Reviews are in and are great.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/horizon-zero-dawn?ref=hp

Look like Sony released two legit GOTY contenders within weeks of each other and it's still 1st quarter. Are they saving anything for the holiday season?

shout out guerilla for nailing it and sony for putting a lot of weight behind it. digital foundry ran an analysis and it runs at a nearly unwavering 30 fps on ps4 + pro, and they're adding a "performance" patch for pro on day one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTH8OnQKWeY

i have to say i'm very surprised at the glowing reviews. every bit of video and text i encountered painted this game as a solid 7 generic open world game. reading through some of these reviews, it seems like there are a lot of familiar elements but it all comes together very well and it's visually stunning. if i weren't so burned out on the ubi open world formula i'd probably pick this up now. as it stands this will make a good discounted purchase in maybe late summer

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

This looks great.

PS4 is killin it lately, been very impressed with their exclusives. Fist Nioh now this.

Dunno when I'm gonna find the time to play em but I preordered both.

>Dunno when I'm gonna find the time to play em but I
>preordered both.

You've got 4 AAA games; Zelda, Horizon, Nier Automatica, the new Mass Effect.

What sucks for me is im still working through Souls 3...so basically that's 4 30+ hour fucking Action RPG's I wanna cop in the same month that I won't probably touch till Memorial day, lol.

>Are they saving
>anything for the holiday season?

Isn't the next God Of War scheduled to drop around this holiday season? Or is that dropping sooner than the Thanksgiving date I have in my head for some reason?

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-horizon-zero-dawn/2300-11893/

i don't see 5* in this quick look. combat looks clunky. melee reminds me of too human. human enemies just stand there and let jeff headshot them. the tall grass + whistle mechanic is ridiculous. the longer fights with bigger mechanical enemies near the beginning were vaguely intriguing. i bet they're interesting for the first couple of times then they become tedious

this must be is a poor showing of the game. enclosed areas filled with human enemies probably don't display this game's strengths. the combination of heavy exploration mixed with a litle combat, character interaction, and world building is likely the main draw. it's a gorgeous game that kind of makes me want a ps pro. i didn't didn't actually get an urge to play this game until ~59:00. that urge started to fade a few minutes later when he started fighting again and it nearly went away entirely when the characters started talking to each other

In the early parts of the game where you're still learning it does seem like as long as you're good at games you'll be fine just doing the standards shit.

Then they start showing up bigger, and more advanced, and more threatening. You find yourself having to lay traps first and really plan out how you're going to take them down. Simply shooting arrows non stop will get you smoked quick.

I really dig it. Had to switch my whole style up with the bigger dudes that show up a little later. And you can always change the difficulty.

from the very first time you actually engage with a Watcher and hunt a fleeing pack of Striders, you can tell this game is special.

The scariest thing about that quick look is the terrible inventory menus, and the most obvious flaw of this game so far is its amusement park-like feel which other critics have touched on. Considering how dangerous they make the machines out to be its silly how crippled NPCs will jsut continue laying there in an open field because the AI pathways don't go that way.

But the combat itself is so crisp even before you start unlocking the elemental effects and bombs, more unique bows, trapping weapons, etc. That quick look also doesn't do a great job of exposing just how vulnerable you are early on. I'm playing on Hard because I've heard that makes the stealth a little less gamable and the human AI a little less stupid and so far I haven't noticed any annoying player strength nerfs or AI health buffs, but they do hit HARD. My first encounter with a Watcher I died in one direct hit. Doing everything I could possibly do before the first boss and getting a health potion from a random reward, I could still only take about four-five hits from it and barely survived.

There's a tension to every battle that you don't usually get right away from games like this that are far more gun heavy.

I'll be interested to see just how much the Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Witcher 3 crossover grates on me but so far it's brought about more grins than groans.

One thing I'd recommend to people is turning off the quest pathing and leaving the waypoint pathing on. The quest pathing jumps around in a faux GPS style that's hard to follow and holds your hand too much, whereas the waypoint markers just sit where they are and let you find your own path to them.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>But the combat itself is so crisp

what do you mean by "crisp?" it looks floaty and animation-driven. the arrows seem to travel slowly and curve to their target, skeleton archers in dark souls-style. that may be an end of game thing. there's no weight or heft behind anything. the tracking on the melee swings looks awful. are the controls super responsive?

>>But the combat itself is so crisp
>
>what do you mean by "crisp?" it looks floaty and
>animation-driven.

It has the complexity of The Witcher 3's combat in that different enemies have specific weaknesses (including, which is probably a Monster Hunter thing, weak points) and swapping weapons and abilities is on-the-fly via a slow motion screen that doesn't pause the action, but you feel in control on the level of Uncharted 4. In that sense, it's certainly animation driven in that you're not canceling or doing super complex combos ala DmC or a fighting game, but it's super fun to set enemies up for failure and like somebody else said, any time you forget you have options other than your basic arrows you're in for a real bad time with the medium and larger sized enemies.

It is also very satisfying to wrangle a herd with a bunch of stun ropes, tie them all down while they're spazzing out and then just crit them one by one to loot them. Coupled with the beautiful world (and I'm still just in the starter zone) it's fun to just wander around hunting things so I can buy the slingshot and sniper bow.

One of my favorite things to do lately has been finding huge herds with a few Grazers, hitting their Blaze canisters with a fire arrow and watching the chaos ensue as a chain of explosions rips through the herd and leaves me to pick off the crippled stragglers.

Just for the visual, I also love doing the power slide, drawing my bow, going into slow motion focus and trying to hit a Watcher in the eye. The robot animations are consistently awesome when they're aggravated, and they look super cool in slow motion. Also, in an early cinematic they show Aloy doing a power slide under an enemy to hit its weak point, and that's definitely a thing that's relevant to certain robots later on.

I will say, if you've grown weary of the climbing in Uncharted or Assassin's Creed, you'll either be really happy or really bored with what this game does. You don't need to hold a button and you often don't even need to actively jump from ledge to ledge, as 80% of the time simply holding up will get Aloy from hand-hold to hand-hold. It's the most poorly designed bit of the game so far for me because when you DO get held up by a need to find the next hand-hold it can sometimes leave me confused for two or three minutes as to where I'm supposed to go. They do the yellow platform handholding like Uncharted thing but they also do the white platform handholding like Witcher and it leads to some real confusion because while the yellow one are always grippable, sometimes the white is just art, though not very often. But it is a weird design choice.

I still haven't done much human combat yet, but I thought it all felt just fine in what little I played. Again, this may be because I'm playing on Hard and the game really gives me the sense its Hard difficulty is a very fairly balanced challenge compared to how I feel about most Hard modes, so it could just be that Medium difficulty is pretty primed to get you moving through the story. I don't have an answer for that. Like I said in the first post, I neeeeever play Hard modes other than random second play throughs on games I really love, but I rarely play those more than 50% of the way through, so the fact that I'm really enjoying Hard here is a big credit to the game IMO (for comparison, The Last of Us is a game I frequently hear felt built for Hard modes, but I couldn't get into it that way).

The melee doesn't have much variety from what I've seen but it has a fun balance of being quite dangerous because one hit, even several hours in, from most basic enemies can send you reeling, and its also got a pretty good stretch on it that makes it really reliable for hunting animals and finishing off crippled robots.


the arrows seem to travel slowly and curve
>to their target, skeleton archers in dark souls-style. that
>may be an end of game thing. there's no weight or heft behind
>anything.

I feel the exact opposite, so maybe that's just looking at the game versus watching it more than anything. Aloy feels a little weird during the tutorial sequence but main game feels fine, and the early bows have pretty long draw times that put major import behind each arrow you fire. There's nothing more disappointing and tension building than a robot moving its head just as you release your arrow, missing the critical hit and alerting the entire herd to your presence. Suddenly you're scrambling all over the zone, flipping from weapon to weapon desperate for a way to whittle 7 enemies down to one and realizing you hadn't rooted up any medical herbs in a while because you got overconfident you were getting powerful enough to take some hits, only to go from 290 to 80 health in a single kick and jump to the edge of your seat to get your dodges on point.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>One of my favorite things to do lately has been finding huge
>herds with a few Grazers, hitting their Blaze canisters with a
>fire arrow and watching the chaos ensue as a chain of
>explosions rips through the herd and leaves me to pick off the
>crippled stragglers.

This is very satisfying. You blast one, it catches on fire and starts a chain and they go ape shit crazy and trample everything in their path. Use the environment to cut others off from moving out of the way and watch them get ran over. I found myself doing this a lot just to see how much chaos I could cause.


>the arrows seem to travel slowly and curve
>>to their target, skeleton archers in dark souls-style. that
>>may be an end of game thing. there's no weight or heft
>behind
>>anything.
>
>I feel the exact opposite, so maybe that's just looking at the
>game versus watching it more than anything. Aloy feels a
>little weird during the tutorial sequence but main game feels
>fine, and the early bows have pretty long draw times that put
>major import behind each arrow you fire. There's nothing more
>disappointing and tension building than a robot moving its
>head just as you release your arrow, missing the critical hit
>and alerting the entire herd to your presence.

The arrows don't seem to curve at all. Honestly was expecting more of aim assist than the game gives you. I was at a camp and cleaned up pretty well then got over confident and went for a head shot, dude turned last second and arrow barely missed him. Had to switch up my entire method of taking everyone out because I screwed up on a shot I thought would be super easy. Feels like taking out large groups here is slightly more difficult than something like FarCry.

He's watching videos of the game and feeling a certain way about it but like most things unless you try it you really don't know. This game feels really good man. I'm almost burnt on open world games because a lot of the times they feel so empty. They made a really great one here.

it seems like the best part of the game (in fact the best part of many games like this) is when you're figuring the systems and how far you can push your character in combat situations

I recorded these for a friend who's finding the combat undecipherable for whatever reason and can't handle even light enemies. Neither of these are master level play (in fact I came across a third of these right before I shut the game down and had a way more fluid fight thanks to the mistakes I learned from in the second video).

I tried to Do a Cool Thing© at the start of the fight proper, but this is just showing how analyzing the set for the encounter can go a long way towards making a difficult fight easy.

https://twitter.com/Nodima/status/837537339157045251

In this second clip, I feel silly for ignoring its weak points so much and drawing the battle out, but I came across a really strong strategy for finishing these things off near the end of the video when I stun it a second time (I also discovered you can quick-fire the bow near the end of this video):

https://twitter.com/Nodima/status/837543066001035264

And yea, it felt real cool killing that thing that way at the end.

Another thing I love about the creatures in this game is how they respond to getting picked apart; you don't get to see it in these videos, but if you blow up that machine's blast furnace and then pick off its two top components, it wobbles around and comes off really disoriented; also fun to do to a bunch of Grazers in the Nora hunting ground by popping off three of their blaze tanks and then letting them try to get their bearings straight.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

the way you and paps (and others) are recounting the encounters makes it seem like the overall arc of combat, i.e. spotting the enemy, coming up with a plan of attack, executing, improvising, etc. is very engaging even if the individual components of the combat (controls, movement, shooting, a.i., customization) aren't particularly noteworthy or groundbreaking

i do want to play this game, if only for the spectacle. just not now

Kinda like how if you saw a quick look of Fallout's combat (or original Mass Effect) you'd probably be like "this game looks like trash".

It seems way more of an action-RPG than anything with the crafting, dialogue trees, leveling, etc. I'm only a few hours in but I'm enjoying it a lot.

no one particular thing you can point to as amazing (maybe the graphics) but overall everything gels together for a pleasant experience

I'm assuming the majority of the enemies aren't going to be humans since it appears the customization of the weaponry appears to be stressed more than hand-to-hand combat. Given how polished the game is overall, the terrible combat system does stand out though.

Some sort of lock on system would help a ton with the combat though. It's very early on, but I just manage to run and swing wildly at human enemies to take them out.

My wife has stopped what she's doing to watch me play twice in two days. I'm a periodic gamer at best, but I can't imagine there's ever been a game that has looked thus good, I've never played anything close to it.

It's amazing. If you have a PS4 get this game.

I don't know how close I am to the end, but I'm currently at level 32 or 33 and I beat all the cauldron levels recently. Pretty cool to have the ability to possess all the machines in the game, although it isn't always easy to sneak up on them to do so. I hope this game gets a proper sequel and/or prequel so I can see the game improve on the weaknesses I see within the game.

Part of me wants to end this game sometime soon so I can take Nier: Automatica out of its plastic wrapping, while another part of me wants to savor this game for as long as possible.

Sales have already exceeded 2.6m, with the developer stating "This is only the beginning of Aloy’s story and our exploration of the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, with the team already hard at work on an expansion to the story.”

Read more at http://gematsu.com/2017/03/horizon-zero-dawn-worldwide-sales-top-2-6-million#B8esuBBz8PTb3hDk.99

Might mean typical DLC, or something more like the side-story Naughty Dog is releasing for Uncharted 4.

>Sales have already exceeded 2.6m, with the developer stating
>"This is only the beginning of Aloy’s story and our
>exploration of the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, with the team
>already hard at work on an expansion to the story.”
>
>Read more at
>http://gematsu.com/2017/03/horizon-zero-dawn-worldwide-sales-top-2-6-million#B8esuBBz8PTb3hDk.99
>
>Might mean typical DLC, or something more like the side-story
>Naughty Dog is releasing for Uncharted 4.


Thank you for that info. Good to hear this game is selling like hot cakes; I'm hoping that means a proper sequel and/or prequel will be in the works, in addition to that possible DLC action you're referring to in that link.

I will say that during one of the harder fights in the game, the machine fell through the floor it was standing on and moved about under the ground. It was reminiscent of the old school Grand Theft Auto 3 glitches. Fortunately, I was able to beat the machine despite that glitch and didn't have to start the fight over.

That's great to hear because it seems like a very large world with all kinds of tribes and communities to interact with.

Sometimes games like this start off great, improve a bit more in the middle, then flat out fail at the end. Horizon ended in a way that couldn't have made me happier.

The lore behind this world they now live in only got better towards the end, it was paced perfectly.

This was definitely a good game and I really hope they expand this universe more.

Fortunately, I had that locked away shield outfit, which made the last boss battle fairly easy. I wish the last machine was a completely new one to make the fight a bit more special, but I was glad in a sense the fight wasn't too hard. I'm almost sad the game came to an end because I don't have much else to do in the game that is of much significance.

Suppose I will finally get cracking on Neir: Automata.

Still like it, about halfway done


>Nier: Automatica

Let us know how this is when you start playing this. I liked that demo.

Horizon seems like a dope open world game, but Zelda is like...genre redefining perfection and might be my favorite game of all time depending on how it wraps up.

I really wish they didn't come out so close to each other.

based on gameplay I've seen on twitch; Zelda looks like it's nearly perfect, while you can see some of the seams in Horizon's stitching. The combat system is terribly flawed and I had an enemy fall through the floor on me mid-battle.

The fact weapons can break in Zelda would probably frustrate me to no end, but I'm sure there are other positive aspects to the game that make up for that flaw.

I'm so behind on games. I haven't opened it yet to play but maybe tonight.

probably going to play the last level again this weekend. it was still hard enough with the super duper secret armor, so I can't wait to try it with normal armor.

I'm counting down the days til DLC and praying for a sequel announcement soon.

There's a lot to this - I still have one more cauldron to find and the armor to get, plus about half a dozen side quests to complete.

Really liked this game

I wish there was more to do because I don't want to stop playing yet.

but I would've platinum'd otherwise.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I completed a couple but the one that stands out in my mind is running Grazers down (which, btw, good on this game for creating dope enough enemy types I can still remember their names two+ months after setting the game down) with those bundles of logs set up over pathways.

I even remember at one point I noticed that those bundles are set up around several different battle areas and thought, "oh, they really wanted me to think about this. Weird."

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

From the bunker. It makes strong enemies a little easier because the armor has a regenerating shield.

And end up just kind of taking more hits than I need to.

Oh, just finished my second full play through too.

and it was the final one you would've found, I think, in the ruins where you learn all the background info on Sylens.


I've heard they patched the armor (they have done a LOT of post-release patching for this game) so it is 40% less durable, which makes sense to me because I literally felt invincible when I finally got the suit and played around with it. I wound up kind of glad I didn't have that armor before the final sequence of fights because I think it would have trivialized everything.


One underrated aspect of Horizon, I think, is how gradual and dope the scale of power is. I was TERRIFIED of the most basic enemies in the game for the first several hours, but as I started figuring out strategies and patterns and getting more weapons and devising more tactics, it's awesome how the combat opens up. First game I've completed on Hard difficulty in yeeeears because it just felt so balanced and right on that difficulty.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

....been putting off starting it though...i know i'm gonna get hooked

You will get hooked.

....i dont know if i've got the right armor or weapons, but i keep buying the purples whenever i have enough shards

The trailer implies Aloy is seeking another mountain base. I hope she's after another one of Gaia's subordinate systems. Either way, we get to learn more about the Banuk.

They have the coolest headgear. DLC is dropping this year too. Can't wait.

At $15, I'm leary it'll be very short, but hopefully it'll have new content, so I guess I shouldn't be too upset.

Am I asking too much if this DLC will carry over materials in the New Game + fashion? I'm very attached to that shield outfit in the game.

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2017/07/06/horizon-zero-dawn-patch-1-30-adds-new-game-face-paint-options-ultra-hard-difficulty-more/

Been thinking about how exceptional the combat is in this game and I wanted to dive back in before the DLC dropped. This is the perfect excuse.

last night to unlock the New Game+ feature and boy oh boy am I rusty as hell. The hand/eye coordination I had with the bow and arrow was completely lost when I beat the game against last night; I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have a prayer if I didn't have that shield suit unlocked.

You just had to load the save and create a New Game+ loadout from the start menu. That shit had me confused at first too.

I made the difficulty jump from normal to ultra hard, and I feel you on being rusty. haha

Stealth is mando for now. I'm not even ready to really go head up with watchers. They're super aggressive and don't die from single eye shots in this mode.

>You just had to load the save and create a New Game+ loadout
>from the start menu. That shit had me confused at first too.
>
>I made the difficulty jump from normal to ultra hard, and I
>feel you on being rusty. haha
>
>Stealth is mando for now. I'm not even ready to really go head
>up with watchers. They're super aggressive and don't die from
>single eye shots in this mode.


That sounds so difficult that it's actually pretty funny. I can only imagine how hard those cauldron levels are on that difficulty level, even with that shield outfit.

where the dinosaurs fight the humans and both will try to fuck you up. I thought to myself, "I wonder if I can make this real cinematic and just sprint through it?"

sure enough, it worked. got my ass beat pretty bad though and barely made it, haha.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Camera is a bit bothersome at close range, but that's par for the course with these games I think. It is quite satisfying taking down Thunderjaws with well placed shots, or tearing through robots with a Ravager cannon. Those birds can eat a dick though

I like how they have Aloy get hype when she brings down a big machine. Makes me want to put another 30 minutes in the game instead of getting some sleep...

Checked this morning before I headed to work. Sure enough, the new map area was ready to roll. Will jump into it tonight, then start a New Game + once I finish. Seriously impressed by this game as a whole

As soon as I finish ACO, I'm going to dive back into Horizon and soak in the expansion.

Running up over a few hills chasing a goat for its skin and not paying attention to the may I ran smack into a daemonic Thunderjaw. Almost like fighting Redmaw in the snow

This game is still freaking epic. More of the same is a good thing in this instance

I'm over Destiny, Mario is hard, and I don't feel like going back to Persona 5 so this has gotten most of my play time in the past few weeks. I really dig the combat and the main story is pretty interesting as well.

It's probably gonna end up as #2 on my GOTY list behind Zelda.

The story goes some interesting places.

Great extension of the main story.

the new machines are hard ASF.

I got to a point in the main story where it seemed like you were at the end of the game so I went and did the Frozen Wilds before finishing that part.

It was definitely a nice challenge. I got some armor towards the end of the game that really would have come in handy in FW, so I kinda wish I'd waited...at the same time, the weapons you get up there are pretty good.

Not quite as good as the shield weaver, but does regen over time, which helps a lot

Will probably start a new game + on this one, which I rarely do.

got the shield weaver armor and I realized that playing this game with that armor while on ultra hard difficulty feels like a totally different game vs a regular armor on easy mode. So I think I'm going to start a new game with this loadout on ultra hard.

The story is incredible, really well thought out. I love how you would work on missions and find out a a big chunk of the mystery but without some details, but you would later get details filled in through the data recordings and holograms. There were so many hints and foreshadowing of the what you would discover later.

I also just found a couple of the vantage point locations which let you see a glimpse of what the Earth was like back in our time - awesome how you see that so much of the game is set in Colorado and adds another layer to the experience when seeing ruins of real world buildings.

Mad late starting this shit, but first impressions is that the script and voice acting are horrible, haha.

This game is pretty great. Halfway through the Frozen Wilds.

https://kotaku.com/sources-horizon-zero-dawn-is-coming-to-pc-1841043569

i did end up playing this a little bit on base ps4 and while i didn't like the gameplay i thought it was one of the best looking games i'd ever played. PC version will likely look so good folks won't know how to handle it

with death stranding's PC port looming that's two formerly ps4-exclusive sony interactive entertainment-published games coming to PC. bloodborne PC port next? 🤞

>bloodborne PC port next? 🤞

I can't really get into Dark Souls but Bloodborne has always interested me...I know it's roughly the same, but the latter just appeals to me more

I think there's still two camps of console vs PC gamers that will always be at odds. If Sony releases exclusives on PS4, PS5+, there's a huge audience that will buy it and never worry about the PC. On the flip, there are scores of PC master race people that will never buy a console, but will get a console port if only to show how much better it looks on their PC. It's pretty low risk for Sony if they release their game their hardware first exclusively, then go to PC, as the overlap of people that have both and play on both aren't as big as some may think.

The whole console wars thing isn't the same as the Sega/Nintendo thing, for better or worse

mircosoft VP of gaming phil spencer is big on this, which is why "xbox exclusivity" essentially means PC and xbox one these days. i'm buying death stranding and HZD on PC, mostly to vote with my wallet and hoping more sony-exclusive games will eventually come to PC. this strategy worked when i bravely purchased awful PC ports of console JPRGs in the late 00s and early 10s. when i was buying them you couldn't find JRPGs on steam. now you can't make it past the front page without seeing them

>I think there's still two camps of console vs PC gamers that
>will always be at odds. If Sony releases exclusives on PS4,
>PS5+, there's a huge audience that will buy it and never worry
>about the PC. On the flip, there are scores of PC master race
>people that will never buy a console, but will get a console
>port if only to show how much better it looks on their PC.
>It's pretty low risk for Sony if they release their game their
>hardware first exclusively, then go to PC, as the overlap of
>people that have both and play on both aren't as big as some
>may think.
>
>The whole console wars thing isn't the same as the
>Sega/Nintendo thing, for better or worse

More 'console-exclusive' not 'platform-exclusive'. Xbox and Switch may never get a port, but PC? Sure. Really, it's always kind of been this way, but I suppose it's more defined now? Whatever..


Tangentially related, I just finished a NG+ run of H:ZD. Man this game is still pretty epic. They could put out a sequel like Tomb Raider and it would still be fire.