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Horizon Zero Dawn Spoiler-free Impressions (for real this time)

So been playing on and off with headphones and also my surround sound. Either way, the details in the audio, from the bass of the robo dinos stomping or the music. To the sound of the rain and wind. Audio quality is excellent and I've found my characters have good to great voice acting.
 
Yes someone is going to complain about crafting ammo and health. I predict the biggest complaints will be that there isn't much to do outside fighting robots or humans and that crafting is so necessary.

Just curious, is the Crafting interesting? Or is it just a basic Upkeep/reload mechanic in disguise?
 
Pst, honeymoon phase.
/S

It seems you went from I really like it (7 or 8 out of 10) to this is great (9 or 10 out of 10).

Yup it keeps getting better. I was stuck running around the first areas for so many hours and neglected the main story which takes you to amazing areas with way better enemies and story moments. And this city I am in now, I'm super impressed. And I still have so much of the map to go! But I'm running out of robot types to find so I feel I might have seen all the best ones already. I wonder how this all holds up for the rest of the missions.
 
Yup it keeps getting better. I was stuck running around the first areas for so many hours and neglected the main story which takes you to amazing areas with way better enemies and story moments. And this city I am in now, I'm super impressed. And I still have so much of the map to go! But I'm running out of robot types to find so I feel I might have seen all the best ones already. I wonder how this all holds up for the rest of the missions.


I'm on my way you
Meridian
I take it that's the city?
 
Just curious, is the Crafting interesting? Or is it just a basic Upkeep/reload mechanic in disguise?

It's pretty basic, it serves to keep the gameplay loop going. You need crafting items to make ammo to fight the robots that give you the items to make more ammo and upgrade all your gear. The healing stuff may be what drives some people mad though, you need to grab flowers or hunt regular animals, that can be tedious.
 
It's pretty basic, it serves to keep the gameplay loop going. You need crafting items to make ammo to fight the robots that give you the items to make more ammo and upgrade all your gear. The healing stuff may be what drives some people mad though, you need to grab flowers or hunt regular animals, that can be tedious.

A pity, something to improve for next time I suppose.
 

Brix

Member
So been playing on and off with headphones and also my surround sound. Either way, the details in the audio, from the bass of the robo dinos stomping or the music. To the sound of the rain and wind. Audio quality is excellent and I've found my characters have good to great voice acting.

Dope!
 
Yep, same for me. I think every game is repetitive, actually. It is just more apparent in some games because of their design (i.e, being open world). Being repetitive isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

Either way, I'm just glad the gameplay seems to be super solid.

This isn't really true.

Every modern open world game is repetitive is more to the point and is something I really hate. The story and characters need to be top notch to save the day, TW3 style.

This game sounds promising in that regard but I'm not really buying it just yet. I would want to hear a lot more impressions about this side of the game because it all sounds "better than expected", where "expected" for a game like this is still pretty terrible.
 
It's pretty basic, it serves to keep the gameplay loop going. You need crafting items to make ammo to fight the robots that give you the items to make more ammo and upgrade all your gear. The healing stuff may be what drives some people mad though, you need to grab flowers or hunt regular animals, that can be tedious.

healing isn't too much of an issue. there's plenty of animals around. I find myself running out of wires because I'm using the what have you bow and I thought they need to implement a Buy more than 1 feature as I'm sitting there tapping X to buy multiple ones.


The crafting takes its cues from FarCry a bit. You use your resources to:

1. upgrade your holding capacity for arrows/bombs/etc
2. use resources to craft ammunition


I gotta say, while its annoying to run out of ammo - eg I have no wires so I couldn't use my tripcaster - it made me do other things in combat which meant I had to mix it up a bit.


btw, combat in Horizon isn't just limited to using your weapons. You can override animals and get them to fight; although its a free for all when it happens. Hence the need to clear
Cauldrons
.

Last night

Overrode 2 x
crocodiles
and there were
longnecks * think ostrichey and other creatures around
nearby and they all fought one another and I ran around avoid the chaos and racking up the kills with limited ammo.


There's more to combat than just you fighting them. The fact that overriding creatures is part of the gameplay adds that to the game

area with the big cows: override 1-2 and let them go crazy.

Incredibly epic. That alone makes the game watching these behemoths go to town on one another.
 
So been playing on and off with headphones and also my surround sound. Either way, the details in the audio, from the bass of the robo dinos stomping or the music. To the sound of the rain and wind. Audio quality is excellent and I've found my characters have good to great voice acting.
Hows the hdr? On a scale of ffxv to tlg. Haven't heard anything about it.

And just generally does the pro get anything other than a res boost?
 
This isn't really true.

Every modern open world game is repetitive is more to the point and is something I really hate. The story and characters need to be top notch to save the day, TW3 style.

This game sounds promising in that regard but I'm not really buying it just yet. I would want to hear a lot more impressions about this side of the game because it all sounds "better than expected", where "expected" for a game like this is still pretty terrible.
Nah, repetition is the recurrence of something. That applies to every game.

And I have no clue what the bold is and where you got it from.
 
This isn't really true.

Every modern open world game is repetitive is more to the point and is something I really hate. The story and characters need to be top notch to save the day, TW3 style.

This game sounds promising in that regard but I'm not really buying it just yet. I would want to hear a lot more impressions about this side of the game because it all sounds "better than expected", where "expected" for a game like this is still pretty terrible.
Well that all depends on what your expectations here, doesnt it? My expectations were about whether the combat would be fun, if the world would be interesting to explore and dynamic.
 
I'm on my way you
Meridian
I take it that's the city?

The scale of that city was pretty amazing. I actually thought of FFXIII and how they can't do a city? Fuck FFXIII. Then you run around and
there's a bloody elevator taking you down to the lower level?
Fuck me.

You'll notice that when you run past the
guards - that they raise their weapons.
Its a neat touch.
 
It's going to be cool seeing videos of people experimenting with overrides during combat. Maybe in sequels (or patches), they'll give you more control over it.
 
Those are valid criticisms. Personally all I want to fight is robots.

True. But these sort of criticism can be held for any loot gathering rpg and HZD can't be blamed for the inclusion of such systems. Witcher 3 had you oiling swords before almost every few fights, or changing it regularly depending on the monster. Crafting and inventory management was abundant in game for potions and repair kits as you had to maintain Gear/weapons, even more awkward before they patched the stash boxes. Oh and Geralt saying Come on Roach regularly to a human sounding horse going brrrr got really tiresome.

W3 is one of my all time favourite games, but you can find personal niggles with anything.
 
True. But these sort of criticism can be held for any loot gathering rpg and HZD can't be blamed for the inclusion of such systems. Witcher 3 had you oiling swords before almost every few fights, or changing it regularly depending on the monster. Crafting and inventory management was abundant in game for potions and repair kits as you had to maintain Gear/weapons, even more awkward before they patched the stash boxes. Oh and Geralt saying Come on Roach regularly to a human sounding horse going brrrr got really tiresome.

W3 is one of my all time favourite games, but you can find personal niggles with anything.

Oh I definitely agree with you there. I just meant I can see that bothering some people, not enough to be a big deal, but at least one thing they won't like about it.
 

Floody

Member
I'm not getting at all where the "expected" was supposed to be terrible. Every time people played the game have praised it.

Maybe he's means you generally don't expect good gameplay from a WRPG? Horizon's gameplay has always been talked about positively though, so if he's referring to that then yeah not sure what he's on about.
 

jayu26

Member
Yeah. "Better than expected" is being used for story and lore, for which some were very skeptical despite the correct hirings to alleviate that issue. The gameplay itself has gotten praise since the first hands on demos.
 
Damn found a sort of screw up with the lore that they need to patch. I am enthralled with this story and it ruined it for me. The journal is amazing and quite funny but...

in the hunters lodge there is a story of the redmaw, the most fearsome beast in all the land. And it describes all the attempts to kill it and how everyone died. Next to that book is volume 2 which I go to read and it tells of the story of how Aloy and her hawk master fought and killed the redmaw and I'm like wtf spoilers!!! Why is the book of my accomplishments there already, fix that GG.
.
 
Well that all depends on what your expectations here, doesnt it? My expectations were about whether the combat would be fun, if the world would be interesting to explore and dynamic.

Combat is fair enough but when was the last open world game where the world was interesting to explore and dynamic?

I don't even think of these games as open world. They are open landscape where everything just happens in a really big area. There is no interactivity, no persistence and nothing really interesting to find, just slightly different textures.

My expectation is that this game will be open landscape #3567743 with ok combat. That goes a long way but having a good story on top would be really interesting.

So is the story good in the context of assassins creed or is it actually well done? Seems I need to keep an eye on this to find out, which is more than I expected.
 
I'm glad to see so much positive preview hype, but I'm seriously pissed with how people like to spoil things. I had an Ellie plot point ruined for me randomly when TLoU came out, and now with this, people have been spreading Alloy spoilers all over my social media. I'm constantly blocking people and removing comments. Trolling and console war drama is all fun and everything, but spoiling stories is on a whole other level of scummy. Honestly, what gratification does one get to ruin stories for people like me who are basically in media blackout mode?
I feel sorry for you, I don't have the same problem because I can only count my gaming friends on the fingers of my two hands, and even then, they're not the spoiler type of folks. Must help that I lend them my games...
 

Karak

Gold Member
Got to watch some today from another persons copy but had to leave just because I didn't want to get spoiled to much on locations and such. Looked good.
 
Damn found a sort of screw up with the lore that they need to patch. I am enthralled with this story and it ruined it for me. The journal is amazing and quite funny but...

in the hunters lodge there is a story of the redmaw, the most fearsome beast in all the land. And it describes all the attempts to kill it and how everyone died. Next to that book is volume 2 which I go to read and it tells of the story of how Aloy and her hawk master fought and killed the redmaw and I'm like wtf spoilers!!! Why is the book of my accomplishments there already, fix that GG.
.

Probably it's a different Aloy and your character is named after her?? Or maybe it's part of the mystery?
 

Krakin

Member
Damn found a sort of screw up with the lore that they need to patch. I am enthralled with this story and it ruined it for me. The journal is amazing and quite funny but...

in the hunters lodge there is a story of the redmaw, the most fearsome beast in all the land. And it describes all the attempts to kill it and how everyone died. Next to that book is volume 2 which I go to read and it tells of the story of how Aloy and her hawk master fought and killed the redmaw and I'm like wtf spoilers!!! Why is the book of my accomplishments there already, fix that GG.
.

Welp. That is indeed a problem
 
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