INTRODUCTION
Horizon: Zero Dawn was developed by Guerrilla Games, the team best known for the Killzone series, made for Sony’s PlayStation platform. Killzone is a first person shooter and an answer from Sony to Microsoft’s Halo franchise. With Horizon: Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games tries to decent into uncharted territory. How well did they do? Let’s find out.
STORY 9/10
The story of Horizon: Zero Dawn is set in a post-post apocalyptic world where human have reverted back to their primitive states and the world is filled with mechanized wildlife. You play as Aloy, an outcast from her tribe who is on a journey to find out the mysteries of her origin and how the world ended up the way it did.
Straight away, when you start the game, you get a sensation that you’re playing a game whose story is being told by Disney of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This is by no means a bad thing, just a surprising one. The story manages to stay engaging till the end as Horizon: Zero Dawn does something which most do not, it raises more and more questions and builds up the suspense as you progress into the story to only be answered at the end. That sense of curiosity keeps you moving forward without wanting to stop. Also, it should be pointed out that in the final parts of the game where the secrets of the story are revealed, a few scientific terms will be used, so for those of you not familiar with the terms, it would be wise to keep a dictionary handy so that this aspect does not prevent you from completely enjoying the storytelling aspect of the game.
GAMEPLAY 9/10
This section is where Horizon: Zero Dawn takes the least amount of risk and plays it safe by incorporating different mechanics from different games. To put it more simply, the overall controls and systems feels much similar to Crystal Dynamics’ rebooted Tomb Raider series, the world map has a striking similarity to Ubisoft’s Far Cry series and the mini compass looks and functions exactly as Bethesda’s Elder Scroll and Fallout series. The game even offers a dialog wheel much similar to Bioware’s Mass Effect series.
Even though Horizon: Zero Dawn indicates similarities to these popular franchises, somehow Guerrilla Games managed to make it work. The game functions as an open world game where you need to hunt and gather resources to craft useful material such as weapons, ammo, armor and upgrades. Hunting is a vital part of the game and doing so cleverly is key to survival and success as almost every animal is bigger and stronger than you and can easily kill you.
Management of resources is also an important aspect as your carry is limited much like your resources and almost all resources have multiple uses, for instance ‘Metal Shards’ act as the game’s currency, used to buy weapons and outfits from merchants and at the same time is one of the primary items needed for ammo crafting. Even the game’s fast travel option is limited in the form of fast travel packs. They are easily craftable and do not need much resources but you will unknowingly burn through your resources for the packs.
Few issues which we personally had with the game when it came to gameplay was the Camera angles and absence of a lock-on system. The Camera always has a tendency of angling as it saw fit. One minute the camera would be angled at the right only for it to be angled to the left which can get pretty jarring as it always tries to maintain a somewhat over the shoulder angling. Even during the platforming sections, the camera isn’t panned out far enough for us to properly see where the next foot hole is to grab onto. This is one aspect which we hoped they would have let Uncharted 4 influence them. Lack of a lock-on also produces some bothersome issues. Since you will be at times fighting certain beasts which are almost the size of a bus, they can cover large areas pretty quick. So having to manually control the camera while running away from the beasts makes it a bit difficult. Even during melee combat, since there is no lock-on, we often found ourselves swinging a little to the left or right of the enemy and missing the target.
VISUALS 10/10
Out of all the games we’ve personally played and reviewed, Horizon: Zero Dawn has to be the most detailed and graphically impressive. Everything from draw distances to Alpha particle effects to geographical design quality to God Ray effects screams detail. Even the mechanized wildlife design to foliage design and their reactions to the wind blowing has extreme levels of detail and the dynamic weather system with different detailed geographical landscapes such as deserts, dense forests to snowy mountains creates a sense of realism which was never before seen in an video game. Guerrilla Games(the developers) should be commended for this technical achievement. This game shows us just how much potential power the aging system has if used efficiently.
Now, Considering the technical aspects of the game, the resolution is rendered at a full native 1080p@30fps on the Standard PS4 and checkerboarded 4k@30fps or 1080p@30fps on the PS4 Pro. The game tends to perform almost the same on both platforms with extremely minor drops ( 29 fps from 30 fps) seen on both platforms. The Standard PS4 tends to have a few more instances where the frame-rate drops the single frame. The single drops are barely noticeable when you are playing the title.
AUDIO 9/10
Audio settings as with most titles are bare boned except for your standard settings, which are:
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Speech Volume
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FX Sound
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Music
The game’s OST(original soundtrack) is an exceptional one with each track perfectly matching and creating the desired intensities for the scene. Voice acting is mostly done with a certain level of professionalism, with only certain instances where the intensity of the moment did not match the tone and expression of the speech. Another thing noticed during dialogs was that lips did not sync properly with the dialog. This is not much of an issue and does not occur all that much to be concerned.
SCORE
STORY 9/10
GAMEPLAY 9/10
VISUALS 10/10
AUDIO 9/10
TOTAL SCORE 37/10
92.5% approval rating
CONCLUSION
Guerrilla Games managed to deliver an exceptional experience with Horizon: Zero Dawn and considering the success of their first attempt in an unexplored genre by the studio, it only means more opportunities and confidence for the studio to try out even more unique ideas.
(The game was played and reviewed on a standard PS4 in both pre and post patch state of the game, with additional performance information collected from secondary data)
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