Saturday Morning Gaming: I have beaten Horizon: Forbidden West
Back in May, I complained about Horizon: Zero West and then, a few short days later, I admitted that my complaints were premature.
Well, I reached the point where I beat the Final Boss Battle and was considering going off and doing the DLC and realized that I needed to upgrade my stuff and that required going out into the world and having multiple battles against robot bats and robot stegosaurs and one thing led to another and… well, I kinda stopped playing it.
Then we got into a discussion on the website about the Rings of Power television show and I realized that I really, really wanted to play Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War again and I booted up my PS5 and remembered “Hey, I never beat the DLC!”
So I have beaten the DLC.
And I realize that I have thoughts about Horizon: Zero Dawn and Horizon: Forbidden West.
The friend who told me “Dude, you have to play this game!” also told me that Forbidden West was better than Zero Dawn. While I understand why he probably thought that, it’s not a sentiment that I share.
That said: The game was surprisingly good. Once the story got rolling and you found out what the game was about, the game dragged you along the way the first game did.
Now, the first game was freakin’ *AMAZING*. You started with a bunch of questions like “why are there robot dinosaurs?” and “why was I an outcast from birth?” and, as the game progressed, you learned the story of What Happened In The Beforetime and had your questions of “how did the old ones overcome this adversity?” answered.
The second game spent a fair amount of time letting you marinate in the old game (but in a new region) and felt like a DLC until the story took off… but when the game took off, it *REALLY* took off.
I shifted from “Meh, more of the same” to “Holy cow, how will I overcome this adversity?” pretty quick once the balls got rolling and the game did a good job of explaining answers to questions we had about the first game.
And, of course, the game finished up with a plot point about how there’s some even greater adversity coming down the pike and you’re going to finally overcome it in GAME THREE!!!
Which, I admit, I am looking forward to.
There are a handful of tics that the game has. A surprising amount of the dialog takes the form “You will never be able to accomplish X!” before you run off and accomplish X and the new dialog is “Wow, you’re really impressive! I was wrong and now I’m eating crow!”
Yeah, yeah. Give me another mission.
But the game is solid, the combat is good, the enemies are interesting, the underlying lore is fascinating, the storyline is engaging, and the world feels like there’s always something new to discover. My complaints take the form that there is a lot of busywork (don’t even *THINK* about upgrading the best weapons in the game) but that’s a small complaint at the end of the day.
I want to see what happens next!
So, all that to say, the game was worth it and I’m looking forward to the third game.
So… what are you playing?
There is a weird sort of mirror image in my enthusiasm with the two games.
After the initial area in HZD, the game throws a lot of all too common collection quests at you. Find cups. And flowers. And Banuk figures. And Vantage points. Why? Because it’s on your map and in your log. Even the scripted side quests were not very compelling.
I struggled to connect with the game and was wondering what all the hype was about. I came very close to not picking up the game again. Then I read online that others had the same issue and found many suggestions to just focus on the main quest.
That helped tremendously and soon was really enjoying it. By the end I had finished all the side quests and gotten all the collectibles, apart from the crystals from the DLC.
I immediately jumped into the second game and, despite finding the changes to weapons a bit jarring, was enthusiastic to play. I started off doing everything I could. And while I did enjoy the main quest line, by the end I had skipped some of the optional quests and a whole lot of collectibles. Especially the ones that were initially locked by story progression and required backtracking and giving practically useless loot. Not even a scrap of lore. I never even bothered with Machine Strike, except for the first lady that teaches you how to play.
I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but fully intend to, and still look forward to the 3rd installment of the series.
I think the 2nd game in particular fell prey to a problem found in a lot of AAA games: the focus on adding “hours of content”. I get that it’s likely mostly consumer driven, as people don’t want to feel like they got ripped off for the price they’re paying. But the older I get the less time I want to spend doing something I’m not really enjoying just to check off a box.Report
Yeah. I’ve no doubt that Forbidden West has another 30-40 hours in it if I wanted to dig for it. Upgrade my favorite weapons, upgrade my favorite armor, and so on and so forth.
Meh. I beat the story. It was awesome.
(The Hogwarts game did the same thing. That would have been an AMAZING 25 hour game! Instead, it was a 50 hour slog.)Report
A lot of the things about video-game design make sense when you think of the target audience as “latchkey kid in 1991 who’s finished all his homework”Report
There are games that did this sort of thing *RIGHT*, though.
The Batman Arkham games gave you Riddler trophies out the wazoo. Each one was different from the others. Heck, The Shadow of War/Mordor ones gave different missions to build the legend of your various weapons.
You have to take a few seconds to say “wait, how am I going to go about succeeding at this?” before going into the tougher ones.
But compared to the ones that do it poorly? Ugh. Homework is *EXACTLY* the right comparison.Report
Yeah, I didn’t bother upgrading the highest tiered gear a single time. The requirements just seemed too tedious.
Though I do wonder if not upgrading contributed to one of my complaints: the lack of badassness.
In the latter part of HZD, after maxing the skill tree and getting the DLC weapons and armor, I felt like a badass.
I didn’t get that feeling from HFW. I’m sure many would say that’s a good thing and evidence of better difficultly scaling and a greatly expanded bestiary. It could also be because the DLC comes after the main story instead of mid-way like HZD.Report
I jumped onto the Dave the Diver hype train. It has a pretty simple gameplay loop, though it continues to add little things as you go through the game. Scuba dive twice per day collecting fish, other seafood, and cooking ingredients. Spend the evening running your restuarant, picking the menu from your available ingredients and helping serve the customers.
Some sea creatures are hostile, and you have to fight them. You can upgrade equipment to dive deeper and stay down longer. If you run out of oxygen, you can only bring one item back to the surface with you.
As the game progresses, you get to explore the mystery of the Sea People. You also learn more about the background of the people you are working with.
It’s an easy game to pick up and play for a little bit, since it is broken into discrete chunks with the dives and running the restaurant. The restuarant management is not super complicated, though I imagine if you really want to maximize profit it could be. I am more interested in the diving aspect.
Overall a fun game that is worth the $20 price tag.Report