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Horizon Zero Dawn |OT| The Land After Time

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danowat

Banned
I'm using both, I'm a sucker for bullet time, was the first things I grabbed.

I think one of my main issues is just the weakpoints on certain creatures aren't very visible or something. Like when you're fighting 3 or 4 stridors and they're looking right at you, it's hard to get an angle on that canister on their backs. And then I believe it gets shot off after a couple of hits? Then what? Shoot them with several arrows that do little damage? Maybe I'm just not doing something right.

Normal arrows don't do much damage, elemental arrows for the right target part is the way to go, it's rock, paper, scissors.
 

Plasma

Banned
How do you land from a jump and roll? I've tried pressing circle to roll just as I land but it doesn't seem to do anything.
 

danowat

Banned
FWIW, some early impressions, I am 3-4hrs in, playing on a 4k HDR display using a PS4 Pro.

Firstly, let's get the elephant out of the room, comparisons, yes, it's like TW3, infact in the first area, you could blink and imagine you are in Skelige, also, TR, yes, it's a female protag, with a bow, so the comparisons will always come, IMO, both are good games, and HZD is a good combination of the two.

The whole game feels very TW3, the feeling of the way Aloy moves, the climbing, the detective mode, it's in no way a bad thing, but the comparison is impossible not to make.

Graphically, I am mixed, at some points, when the lighting and atmospherics are just right, it looks stunning, other times, it just looks "good", textures don't seem particularly great, there are some lovely little touches, like leaf ants crawling up tree trunks, and clumps of fireflies at night, but I don't think it's quite as spectacular as some say, and I don't think it's the best looking game on the gen.

Performance is fine on resolution mode, I noticed no skips or drops while playing.

Combat is good, particularly bow combat, it does feel like a lock on system would be nice, but I wonder if that would interfere with the "part targeting" system for taking down mechs.

Spear combat feels a little clunky, but quite OP,
especially after the first spear mod.

I don't like the climbing and jumping, much of it appears automated, and there is very little fun or challenge in doing it, there was one section where I thought I knew where to go, but it wasn't the "right" way, even though I should have been able to make it, the game just kept getting me stuck between the rock face and a laid down tree trunk.

I am not really far enough in to make much of the mission structure, but what I have done feels genuinely interesting and fleshed out.

Voice acting and lip sync is good, although characters (and Aloy) have a tendency to repeat the same line over, and over, if you are near a mission start character, or near a mid mission character, but are say, collecting resources, or taking something down, they will just repeat the same line over and over, this happened twice in my first 3hrs, and I found it a little grating.

The story is intriguing, one thing I did think was odd was
the "sign post" displays on rocks, I assume this is coming from Aloy's focus item, but who put them there?

Looking forward to playing more.

edit : Oh yeah, so far, it's NOTHING like Far Cry, so any comparisons of the two are moot IMO
 

pronk420

Member
Has she always been called Aloy? I could have sworn it was Alloy, or have I just been misreading it for months/years?

I thought the press were calling her 'Ayyyy-loy' instead of the correct english pronunciation because they were american, but the game calls her that too.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Is it just me or does Uncharted 4 still has this beat in term of facial animation and body fluidity. Everything else is drop dead gorgeous though.
It's not like an RPG game where most of the facial animation is procedurally animated, realistically has any chance to be better than UC4 in facial animation. However, from what I've seen, when it comes to this type of games (open world/rpg), Horizon is the best there.
 
Has she always been called Aloy? I could have sworn it was Alloy, or have I just been misreading it for months/years?

I thought the press were calling her 'Ayyyy-loy' instead of the correct english pronunciation because they were american, but the game calls her that too.

It's A-loy. Always has been, but when you shout someone's name you usually tend to make their name bigger. That's why the opening cinematic has Rost saying; Ayyy-loy!
 

Zen Aku

Member
I'm using both, I'm a sucker for bullet time, was the first things I grabbed.

I think one of my main issues is just the weakpoints on certain creatures aren't very visible or something. Like when you're fighting 3 or 4 stridors and they're looking right at you, it's hard to get an angle on that canister on their backs. And then I believe it gets shot off after a couple of hits? Then what? Shoot them with several arrows that do little damage? Maybe I'm just not doing something right.

Go for the eye/eyes. It does a lot of damage too. Usually going for the glowing weakspot than the eye ends every battle for me pretty damn quick. (On normal)
 

iFirez

Member
I was set to play for 5 hours last night... ended up spending atleast 2 hours just wandering around and using photo mode... damn this game is pretty.
 

noomi

Member
My inventory and reaources menu have an exlamation point on them as if there is something new.... but there isn't. Kind of annoying... whats going on here?
 

nOoblet16

Member
Is it me or is the day night cycle super quick? Like in 2 mins it went from morning to night to morning again.
From what I've noticed the day night cycle in this game is weird because:

1) Often the cycle will come to a halt (you can check this by stopping and looking at shadows and they won't move an inch). And at other times it'll progress super quick (you can check again by looking at shadows that quickly move at times). My conclusion is that the cycle is not always active and rather comes to a halt at times and also takes the location into account...Meaning if you go from one location to next you often notice a change.


2) The change from night to day is not gradual, it's extremely abrupt. You can check this by messing around with ToD in photomode where night just pops up after 7pm in an instant.
 

Prithee Be Careful

Industry Professional
There are hidden treasures. Multiple kinds of actually. There are mysterious metal flowers that a certain merchant will pay you a lot for, there are "treasures" from the ancient world, that another merchant will pay you a lot for, there are Banuk carvings another merchant will pay you a lot for, there are also interesting audio files and text documents and there are secret vantage points,
You can find them on your own, if you search well enough and/or are lucky, but you can also buy maps that will guide you to them.
Last but not least there are traditional treasure chests/loot boxes, but they are very rare in the wilderness and are mostly found in villages or bandit camps.

I also found a cave with a set of
'Old Ones' mecha-armour
, but I haven't been able to unlock it yet.
 

Chumley

Banned
Just started it up and holy fuck, soon as I went outside, LG OLED purchase justified

No fucking idea how these wizards figured out how to hold 30fps at 4k with these graphics. This is totally nuts, might even surpass The Witcher 3 maxed out on PC at first glance.
 

Raybunny

Member
From what I've noticed the day night cycle in this game is weird because:

1) Often the cycle will come to a halt (you can check this by stopping and looking at shadows and they won't move an inch). And at other times it'll progress super quick (you can check again by looking at shadows that quickly move at times). My conclusion is that the cycle is not always active and rather comes to a halt at times and also takes the location into account...Meaning if you go from one location to next you often notice a change.


2) The change from night to day is not gradual, it's extremely abrupt. You can check this by messing around with ToD in photomode where night just pops up after 7pm in an instant.

Was wondering about that. I had that impression watching Karak's ACG video of it this morning. Something he mentioned was how the cycle were dynamic. Maybe "finicky dynamic" is the description there. Nothing I can experience until I get out of work but something I will keep an eye on.
 

Carcetti

Member
About the day/time cycle, you should notice that in many missions it's ruled by drama instead of nature. Certain situations and places for the time of the day into certain settings so that you get an oppressive night or a joyful sunrise. You can't even force the change in photomode in some of those situations.
 

FiraB

Banned
Tripcaster is god, just saying. In the desert now and by god does it look beautiful, but boy are the new machines scary...minding my busimess and BAM! 15 minutes of dodging and weaving! Then I killed it and was like Whooo! And then his two buddies came and I was like What? And i cheesed them with tripcaster...

Boom! Shock! And Burn! Survive that all at once with 12x wires...Hunting is so fun, hunting is so fun and now we stop to see the massacre we have done.

:)
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
This game is just something else man.

The foliage and lighting is insane. I wish every game came close to what they manage to do with that.
 

Gudji

Member
How does a game that hoozes quality like this gets a 2.5/5 and a 6/10 review? Laughable. It's a fucking great game from what I've played so far and I haven't seen 1/3 yet.

The first 4 hours of story are just amazing, I'll even say that I think this beats anything ND produced, yes even the TLOU beginning.
 

thatJohann

Member
My Pro fans sound like a jet engine with this game. Other than that - I am amazed at how gorgeous it is. And I instantly bonded with Aloy especially the first segment. Adorable.
 

WITHE1982

Member
Just passed the mythical 4 hour mark last night and I'm very much enjoying my time with the game so far.

The overall game-play seems very solid and the open world is simply stunning, even on a base PS4. The environments are breath-taking but I'm consciously trying to avoid photo-mode during my first play through and It can be distracting and add a few hours to my completion time.

I found Aloy to be such a likeable character from the outset and I can see why so many are enamoured with her. Her facial animation and voice acting are both top notch. I often find myself smiling quite a lot at her responses during cut-scenes.

So far I've spent the majority of my time stealth killing tons of watchers (after unlocking the whistle and stealth kill abilities, both of which I recommend heavily early on). I've just killed my first sawtooth and I'm currently polishing off tutorial missions for the first 4 weapons I've bought.

My only small gripe is that the controls seem a little unintuitive IMHO. I don't know what it is but there seems to be a lot of button combinations to remember. For example to mark an animal and its trail it's R3, R2 then R1. To precision aim it can be R3 (to highlight weakness) L2, R3 (to slow time) then R2 to shoot. Also having triangle to interact and square to crouch is throwing me a little but I'm sure I'll get used to it over time but TBH I'm just nit-picking.

Great stuff so far and I feel that I've barely scratched the surface of the game.

Here is that 4hrs... every damn time .. " 4hrs till Horizon" meme

Just before I turned the game off last night I checked my play-time. I noticed it was a little over 4 hours and I chuckled a little. Definitely seems to be the general cut off point for everyone's first session.
 

danowat

Banned
Getting quite a heavy push on Radio 1 (national UK radio station) this morning, an item pointing to their article on every on the hour newsbeat program.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39107646/horizon-zero-dawn-rpg-titles-need-to-be-disciplined

"We wanted a focused experience that makes people think they're part of this living breathing world, but not feel like they're doing busy work,"

"Yes you can cram in lots of things, make the world incredibly huge, but not if it distracts from the main story or what helps you explore it."
That's not to say this title will be wildly different in size to other popular franchises in the genre like The Witcher, Mass Effect or Dark Souls.
"There's a main quest through line you can follow," says Sam.
"There are a whole host of side quests, characters to meet, areas to explore and things to learn about the game's back story.
"But we didn't want the player to just do busy work, going and collecting stuff or whatever.
"We wanted activities to explore the world, understand the lore, and uncover the mystery of what happened.
"That's the central tenant of the story."
 
Gameplay character model in photomode. Tried to zoom in as much as I can.

A new benchmark perhaps.

ntsBKd.png
 

RedAssedApe

Banned
Game hasn't quite grabbed me yet. Just got up to the sawtooth.

Side quests so far have been kind of meh. Hope they get better. Game is gorgeous and feels good to play so far though.

Aloy's snark also seems out of place in this world. Having a hard time separating her from Ashly Burch and other characters she's voiced because the other npcs speak so differently.

Oh and if you choose fist does
Aloy actually throw that rock at the punkass kid?
lol
 

nOoblet16

Member
I love how the foliage looks and how dense it is but man they should have had it move when the player walks past them. I'm not asking for actual soft body physics interaction like Uncharted/Crysis but just having a canned animation where the foliage simply shakes a bit while you pass through them is enough, this is how TW3 did it. Cause it's very odd to see a game in 2017 where the foliage doesn't move at all when the player walks through it. It's even more odd when you consider that the tall grass do have actual soft body physics and collision detection for interaction with player and as such the disparity stands out a lot. Having the other foliage just move in a simple fashion would lessen that disparity.

And that's the thing about this game's graphics and animations i.e. the disparity. It makes it inconsistent as is the case with foliage, the ToD, the water. Speaking of the water, Aloy's clothes don't even get wet when she dives into a river and again the interaction...I'm not asking for physics based water or something but atleast have...something there like normal maps for ripples or some alpha sprites for splashes (which already do exist whenever you jump into water but not when swimming) rather than nothing at all.

Then there is the animation, the climbing is weird in that you cannot grab onto anything even if it looks like something you can grab onto in other games. Like a piece of rock that's your height, you can only jump up to it not grab it making it awkward to navigate at times. And there's also a glaring flaw in the dodge animation, the transition from whatever Aloy is doing to dodge is instant meaning there are no transition animations leading to a "skip" in animation making it look juddery. I cannot understand how something so obvious as the main character's animation was looked over.

All these little things are more to do with attention to detail than actual performance.

About the day/time cycle, you should notice that in many missions it's ruled by drama instead of nature. Certain situations and places for the time of the day into certain settings so that you get an oppressive night or a joyful sunrise. You can't even force the change in photomode in some of those situations.
Yea I know. But it kind of defeats the purpose of having real time ToD if it's gonna reset for missions, especially because in this case it becomes extremely noticeable...I never liked that.
 

nOoblet16

Member
How does a game that hoozes quality like this gets a 2.5/5 and a 6/10 review? Laughable. It's a fucking great game from what I've played so far and I haven't seen 1/3 yet.

The first 4 hours of story are just amazing, I'll even say that I think this beats anything ND produced, yes even the TLOU beginning.
Honestly I'd probably give it a 7 too, it is good with an engaging story but there are enough blemishes and not so good parts that'd make me give it that score. It kind of does get repetitive despite the variety in robots.
 

danowat

Banned
Honestly I'd probably give it a 7 too, it is good with an engaging story but there are enough blemishes and not so good parts that'd make me give it that score. It kind of does get repetitive despite the variety in robots.

Nah, it's a solid 8 all day long.

As for the 2.5's and 6/10's, they may surprise some, but the 10/10's surprise me just as much.
 

kyser73

Member
I'm using both, I'm a sucker for bullet time, was the first things I grabbed.

I think one of my main issues is just the weakpoints on certain creatures aren't very visible or something. Like when you're fighting 3 or 4 stridors and they're looking right at you, it's hard to get an angle on that canister on their backs. And then I believe it gets shot off after a couple of hits? Then what? Shoot them with several arrows that do little damage? Maybe I'm just not doing something right.

2x fire arrows will deliver a big AOE fireball, and if you catch any other blaze flasks on that blast they blow up too.

Re: the Focus - if you could run around with it you'd be OP - the whole point is to use it as a tactical aid, not as some kind of ongoing super-vision.
 

dealer-

Member
How does a game that hoozes quality like this gets a 2.5/5 and a 6/10 review? Laughable. It's a fucking great game from what I've played so far and I haven't seen 1/3 yet.

The first 4 hours of story are just amazing, I'll even say that I think this beats anything ND produced, yes even the TLOU beginning.

Woah there, let's not get carried away ;)

Game sure is fun though. Glad it delivered.
 
Where can I find information on what all the little icons mean in the weapons/armor sections of menus? Wish they had like a help toggle so I could hover over every little thing and see exactly what it represents, like in souls games.

Forget about tooltips, we can't even see a character screen for level and stats, a pretty basic yet essential RPG element.
 

bigol

Member
its a rpg...

time to get a better bow

i have seen plenty of times where people one shot human enemies with arrows aiming the head. It's not a case of being an RPG, it's more a case of bad collision that sometimes makes arrow fly through enemies heads.
 

aravuus

Member
Game hasn't quite grabbed me yet. Just got up to the sawtooth.

Side quests so far have been kind of meh. Hope they get better. Game is gorgeous and feels good to play so far though.

Aloy's snark also seems out of place in this world. Having a hard time separating her from Ashly Burch and other characters she's voiced because the other npcs speak so differently.

Oh and if you choose fist does
Aloy actually throw that rock at the punkass kid?
lol

Rost
shoots the rock mid-air
, unfortunately lol

Agreed on the side quests, however. I've done a couple, but they were really boring. I've been sticking to main quests for now, the story and uncovering the mysteries of the world/lore is the driving force of the game for me atm, though I have started enjoying the combat more too.
 

Sun

Neo Member
I’ve played through the Proving & the following sequence – and yeah, go play this.

There’s small annoyances, things which could’ve been done differently (quickly standing out would be climbing design, melee fighting would be another; someone else would have other things to cry about I guess).

Story-wise I’m reminded of Avatar – in the sense that’s mostly a story following known beats, but manages to infuse itself with enough personality to stand on its own and have you follow it.

The whole build-up to the Proving also led me to think of Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage – which is cool nostalgia, haven’t tought of that book in a while.

Now I’m curious to explore & discover the world of Horizon, and see what characters & stories I can find along the way.
 

reKon

Banned
I couldn't help myself and I decide to play... for well past 2 hours, when I only planned for an hour.

The graphics are brilliant. The gameplay is fun snappy in terms of movement and using the bow. But one thing I've noticed is that GG did an amazing job with the sound in this game so far. The machine sound effects are sublime and the soundtrack sounds good.
 

bubumiao

Member
While playing in remote play on my laptop in the next room (didn't play on tv because it is an old 720p/1080i samsung) during the intro movie my ps4 pro froze twice. So once it froze I went back into the tv room (after closing the game application), turned on tv and it was a black screen, pro light was white, so I held in power button til it turned off. Tried to play again, same thing happened and turned off the same way. Both times the ps4 had to do that system check or whatever (all black screen white percentage bar in the middle of the screen filled up horizontally).

Since other people mentioned problems with the intro movie, I just watched it on the tv, then went back to remote play once Aloy starts the game as a little girl. Played for about 3 hours with no problems (via remote play) with no problems after that.

Game is everything I'd hoped for and more. Can't wait to jump back in tomorrow after work

:D
 
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