Horizon: Zero Dawn

One tiny little touch on the graphics that I noticed was when I used the elevator in Meridian for the first time. I went in and pulled the switch to go down. There was that split second hesitation and then the little jar as it started down and you noticed your clothes and hair suspend a sec and then fall as you start to go down. I thought that was kinda cool.

I think it is clear that the talent they had was completely wasted on Killzone...

Jive Turkey said:

I was a bit worried about this game because Guerrilla Games never seemed to figure out the Killzone series. They had some cool ideas that were implemented poorly and the game was never really that fun. And the storyline and voice acting were cheesy as fuck. Is there any of that residue on this game?

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I bought Killzone with my launch PS4 and I'd rank that as the worst PS4 game I've played to date, I absolutely detested everything about it especially that one fucking flying level that came out of fucking nowhere.

I am really enjoying HZD so far with ~20 hours in, it has some minor flaws and some parts are a bit repetitive but I'd put it at a slight notch below Uncharted right now. Mechanically its a very fun game, story is great in the small dribbles I have seen so far, and the open world is absolutely fantastic. All the things I really hated about Killzone are not here.

Everything is fully voiced here and in English which is one of the things I like it better than Far Cry Primal, that tribal language shit grated on my nerves after a while.

Utnayan said:

I am about 20 hours in and almost level 27 or so. All I have to say is I looked to see how many story missions I have left because I do not want it to end... I have about 7 left. And every time some of the mystery is unraveled, another mystery takes it's place and I cannot wait to see what happens next. Yesterday I spent an hour or two chasing down some Wild Flowers and Ancient relics. I upgraded to a hunter Shadow Bow, the best Sling money can buy (The damage output is freaking nuts). I need to upgrade to a shadow sharpshooter bow still (Using the blue one) and upgrade the tripcaster to a Shadow as well, but I am finding I very rarely use the tripcaster for now.

I have started fighting some VERY big machines, and that shadow hunter bow with Hard point arrows is absolutely awesome. I also got my first power cell for that mystery armor you uncover as a level 25 quest very early on in the game. So I am fired up to get that.

Before I continue on in the main story I am going to finish up all the errands and side quests I have.

I booted up Zelda and am fired up to play that too, but quit just after marking the three ruins with the old man, and came back to this. It never gets old this game. And I am STILL reading every text document I find. Which I never do, just because I want to continue to find out what happened.

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I'm level 18, and just finished the 1st Cauldron quest line.. I just never did it earlier for whatever reason. I feel like I'm finding new quests and events everywhere. Very happy with the whole experience so far.

spronk said:

By contrast Nioh, Nier, RE7, Yakuza 0, and HZD have all been fantastic and better than most people expected.

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I hear Nioh is extremely good as well..

The game reminds me of Prey a lot.. Native American + Tech.. Prey was a great FPS, and I'm loving this one too..

Crone said:

So anyone able to help me out and make some comparisons to Uncharted and FFXV?

With Uncharted, just kinda burned out. The story wasn't all that exciting to me, and the bullet play was meh, so I got half way through #2 and quit.

FFXV I thought I'd like a lot more because of working with a team. But again, I could care less for the story, and the combat was either balls hard, or balls easy hold 1 button. I never felt a good in between.

Anyone else make some comparisons?

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Got to play a little more this weekend once my friend left, I just finished up the Maker's End quest, that was pretty epic with all the discovery about background history.

As for comparisons to other games, I would compare it most to Skyrim, the reason being the game is mostly played as a stealthy archer, which is kind of how I played Skyrim in my initial playthrough. I would say 90% of the time you are killing things with your bow, especially the robot-dinos, with the occasional traps being set for harder mobs. Melee when they get too close. Humans are a combo of stealth bow and stealth melee kills. Graphically the game is better than Skyrim, but you would expect that for a newer game. Skyrim is more immersive though in the sense that there is a lot more reason in that game to talk to people and they change more dynamically based on what you do. In Horizon, really the only people you talk to are quest-givers and merchants. The random NPC you walk rarely say anything of import. It's wierd in Horizon going into a large city like Meridian and not really engaging with the population like you do in Skyrim or even Fallout. The NPCs are there just more as filler to make the city look "alive", but it's not as well done as in those other games.

The storyline in this game is superior to FFXV, but it does have some annoying similarities, mainly the "collection" quests where you have to try and find an item in a given area....kinda like those stupid frogs in FFXV. I loved the Uncharted series, I felt really vested in Nathan Drake and thought he was a great character, so I am biased in that sense, but this game does not play anything like the Uncharted series, since that has much more to do with guns and parkouring, while in this game it's bows and climbing/parkouring is just an exercise in frustration.

Really the strengths of this game are the incredible graphics, interesting storyline, really fun combat system (there are really a ton of different iterations to kill stuff once you get all the weapon classes), and fluid quest system (very easy to mark new quests, innovative dynamic questing where you can just highlight items/resources you need and it will show you where to get them). Things that are just "meh" are the skill upgrades (done better in games like Skyrim) and NPC interactions. Things that are done worse imo are climbing/parkouring (superior in UC series and TLOU) and collection/vantage point quests.

spronk said:

i tried save scumming with purple vendor treasure chests and it doesn't work, it seems to "lock" each chest to an item until you at least completely exit the game. Save, buy chest, unpack it, be disappoint, reload, buy chest, same item, try reload/buy 5x time all the same item.

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That only sort of happens for me with the collection boxes. I've got all 12 coffee mugs right now and I'm turning them in. Buying 1, 2, or 3 boxes at a time has different results, but each one is the same when I reload. I ended up selling 2 sets for boxes that contained two good purple mods, and kept the third set for later in the hope that it will reset because right now it has no purple mod at all.

If I just buy the 1350 shard box from any old vendor, it changes every time I load my save. Got electric and fire weapon mods which I needed, then a corruption armor mod which I didn't want. Reloaded the save and got a damage mod for weapon instead.

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Re: hunter trials... I was wrong, they are all super easy now with the items and skills I have. Even the log one was simple.

Finished this last night amazing story all the way till the end, and the massive data dump you get after a certain point fills in so much of the back story.

The only hunting trial that gave me any problems was the Glinthawk critical hits(came back later after upgrading my ropecaster), even had a lot of fun with the Thunderjaw trials(wish there was more of them.)

Just a heads up but if you missed the power core in the quest Womb of the Mountain and you go back for it later, you have to wait till it is night for the gate to open.