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What are your thoughts on the Horizon series?

Horizon Zero Dawn: Arguably best gaming plot i've ever witnessed. Great sense of mystery as you slowly unravel truths throughout the game. Great plot twist. The gameplay is incredibly fun and in depth both combat wise and crafting. Lore is very deep and intriguing. Graphics look stunning for a PS4 game. The world feels alive and very beautiful.

Horizon Forbidden West: Plot is decent but very lackluster compared to ZD. I don't like how half of the main plot just feels like side quests unlike the more focused narrative of ZD. The actual conflicts in the forbidden west between the different tribes should have played a more prominent role. Gameplay feels like a step backwards with some of the changes they made. Machines feel overly spongey. Heavy attacks feel weightless now and you have to hold charge to get knockdowns. The "super modes" do more harm than good, I don't like that it slows the pace of the gameplay down and it doesn't feel fitting for this type of game. You also have to change them in the main menu which gets tedious. I didn't like the new weapons, besides maybe the elemental boltblaster. I didn't really like the changes to crafting either that made it more restrictive. Graphics hardly look different(this game should have been PS5 exclusive). I do like how you get the option to play in 60fps though.

I feel like ZD just went way too hard for a first entry and as a result the sequel couldn't really do anything to improve on it as a result.
 
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HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
As much as I enjoyed Zero Dawn I have to admit FW just didn't do it for me and honestly struggled to get through it and can't explain why I felt this way

Maybe with how much Zero Dawn surprised me on the PS4 I went in thinking I was just going to be blown away by FW and just wasn't
 
As much as I enjoyed Zero Dawn I have to admit FW just didn't do it for me and honestly struggled to get through it and can't explain why I felt this way

Maybe with how much Zero Dawn surprised me on the PS4 I went in thinking I was just going to be blown away by FW and just wasn't
Same. FW just feels so underwhelming across the board it isn't easy to put into words.

If it was exclusively next gen it could have blown us away like we were expecting it to.
 
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CyberChulo

Member
I enjoyed the first one. Started to enjoy the second one but the twists and turns toward the end of the story were a letdown for me. That final twist of who the real enemies were made me not want to play the sequel. But I probably will because of the graphics.
 
Great world, great concept, great combat. Held back by overly done game design philosophy. I'm just tired of the ubisoft style game design....I skipped FW because I just can't anymore. Open world games with that design philosophy just isn't for me regardless of how good the story is. I'll just watch recaps cause playing is a slog.
 

Gudji

Member
One of the best new IPs from the PS4 generation and one that I hope continues to be present for a long time since there's plenty to explore.
HZD was great but had a lot of things that could be improved and GG did exactly that with HFW, it is a better game in every way.
Some might like the story from the first game better but that's mostly due to the discovery of what happened to the world, they're different types of stories but the presentation and everything else on HFW is better.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
Same. FW just feels so underwhelming across the board it isn't easy to put into words.

If it was exclusively next gen it could have blown us away like we were expecting it to.
I hate to use this term because I see it used a lot for Sony games by Xbox warriors but honestly it felt like tacked on DLC

I can't really nail down why it just didn't click with me this time
 
Wasn't a big fan of the first game, but loved Forbidden West.

The lore and story is very sophisticated when compared to other modern games, and I think it puts a lot of people off but it is something I liked about the series.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
I bought the first game on Steam and dropped off after 4 hours. That's par for the course with Guerilla Games though. Boy, they sure look great but the gameplay never hooks me.

I'm planning to circle back before the end of the year and give it a proper shot.
 

Arachnid

Member
It's the most boring game I played of the PS4/XBO gen.

I personally thought the plot of the first was the most predictable and derivative I've ever come across in a game. The dialogue was also incredibly stupid, which made all the quests and side quests feel boring to take on. The dialogue is what killed the game for me more than anything. Every character felt flat out retarded and only served to try to make Aloy come off as smarter/more witty with her lame comebacks. She just ended up a super unlikable character. It felt like the devs were patting me on the head and telling me what a smart boy I am.

Gameplay wise, Aloy is floaty/imprecise, with your typical bow stealth gameplay. Combat against humans is boring, and the melee felt awful. The map is littered with collectables and points of interest, not to mention towers you climb to reveal the map and copy-pasted enemy camps you clear out. Exploration in general felt boring and pointless. Some of the most ubisoft tier trash I've ever seen.

The combat against the robots was the only okay part. I liked different weaknesses and different points of weakness. Unfortunately, Aloys detective mode that made their weak spots glow kind of took away any tactics since all you had to do was press a button to see where to damage them and just spam arrows. This had potential, but squandered it. Sucks, since machine combat is the point of the game.

I forced myself to play through the game to the end. I actually really wanted to like it since I've been a hyper fan of the woman that voices Aloy since puberty. It just didn't deliver.

tl;dr: Derivative/predictable story, stupid dialogue, terrible combat, boring exploration, unlikable characters, ubisoft gameplay, no heart.

tommib tommib hit this shit

YP3mnXN.jpg
 
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Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I wasn't that big on the 1st game but Horizon Forbidden West blew me away with it's visuals, gameplay and story

I love how they added underwater exploring and the flying mount too. Fantastic game!
 
Isn't it just more of the same though? What makes it worse then zero dawn?
- Story is mediocre compared to the first game. Most of it is just side quest caliber material and it doesn't do as good of a job at unravelling the huge mystery plot twists as the first game.

- Gameplay feels weaker. Heavy attacks feel too weak, enemies feel spongey, you run out of ammo too easily. There's a lot of unneccessary weapons. It's hard to explain fully.
 
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Well first off. I definitely gotta thank Sony for giving Zero Dawn away for free. Without that, I would have never even played the game, initially it just didn't seem all that appealing to me. With that said, I enjoyed the first game. So I ended up buying the second game Forbidden West, and I like it even more. Its my game of the year. Such an incredibly beautiful game. And honestly, Sony should think about using that strategy in the future with other games. (Make the original game free to boost the sales of the sequel).
 
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-Zelda-

Banned
I remember that really long trailer for the game that was years ago before the covid times, thinking that it looked amazing. I started playing it after pre ordering from amazon only to little by little start not liking it. Aside from the amazing lighting and the enemy designs, the story and open world started to annoy me. I completed the game, but I am not going back to it or playing the sequel.
 
- Story is mediocre compared to the first game. Most of it is just side quest caliber material and it doesn't do as good of a job at unravelling the huge mystery plot twists as the first game.

- Gameplay feels weaker. Heavy attacks feel too weak, enemies feel spongey, you run out of ammo too easily. There's a lot of unneccessary weapons. It's hard to explain fully.

Guess I'll see for myself. Gonna play it after ragnarok.
 

Gudji

Member
It's the most boring game I played of the PS4/XBO gen.

I personally thought the plot of the first was the most predictable and derivative I've ever come across in a game. The dialogue was also incredibly stupid, which made all the quests and side quests feel boring to take on. The dialogue is what killed the game for me more than anything. Every character felt flat out retarded and only served to try to make Aloy come off as smarter/more witty with her lame comebacks. She just ended up a super unlikable character. It felt like the devs were patting me on the head and telling me what a smart boy I am.

Gameplay wise, Aloy is floaty/imprecise, with your typical bow stealth gameplay. Combat against humans is boring, and the melee felt awful. The map is littered with collectables and points of interest, not to mention towers you climb to reveal the map and copy-pasted enemy camps you clear out. Exploration in general felt boring and pointless. Some of the most ubisoft tier trash I've ever seen.

The combat against the robots was the only okay part. I liked different weaknesses and different points of weakness. Unfortunately, Aloys detective mode that made their weak spots glow kind of took away any tactics since all you had to do was press a button to see where to damage them and just spam arrows. This had potential, but squandered it. Sucks, since machine combat is the point of the game.

I forced myself to play through the game to the end. I actually really wanted to like it since I've been a hyper fan of the woman that voices Aloy since puberty. It just didn't deliver.
The most boring game of the generation? Everything you wrote after has no meaning then.
 
I was pleasantly surprised with the first one. No doubt it looks great, and has pretty solid gameplay. Story is interesting, and I actually didn't have any issues with Aloy's character. I just kind of slowly kept losing steam picking up sticks and fiddling with the RPG / crafting / menus, which don't add much to the game. Too much padding.

Haven't tried the second one, but it looks great. Will get it on a deep sale, if ever.

As for the series as a whole, feeling a little over-exposed at the moment (VR game, part 2 DLC coming, TV show, MMO). The series will probably keep growing in popularity, but I think I'll be skipping most of it.
 

scydrex

Member
HZFW is to me is better than the first one except the story... the pacing is bad and too long. It feels more than assassin creed than HZD with all that side content and optional stuff. To much weapons and armor. Making it cross gen also didn't help. Aloy talk too much my god i was tired of it. Now the combat compared to GOW:R is not good they have to improve it.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
Tried playing the first one, and got over it pretty quickly. Nothing really "grabbed" me at all, while visuals and stuff were nice, I felt like I had already experienced other games that played similarly and did it better IMO. Didn't really care for the IP after that.
 
I hate to use this term because I see it used a lot for Sony games by Xbox warriors but honestly it felt like tacked on DLC

I can't really nail down why it just didn't click with me this time

Yeah you could say that. It didn't feel like an improvement, it didn't really up the scale or anything and most of the changes felt like a step back.
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
Like what then?
Just because I have this fresh in my memory and I was so baffled at how bad Rings of Powa is.

You could watch Arcane and Vilolet Evergarden.

These two shows exemplify a masterclass in storytelling. Strong women protagonists (well made without bullshit)

Also, they show how to develop a character that could come across as unlikeable.

One of the main issues with Horizon is how dumb the writing/characterization is.

Aside from the outdated game design.
 
Not a fan or Horizon at all. Tried playing it 4 times and just can't get into it.
I remember starting it in 2017, got bored after like 10-15 hours of mostly just fucking around in the open world. Started a new game in 2019 and played all throughout, much more enjoyable the second time around.
 
Just because I have this fresh in my memory and I was so baffled at how bad Rings of Powa is.

You could watch Arcane and Vilolet Evergarden.

These two shows exemplify a masterclass in storytelling. Strong women protagonists (well made without bullshit)

Also, they show how to develop a character that could come across as unlikeable.

One of the main issues with Horizon is how dumb the writing/characterization is.

Aside from the outdated game design.
I'm not talking about TV shows. TV shows and movies have a much higher standard for writing quality than games do.
 

GametimeUK

Member
I remember really enjoying it at the time, but looking back it's rather average. The whole concept just doesn't really do it for me. The gameplay was quite fun, but yeah I never need to play an entry in the series again.

So yeah it's good, but just a bit meh.
 

nowhat

Member
I think on a technical level HFW blows HZD out of the water in pretty much every aspect. Yes, it was rough at launch especially with the performance mode on PS5 (I can't help but to feel the release was pushed out too early, even if the game was delayed), but in it's current state it's pretty much flawless as far as I'm concerned. I like the new weapons, also the economy (while not flawless) is more interesting, gives more incentive for the player to engage in combat in different ways if you want to upgrade your gear all the way (or turn on auto-loot settings if you're so inclined). The side content is miles better than before.

...but, the main story just isn't as good. And it resolves pretty much everything left open from the first game, so it ends on a complete cliffhanger. Which is not great. I'll play the third game for sure (let's face it, there will be one), but I hope more emphasis will be put on the main story then. This time around, everything else was improved on except for that, quite crucial, bit.
 
I think on a technical level HFW blows HZD out of the water in pretty much every aspect. Yes, it was rough at launch especially with the performance mode on PS5 (I can't help but to feel the release was pushed out too early, even if the game was delayed), but in it's current state it's pretty much flawless as far as I'm concerned. I like the new weapons, also the economy (while not flawless) is more interesting, gives more incentive for the player to engage in combat in different ways if you want to upgrade your gear all the way (or turn on auto-loot settings if you're so inclined). The side content is miles better than before.

...but, the main story just isn't as good. And it resolves pretty much everything left open from the first game, so it ends on a complete cliffhanger. Which is not great. I'll play the third game for sure (let's face it, there will be one), but I hope more emphasis will be put on the main story then. This time around, everything else was improved on except for that, quite crucial, bit.
The only major difference I notice technical wise is 60fps and ray traced lighting during cutscenes.
 

nowhat

Member
The only major difference I notice technical wise is 60fps and ray traced lighting during cutscenes.
I don't think there's ray-traced lighting used anywhere, not a feature of Decima (in it's current incarnation at any rate), just the "hero lighting" which is present in cutscenes.

What I mean is the shimmering present in the performance mode:



That was fixed by Guerrilla sacrificing a (metric, as the studio is Dutch) fuckton of goats to the elder gods.

or using different source data for the image reconstruction, but I like my explanation better
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
I really thought the first one was a 10/10 game. Great story, interesting characters, well-told. Great world to explore. Amazing graphics. The combat was genuinely fun. I loved it. I thought it was a masterpiece and got shit on unnecessarily because of its proximity to BOTW.

The second game is a dud. It’s both more of the same and bloated. Really feels forced in a lot of ways. Aloy is a net negative in this game. The gameplay is more of the same. The only thing it really has going for it is graphics which IMO are the best out there. It’s a showcase game for the PS5 in a way that even Ragnarok isn’t.

With the VR game being the flagship, and the rumored MMO, and the rumored remake, I think Sony is trying to turn it into something it never was, which was a massive AAA franchise. To be fair, that was probably the plan all along, but HFW isn’t good enough to propel it.
 
I don't think there's ray-traced lighting used anywhere, not a feature of Decima (in it's current incarnation at any rate), just the "hero lighting" which is present in cutscenes.

What I mean is the shimmering present in the performance mode:



That was fixed by Guerrilla sacrificing a (metric, as the studio is Dutch) fuckton of goats to the elder gods.

or using different source data for the image reconstruction, but I like my explanation better

My bad, whatever it is the lighting looks very advanced compared to zero dawn.

Glad they fixed up the shimmering something about performance mode felt off visually during exploration.
 

analog_future

Resident Crybaby
Power to anyone who love the series, but I kind of loathe the games.

The voice acting is bad, the actual written dialogue is awful, the story is absurd, and the visuals remind me of a modern day version of Perfect Dark Zero or Kameo: Elements of Power, where the devs just threw everything and the kitchen sink at it so they could go "look at all these shiny effects!" despite all of those effects amounting to a really ugly looking game, artistically. It's just everything turned up to 110.

Would've probably been my dream game when I was 10 or 11 but now the whole thing just kind of gives me a headache.
 
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rofif

Banned
Mediocre games with great world and graphics.
1st one was quite ok but dragged towards the ending. Story was intriguing.
2nd one botched the story totally... and made gameplay way more annoying and a 2nd job. Constant pick ups and leveling of everything in your inventory. And on top of that - everyone is always talking... they never shut up. Exposition standing in 1 place 50% of the game. And most of the character are boring wokes

SO yeah... I like both games well enough. First one is 8 and 2nd one is 7... maybe
 
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