards as Horizon look like a relic almost immediately.

Looks great though so you know 10/10 GOTY please tune in to the Game Awards!!!!!!