Horizon Forbidden West Review – epic and yet stressful

Fans of Aloy’s first appearance had to wait a long time. The Cliffhanger End of Horizon Zero Dawn has left players with many questions, and now, almost five years later and on the next console generation, Aloy is back with some answers. It goes without saying that Horizon Forbidden West is one of the most impressive games, but the appearance is not all. I played about 18 hours Horizon Forbidden West, but due to some disappointing design decisions, only a fraction of this time was actually spent exploring the world.

Horizon Forbidden West is all you expect from a continuation of Horizon Zero Dawn and more, but it is already obvious that it is far from a perfect match. Guerrilla Games has added new levels to all existing systems and mechanics to create a network of upgrades and unlockable skills that is so extensive that it actually becomes a slightly inflated experience. So far, I have found that it deflects you from the gameplay and leaves tempoblemblies in the narrative. In these early stages, you spend more time to browse the menus and apart statistics than to combat machines and (again) to save the world.

Father, almost every newcomer is fantastic. You can spend time to improve your weapons and outfits, improve them and build them on unique advantages and buffs to adapt their equipment to their style of play. Or you spend your time exploring the forbidden West – the reliktruins offer more demanding puzzles and make collecting collective objects more than just find on the map. However, if you bundle all these new features, creates a supersaturated experience. It just offers too much.

Despite the countless additional features that set in the way, the world of Horizon Forbidden West is still enchanting, and it’s a game that will make it addictive to its predecessor.

Aloy wrestles with self-doubt and pressure to be the Savior of Meridian (after victory over Hades in Horizon Zero Dawn), and remains a captivating protagonist. Sometimes she is almost too engaging – in her not so internal monologue, she often commented on the next stage of a puzzle or calls the direction you need to hit. It eliminates the success of the success that you would like if you solve a mystery itself, and the miracle when you explore the right way and encounter it. But you learn to live – Aloy just like talking to yourself. Loud. Above all.

Luckily, Aloy is not alone all the time and she has a wonderfully rich occupation of minor figures where she can bounce off regularly. It’s hard to skip a delayed dialogue line in a conversation as they all wrote so wonderfully.

Integrate this in the incredible Maschin Champion of Horizon Forbidden West, which has been refined since the first horizon game, and it is very hard to put this game out of hand. It has never been so exciting to pursue her technological booty. Guerrilla has added more details to each machine and there are more ways to disassemble them. Horizon Forbidden West thrives in the moments, which overlap with secretness and struggle, the calm before the storm, in which Aloy puts her fall and prepared for the first devastating blow.

On the PS5 this is by far the most satisfying use of the unique functions of dualSense. From a soft crackle of a bumped shock arrow to the rhythmic crevations of a curving thunderkief, Horizon Forbidden West uses the hardware offered fully to create a camphor experiences of the next generation. However, when it comes to crossing and movement, Horizon Forsbidden West is weakening.

It does not feel like the way Aloy has moved significantly, although built on almost all other aspects of the game. Sometimes aloy feels separated from the world around her. It can jump unusually far, slip over rocky projections and fall into a role without any restraint. It keeps the gameplay liquid, but works in front of a background and graphics that push for realism and immersion, fails.

To the disappointment is added that I have found that two of the three new traversal mechanics are broken. The new climbing mechanics, which gets closer to the free climbing features of the latest Assassin’s Creed game, just does not work very well. Aloy’s focus can be used to expose a wealth of handles and handles in a rock wall, but climbing on these handles is painfully slow. Aloy also misses regularly those who could grab her when jumping over gaps.

Then there are parts of the game that are strongly dependent on the new pullcaster mechanics – but it is not working so well. From the stand, the pullcaster usually works. However, there are times when Aloy jumps and it has to use in the middle of the air, and in these situations I have found that it just does not work. The game confirms that you have tried to use the pullcaster – you can roll out his cables – but it does not seem to be liable.

Luckily, Guerrilla has dotted areas in which this problem occurs with ladders, but it is unnecessarily time consuming and is just another thing that keeps it from the imagination.

However, this imagination is running out. Horizon Forbidden West makes, apart from a few technical problems, a wonderful job to pull them into the fantasy world that created guerrillas. If you go through an OSERAM settlement like Chainscrape, you feel the pioneers who are hopeful about a better life in the forbidden West. If you prepread yourself in the high grass on a machine, they hold out of fear, to be caught the breath. Horizon Forbidden West is wonderfully atmospheric, but every now and then the mask slips – especially if someone chips out with the word “wild” and is forced to remember one of the great shame of the first horizon game.

Horizon Zero Dawn had problems with cultural appropriation and if one is aware of it is hard to forget. Holly Greens discussion on the Frozen Wilds DLC and its strong dependence on native cultures is the perfect deconstruction of what this is even a problem. However, it is not limited to Horizon Zero Dawn – it penetrates in Forbidden West.

Dia Lacina’s piece over the damage, which is done by the loose use of derogatory terms – words like “primitive” and “wild” – I must always keep in mind when playing Horizon Forbidden West. It does not take long until someone calls aloy with a sharp tongue as a “wild”, and since a large part of the story of Horizon Forbidden West plays next to the Teknath tribes, it is a shame that the situation has not really improved. Guerilla continues to borrow bonds in domestic cultures from around the world, and often it feels like it’s just a cosmetic way.

As a white man, it is easy for me to watch over these things without connecting to the cultures, of which Guerrilla bonds seem to take over these things – but when I think back what I have read by people WHO Tippen pasting past these things everything feels all Little uncomfortable.

At the moment it is difficult to give a definitive opinion or rating for Horizon Forbidden West. Already in the first about 18 hours it is clear that Guerrilla has done much in this continuation, but also misses the target in many important points. If you liked the first horizon game, this is more of the same – but turned to 11. In the early stages of this game, however, there is certainly evidence that you can have too much of a perceptible good cause.