LogFAQs > #892668215

TOP 10 GAMES OF THE YEAR

10. Horizon: Zero Dawn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Xx3MdqdgM

Rounding out the bottom of the list was a game that almost didn't make it in :O

Horizon is the first open world game by Killzone developer Guerrilla Games. For a first attempt it's actually pretty good, but it fails in some key areas for me that prevented me from enjoying it as much as I had hoped. The game's strengths are definitely its visuals and the combat. This is first game I've played that really made me feel like my purchase of a PS4 Pro and a 4KTV was worth it. The HDR settings make the world beautiful to look at and sometimes I felt like I was getting sucked into the TV just gazing at it. Unfortunately it's hard to describe if you haven't experienced 4K and HDR for yourself because it's not really something describe the differences from HD other than "oh it's sharper!" "oh you can see a larger range of whites and blacks!" You don't really get the effect without seeing it for yourself.

The combat on reminds me of a cross between 3D Zelda and Monster Hunter. You gather resources from the environment and defeated enemies to craft everything in your inventory. Weapons, armor, ammo, potions, traps, etc you name it you can make it. It also features the easiest crafting system ever. You just open your weapon wheel by holding a shoulder button and select the weapon you want craft ammo for and just hold the X button and you'll quickly craft all the ammo you need. It's fast enough that it keeps you in the action no matter what you're doing. Speaking of what you're doing in the action you're hunting giant robotic animals and dinosaurs. You can sneak around the environment and try to take out your enemies without them noticing or you can just assault them with elemental traps to try to incapacitate them. Each monster has various strengths and weakness so you need to scan them and attack them with the appropriate weapon and aim for the body part that it is weak to (for example an enemy might have a flammable tank on their back and you can shoot a fire arrow at it to blow it up and damage them if not outright kill them). The enemies just seem to get bigger and bigger as the game goes on and it feels good to take them down. There's also like 5 or 6 difficulty levels so you can adjust the game to your skill level if you're finding it too easy or too hard.

Now the parts that didn't thrill me too much was the story and exploration. I'm usually down for a post-apocalyptic setting where robots have taken over, but when it reduces humanity to cave people who have lost all understanding of technology which just annoys me. The main protagonist, Aloy, seems to be the only person in the entire world with the brains to understand what's going on while everyone else is helpless and she's just takes it upon herself to solve everyone's problems because they're too busy worshipping lost technology as gods when she should be focusing on her revenge for the people who murdered her foster father. It doesn't help when the voice acting for most of these NPCs is pretty bad, but at least Aloy makes up for it with her sarcastic responses to everyone.

The other issue I had was the map. It's not truly open world, it definitely leads you in a direction with impassable mountains on either side of you. The game even put up invisible walls on me once because I wanted to explore instead of continue the story and it was like "nah, son". The other issue is a lot of the areas just end up looking the same and don't really motivate me to check every nook and cranny. It ends up just being me walking to waypoint to waypoint on the map, checking out just that area and moving on, etc. In open world games I really want unique looking locations that hides secrets in every little area. The biggest rewards you get in this game are loot boxes with more money and resources and that's about it.
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