Horizon Zero Dawn Review

Horizon Zero Dawn is Guerilla Games’ first action role-playing game which released in early 2017 and is exclusively available on the Playstation 4. The completely new intellectual property was a big project for the relatively small developing studio but thankfully they can be proud of the project that eventually came to be Horizon Zero Dawn. Yet again, considering the game focuses on fighting robotic dinosaurs, there isn’t much room for going wrong.

To start things off, Horizon’s post-apocalyptic world is absolutely stunning and is a joy to explore. The forests, icy mountains, and the desert are all beautiful in their own way. However, the difference in weather conditions isn’t the only thing that makes these areas so distinct from each other. Even the machine types vary from one area to another according to how their biological versions would have lived. Aloy, the main protagonist, complements the world well thanks to her agility and quickness both in and out of combat.

The story is the most important part of such a game and overall it doesn’t disappoint. In general, the first few hours of the story where the best in gameplay and voice acting and unfortunately the game couldn’t maintain the same level of quality as we progressed through the story. But at least the increasingly interesting narrative made up for it and kept me engaged.

The game is relatively difficult even on normal settings, and this can be attributed to the machines being extremely hostile and have a tendency to attack in groups. This pushes players to utilize stealth and take advantage of their environment and the many tools at their disposal. Nonetheless, players can level up with ease and continuously improve their equipment and weapons which makes the game become easier with time. The combat is very satisfying thanks to the wide selection of weapons and ways to take down enemies but can punish players for not taking the stealthy approach.

Despite Horizon Zero Dawn being great as a whole, there still are a few things that prevent it from being considered as the best singleplayer game on the PlayStation 4. These primarily include forgettable characters and at times, cringe-worthy dialogue and remarks from Aloy. It is safe to say that the more you play, the more interesting the game becomes. It is hard to mention much about the narrative without giving away some minor spoilers, thus it is up to you to play the game and experience the story firsthand. The game has close to no bugs and glitches wish is a luxury to have nowadays and performs pretty well for a game of its size.

To sum things up, Horizon Zero Dawn is among the best PlayStation exclusives and certainly does exceed expectations thanks to the uniqueness and beauty of the open world. The combat is impressive and each encounter feels different than the other thanks to the diversity of machine types and the large arsenal of weapons at your disposal. The story is intriguing and always has players coming back to uncover the mysteries of the past.