Recently I have been playing Horizon Forbidden West on Steam, and I am really struggling to enjoy it! For those not in the know; Horizon Forbidden West is an action role-playing-game developed by Guerrilla Games, and originally released for the PlayStation 4 and 5. In recent years, Sony Interactive Entertainment has started to re-release some of their library onto PC through Steam. Some of these games include The Last of U Part I, God of War, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Horizon Zero Dawn.
Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to Zero Dawn, and it’s a game set in a post-apocalyptic future, where tribes of hummanity live in an awkward existence, with a race of mechanical creatures called Machines.
Now, I currently don’t have a PlayStation console, and so my experience with the Horizon series comes through the game’s being re-released through Steam. I played the first game a couple of years ago, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the world it was set in, the story was packed full of mysteries to unravel, and the many game mechanics felt like an evolution of those mechanics, which didn’t just copy those same elements from other popular releases, but evolved them into thier next step. So when Forbidden West’s PC release was announced, I was dead excited, even giving my PC a RAM boost to assist. And my first experience with the game…was good!
The opening area of the game felt like I was rejoining the world. Sure, some of the side quests were long and overwinded, but it felt like I was back in that world, and immersing myself back in that experience. And then, the rest of the world was unlocked. Now I am not saying that it’s a complete waste of time, nor is there no joy to be found, but it feels less like a game from this point on, and more a commitment.
Firstly, the graphics are ok, but in the light of the dawn, they play havoc on the eyes. Some light is just too orange, and when you turn the camera around, you see Aloy in this horrific dark, black and white like vision, like you’ve entered the dark underworld of a apocalyptic parallel universe. And this ligthing can cause problems when trying to locate places where Aloy can climb up walls.
The game is needlessly difficult in easy mode, and where it’s at it’s most unfair is in it’s close combat, which mostly involves being knocked down constantly, and taking forever to get back up, only to be knocked down again. I had to put it in Story mode difficulty just to reduce the stressful levels the combat was at.
The locations are far too repetitive. The major settlement locations are always on changing levels of the land, so can be hard to find certain shop keeps. And the side missions are far too long. They take up as much time as the main story missions. They’re side missions! They should be doable in a fraction of that time.
The map is too big! I understand that the game wants to be set and explore a much larger world than the previous game, but in this instance, everything is just too far away. It’s like playing We Happy Few all over again, with missions set over 1000km away, and taking forever to get to them. Yes, I suppose I can shorten the amount of time in travel by riding a machine, but finding ridable machines is easier said than done. Why can’t I canabilize a machine and make a car?
And then the story, has just too many villains in it. So you don’t know who the ‘big bad’ is, and their stories are so dispersed that it feels like complete randomness whose story is the main one, and who is going to show up in the next major cutscene!
There’s other stuff I’m probably forgetting, but those are the main issues for me. I do like this world, I like these ideas, but this game seems to have gone backward rather than act as a true sequel to Zero Dawn. All the mystery has gone, and instead it just feels like it’s trying so hard to sarcastically point out how obvious everything is. And as a result, I find the whole thing rather stressful. It’s a game, I’m supposed to be enjoying it, but I get in an angry tizz virtually every few minutes.
So, with 40+ hours in the bag (virtually the same amount of ime it took me to play the first one), I feel like I am barely half-way through this game. So, instead of continually being stressed out by it…I’m going to take a break from it.
Take a break, play something else, hopefully more enjoyable (perhaps Zero Dawn again, and remember what a Good Horizon game is supposed to be), and return to this one in the future. I don’t know when, could be a few weeks, maybe a month, or year. Just time to remember how to enjoy playing games, before giving this one another go.
OK, Rant Over…for now!
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