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

so much of the charm of the originals has been lost. the simplistic art style has been covered in unreal engine grass that hides all the gems. the animated title screens and cool menus have been butchered. the character designs ripped in half. the skyboxes thrown into a meat grinder.

the biggest crime? actually making me play 2 & 3 as intended, not allowing me to skip most of the backtracking with my badass speedrunner skill.

at the end of the day, it's fine. there's just no reason for it to exist

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

generally have a well-earned distaste for video game remakes, especially with how N. Sane Trilogy turned out. unlike that game, this game is pretty and the music isn't butchered. in fact, it's better than the original and one of my favorite games ever.

Beenox was smart. they knew that Naughty Dog already made the greatest kart racer of all time. what can they do? copy the tight controls, except make it faster and add more stuff. Beenox further developed mechanics like u-turning and blue flame, allowing you to use both with less restrictions. it makes the game fast as hell, while still feeling like you have complete control.

the tracks and roster are both great, and do something I wish more remakes would do: use the good from the bad in the good. sorry for the stroke. what I mean is, take characters or tracks from less than good Crash games and put them in a good game. they did this perfectly, reaching across Crash's entire (except Twinsanity) history. finally, I can play Nitro Kart tracks without falling asleep

there are definite issues: Activision are greedy little piggies that added microtransactions to buy inflated cosmetics, 30fps, and long load times being the big ones. playing on Switch emulator is the best option and fixes the former two, but sadly the load times still suck, some textures are N64 level shit, there's minor emulator bugs, and obviously there's no online. one day my endless prayers for a PC port will be answered.

they even added the placeholder line accidentally left in the original by having the character voice it himself!! that’s so cool! this game rules!!