Review: Horizon, Zero Dawn (no spoilers)
Mar. 13th, 2017 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalSummary: Born into a primitive tribe sometime after an apparent robot apocalypse, young Aloy is sentenced at birth to be an Outcast, for reasons unknown to her. Raised by her fellow outcast and father figure/mentor Rost, she trains hard to enter the Proving, a coming of age ceremony that, if she passes at age nineteen, will welcome her into the tribe and allow her to get answers to her questions about her origin.
Winning the Proving and entry to her tribe proves to be just the beginning of her search for answers, as Aloy travels across the world, trying to discover her heritage and investigate why the Machines, previously passive and not interfering with humans, have become increasingly deranged and dangerous these past nineteen years…
Review: First let’s get the obvious out of the way. This is a fucking gorgeous game. Up until this point my gold standard for PS4 game graphics was Batman, Arkham Knight. However, Guerilla Games ups the ante considerably from Rockstar’s efforts, which is even more impressive given their rep for producing an endless series of generic, grey and brown FPS’s. While the interiors of some ruins are suitably drab, there isn’t a single view of the outside world that’s not beautiful to look at, and there’s rarely any set dressing that looks like it was pulled from a standard kit, except for some storage boxes and ruins interiors (the latter part of a project with modular construction, so it makes sense.) From the snowy woods and mountains of the Nora tribe’s territory, to the warm sandstone and deep green jungles of the Carja, visually the game is a delight. That goes for Aloy and the other characters as well. They look as real as any video game can manage at this point, even viewed on a non-4k HDTV through a baseline PS4.
But that’s not all. The story is also the best I’ve ever seen in a video game. Aloy’s journey from outcast to reluctant messiah is compelling. Without the measure of genricism required from Fallout 4 or the shackles of past publication history that weighed down parts of the Arkham games, Aloy and the player goes through an emotional journey that ranges from touching, to infuriating, to horror inducing, until finally it ends on a balance of grace and peace. It presents a world that’s post-post-post apocalypse, a thousand years since the end of world, where the life the end isn’t even a memory. This contrasts with the Fallout series, which while it has its scary and dramatic moments, is still stuck with the basic “The Future As Seen From the Fifties” aesthetic which just comes across as painfully goofy compared to Zero Dawn.
Gameplay wise there’s nothing to complain about. Aloy’s Focus acts in a similar manner to Arkham’s Detective Mode, pointing out vulnerabilities on Machine opponents and allowing her analyze and track more human prey. Combat is fast and furious, with Aloy being able to hit hard and fast with sufficient planning. The RPG skill tree does allow you to choose a bit between sneaky sniper to combat bruiser, but either way you have to use cover and movement to your advantage at all times. If Aloy stays in one place for too long she will get pounded flat, even with the best possible armor in the game.
If there’s nit to be found in the game, it’s with the scenes where you chat with NPC’s. The use of a dialog tree forces you go into a Talking Heads mode similar to Fallout 4, which is static at best, and suffers from an occasional jarring editing glitch which makes the camera on the NPC suddenly make a sudden cut from close up to even closer up. This is in contrast to Arkham Knight’s more dramatic staging, though Zero Dawn has moments of that as well. Also some of lip syncing is off and faces lack expression occasionally, but those are minor aesthetic complaints in comparison to the gorgeous environments.
Winning the Proving and entry to her tribe proves to be just the beginning of her search for answers, as Aloy travels across the world, trying to discover her heritage and investigate why the Machines, previously passive and not interfering with humans, have become increasingly deranged and dangerous these past nineteen years…
Review: First let’s get the obvious out of the way. This is a fucking gorgeous game. Up until this point my gold standard for PS4 game graphics was Batman, Arkham Knight. However, Guerilla Games ups the ante considerably from Rockstar’s efforts, which is even more impressive given their rep for producing an endless series of generic, grey and brown FPS’s. While the interiors of some ruins are suitably drab, there isn’t a single view of the outside world that’s not beautiful to look at, and there’s rarely any set dressing that looks like it was pulled from a standard kit, except for some storage boxes and ruins interiors (the latter part of a project with modular construction, so it makes sense.) From the snowy woods and mountains of the Nora tribe’s territory, to the warm sandstone and deep green jungles of the Carja, visually the game is a delight. That goes for Aloy and the other characters as well. They look as real as any video game can manage at this point, even viewed on a non-4k HDTV through a baseline PS4.
But that’s not all. The story is also the best I’ve ever seen in a video game. Aloy’s journey from outcast to reluctant messiah is compelling. Without the measure of genricism required from Fallout 4 or the shackles of past publication history that weighed down parts of the Arkham games, Aloy and the player goes through an emotional journey that ranges from touching, to infuriating, to horror inducing, until finally it ends on a balance of grace and peace. It presents a world that’s post-post-post apocalypse, a thousand years since the end of world, where the life the end isn’t even a memory. This contrasts with the Fallout series, which while it has its scary and dramatic moments, is still stuck with the basic “The Future As Seen From the Fifties” aesthetic which just comes across as painfully goofy compared to Zero Dawn.
Gameplay wise there’s nothing to complain about. Aloy’s Focus acts in a similar manner to Arkham’s Detective Mode, pointing out vulnerabilities on Machine opponents and allowing her analyze and track more human prey. Combat is fast and furious, with Aloy being able to hit hard and fast with sufficient planning. The RPG skill tree does allow you to choose a bit between sneaky sniper to combat bruiser, but either way you have to use cover and movement to your advantage at all times. If Aloy stays in one place for too long she will get pounded flat, even with the best possible armor in the game.
If there’s nit to be found in the game, it’s with the scenes where you chat with NPC’s. The use of a dialog tree forces you go into a Talking Heads mode similar to Fallout 4, which is static at best, and suffers from an occasional jarring editing glitch which makes the camera on the NPC suddenly make a sudden cut from close up to even closer up. This is in contrast to Arkham Knight’s more dramatic staging, though Zero Dawn has moments of that as well. Also some of lip syncing is off and faces lack expression occasionally, but those are minor aesthetic complaints in comparison to the gorgeous environments.
