Horizon: Zero Dawn impressions

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I'm actually really considering breaking my rule on never buying full price. Seems like everyone is really digging it.

Don't expect too much from the story and characters, but prepare for the sickest monster fights in the most gorgeous landscapes you've ever seen. That's about all you need to know.

How does it compare to Shadows of the Colossus?

 

[Casual Shinji]

How does it compare to Shadows of the Colossus?

The bigger less "walkie" machines definitely have a heavy SotC feel to them when you're fighting them. There's one in particular that feels like a straight-up homage, all the way down to fighting it in an area that feels specific to him.

The difference being that none of them are of the slow, lumbering kind. Even the big ones can leap like crazy, spanning as much as twenty yards in a single hop. And if those jumps hit you...

The dodge button becomes your best friend in this game.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I made a pretty short video with a couple fights I had early on in the game.

 

[sXeth]

I'm enjoying it quite a lot so far. I feel the melee combat could do with a teeny bit of tightening up (my Dark Souls instincts keep making me bring up the focus in an attempt to lock on to targets). The AI is also a bit thick at the best of times. I had one occasion where I attempted to sneak attack a dude, missed and sent my spear noisily clacking into a wall in front of the guy, panic a bit and do it a couple more times while I tried to recenter myself... And then pulled off the sneak attack on him. All this occured while another guy watched from the other side of a tiny trench apparently missing the whole exchange.

Yeah, the window for "Stealth Attack" is prettymuch a barn door. I only just got out of the start area, but its easy to just sprint up to a Watcher (as long as you don't come in literally head on) and get the Silent Strike. The melee could use a lock on too, with how some of the stuff leaps around I think.

Other then that its been fairly enjoyable so far. There's some picks of course. The voice acting feels a bit off a lot of the time. And the climbing is really inconsistent. When they aren't explicitly marked out with the yellow ropes, grabbable ledges don't seem to really be delineated at all, and look more or less identical to completely non-grabbable ones. There's also some that stick out like sticks with a gap between, where if you sprint across Aloy auto-jumps, but if you do the jump manually (like logic would dictate) she won't land on the pole properly.