Horizon: Zero Dawn

The reception this game has gotten is absolutely puzzling. I wouldn't say it's terrible. It's just an uninspired grab bag of action-adventure elements taken from every popular game of the last 10 years.

Graphics are impressive but that color palette is downright boring. You're surrounded by various shades of red, green, and brown 90% of the time.

Stealth gameplay amounts to little more than crouching in some brush and catcalling an enemy as his friend remains oblivious just two feet away. In fact, it's the complete opposite of stealthy.

They spent zero time crafting an interesting, vibrant world. You can't go off the beaten path to explore something that piques your interest or get a sense of a village's history and people by rummaging through their homes. Everything is merely ornamental.

The side quests. These mundane collection tasks make up the bulk of the game. Why are we still doing this in 2017? If you completely ignore these, the game would be about 5 hours long. The main quests really aren't much different. Aside from watching major developments unfold via cut scenes, these quests all culminate in the same damn objectives.

Collectibles were added in the laziest way possible. Instead of incorporating them into the story or making their discovery thrilling in some way, the developers just decided to scatter them on the ground and make you run around in a circle until you spot the purple marker.

The climbing mechanics are beyond terrible. I can't tell you how many times I was unable to scale a chest-high wall because it didn't have yellow rope attached to it.

Yeah, I'm not really feeling most of your complaints.

1) The game has deserts, snowy mountain ranges, multiple types of forests, foggy bogs, futuristic mechanical dungeons, decrepit civilizations and buildings, ect. That doesn't count the varied character looks and styles and creatures. I don't know how you are seeing three colors for 90% of the game because it's simply not the case.

2) Stealth gameplay is what you make of it. I've taken out entire raider camps without ever being seen and never using grass once. I've done hit and run attacks where I'm fighting toe to toe and the next minute enemies are looking for me due to using a combination of gear and environment.

3) Why do you want to rummage through peoples homes? It's far and away one of my least favorite things to do in games. I actually enjoy finding bits and pieces of lore through my actual adventures instead of ransacking every house I come across for info. I'm glad they didn't take this from other games.

4) The side quests are surprisingly decent for this type of game and the main story and overall world lore is nothing short of amazing. The further you get in the game the better it gets.

5) The climbing isn't great, it's basically Uncharted lite and it's aggravating getting stuck on a jump or transitioning from water to land. This is the one complaint I agree with. Having said that the combination of extremely beautiful and vibrant world combined with excellent story and some of the best combat in the genre makes the climbing niggles something that I can live with.

Yeah, the climbing is the only part of that I'd agree with too. Not saying it needed to be like Zelda, but there should be vastly more places where climbing is possible.

I would bet Utnayan 's left nut that this is GotY.

Palum said:

I would bet Utnayan 's left nut that this is GotY.

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Red Dead Redemption 2 comes out this year.

I agree with Sneaky on a number of things. I think the stealth gameplay is super lame. Hiding in a bush as an invulnerability tactic is pretty tired; and being able to single-out mobs at will and take them down removes almost any challenge in going the stealth route. It is still enjoyable to a small extent but I'd hardly call it excellent gameplay. Comabt overall for me is only mediocre; but that might be because I'm coming directly from Nioh. I enjoy tactically destroying key points with my bow but, again, that's hardly a new concept or something that is implemented in a really unique way.

For me, however, like others, I do find the world naturally intriguing. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about just what the hell happened, what the corruption is, how everybody died and the rest of the details. So far I've found a few logs and such that have also been pretty engaging and cool - small stories within the greater apocalypse.

For me this is definitetly not GOTY (that award goes to Nioh so far) but I am enjoying the game a lot. I also found personally that the game was A LOT more engaging once I got past the first few boring tutorial-esque quests and started charting my own path around the world.

PS. Oh. And I do think the graphics are absolutely mind blowing. The small details (flailing while going down a hill, ants on trees, bats casting shadows in a cave as they fly, breath showing in cold at night, the animations of the mobs, etc.) are best-in-class in my view.

yeah the polish on this game is amazing, everything looks stunning and the sounds are great and the enemies are cool and the world is just outstanding. Combat has its flaws, if you are a hardcore dark souls kind of player and hate anything thats not as tough then this will frustrate you, since its relatively easy to cheese most (all?) encounters and you have a wide arsenal of tools to rarely get into trouble. Then again, you could make your own challenge like not getting hit once by an enemy or always being in stealth, etc.

The story and world is absolutely engaging though if you love post apocalyptic settings and imo its far, far superior to fallout 4 in how its executed. I would have loved FO4 using this engine and "style", whereas I loved FO3/FONV this game just executes the unfolding of everything way better. If you hate reading text or following a story and much prefer an open world game where you just go do whatever you want (EQ / Skyrim style) then this may not be your thing, while the world is totally open and you can go explore whatever the missions are fairly simple and always tell you exactly where to go and what to do.

It reminds me a lot of witcher 3 in the sense that there is a thread of a main story but the side quests also tend to be pretty engaging and world building.

If you are ever running low on Blaze, travel to the fire directly below the Ancient Armory bunker. Right across the river is about ten long necks, each with four Blaze canisters. It's an easy 2-300 Blaze for a couple minutes work.

You mean grazers? You can also do that at the very first hunting ground, since the herd respawns each time you start a trial.

The thing I never knew until after I already beat the game was that you can stealth kill the machines and then shoot the canisters off the bodies with harvest arrows.

Yep, my mistake, it's Grazers. And the canister trick was a godsend. It's so much easier to keep Blaze stocked when you know to do this.