horizon zero dawn breathes a sigh of relief. a competitor for the title of “worst huge budget huge publisher AAA game” has arrived.

it’s hard to decide the winner (or loser, rather) but this game does have map design so bad it could win awards, incessant backtracking, an incredibly boring story with wood plank characters, combat that consists of pressing L1 until you’re allowed to damage the enemy, hours of modern AAA "gameplay" (it’s auto-climbing), tons of bugs and jank

i usually hate the nostalgia baiting franchises like star wars love to do but this game is so dreadful when the character I knew from the only good star wars media showed up I pointed at the screen, mouth agape, managing to eke out “I KNOW THAT CHARACTER” between happy sobs

how the hell did they manage to make a game about time-traveling dinosaurs so bland? this game has an incredibly boring setting, which is especially important in survival horror because of how much backtracking and memorization it requires. the game also fucks up so many things that the original Resident Evil nailed three years prior. the inventory system is absolutely abysmal. there's like seven mechanics associated with just storing items. hardly any variety in dinos, and one boss (that isn't even good). the files don't even save. if you are at a puzzle and want to reread the associated file, you have to GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO IT, using the useless map. all of these aspects were great in Resident Evil, made three years earlier by the same guy. Shinji my man how did this happen. the OST is good and some of the puzzles are fun and Regina is cool but man this game sucks