I played this game at a friend's house for like 4 hours straight.
I am actually surprised that this game wasn't reviewed higher by the review journalists. This game would've been showered by 10s like a few years ago. It's exactly the type of game that wins GOTY by the media at large.
It's a complete package for a single player AAA game in terms of quality and really does puts every open world by Ubisoft to shame. I also think it beats games like Tomb Raider by a mile too and that game got a ton of great reviews as well.
Story actually doesn't suck donkey balls.
Graphics are like... witchcraft. I don't know how all of that is possible on the PS4.
Sound design is phenomenal.
Game play doesn't suck for open world, there are actually some tactics/strategy to hunting down the bots.
Actually some RPG stats to take care of.
Side quests don't suck ass.
Game is actually hard on the higher difficulty levels (was playing on Very Hard, definitely not a joke).
There is enough to do in the open world and doesn't feel super empty/barren.
No framerate drops, performance has been solid.
Voice work, animations and general mocap has been top notch.
I have been playing games for quite a while and I can say that from my time playing this game, I haven't found an egregious fault with the game. The faults are pretty minor and honestly bordering on nitpicking if I bring them up... like the water effects aren't up to snuff with the rest of the visuals and some random collision glitches/bugs that you run into in these open world games.
I have played quite a bit since yesterday, but not finished obviously
It is a 10/10 in my scale. But I can understand why some reviewers would drop a point or two.
* The graphics are so damn good most of the time, that when you get the occasional warping, or pop-in it stands out a lot more than your average game.
* Many people have said it, but facial animations are mixed. They vary from VERY GOOD to mediocre. The mediocre ones are not even that bad. The mediocre ones are still about the same tier as other AAA games like Fallout3. But compared to the very high quality ones, they stand out. Obviously the reason for this is time and budget. It's going to bother some people enough to drop points for sure.
* There is significant inventory management. Some people just don't like this. I remember people complaining about this in the Witcher 3 at launch too. But W3 got some ease of use patches over time.
* The story is very high concept. It is simply going to go above some peoples heads. Personally I freaking love it.
* Most of the dialog writing is wonderful in my opinion. But it is not particularly witty or punchy in a Hollywood kind of way. It's subtle and there is a lot of sub text in the conversations. Which is very refreshing for video game writing. But that being said, majority of the conversations are just two people facing each other talking in a Mass Effect kind of way. Not moving around a space and conversing in an Uncharted kind of way.
* Combat is deep and there is a significant learning curve and lessons to learn about each enemy type. The game supports multiple styles of play. And I am sure some styles of play are just more fun to some people than others. And the game is deep enough that even after beating the game, I can see some reviewers still not having a full grasp of all the combat systems.
* One reviewer complained in a podcast (IGN I think it was) that they did not like that the player character can move around during story exposition parts. And they said they were have prefer it to just be a cut scene because it broke the immersion for them if they could move/jump around/do stupid things while a serious conversation was going on. I personally have the opposite position of this, I feel video games should NEVER take away control from the player. I am fully on the side of HalfLife game design, where all "cut scenes" should be interactive and from the players perspective. Horizon does have some static cut scenes, but appreciate the moments where they do not take away player control and tell story within the game itself not a movie clip.
