Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4)

INTRODUCTIONHorizon: Zero Dawn was developed by Guerrilla Games, the team best known for the Killzone series, made for Sony's PlayStation platform. Killzone is a first person shooter and an answer from Sony to Microsoft's Halo franchise. With Horizon: Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games tries to decent into uncharted territory. How well did they do? Let's find out.STORY 9/10The story of Horizon: Zero Dawn is set in a post-post apocalyptic world where human have reverted back to their primitive states and the world is filled with mechanized wildlife. You play as Aloy, an outcast from her tribe who is on a journey to find out the mysteries of her origin and how the world ended up the way it did.Straight away, when you start the game, you get a sensation that you’re playing a game whose story is being told by Disney of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This is by no means a bad thing, just a surprising one. The story manages to stay engaging till the end as Horizon: Zero Dawn does something which most do not, it raises more and more questions and builds up the suspense as you progress into the story to only be answered at the end. That sense of curiosity keeps you moving forward without wanting to stop. Also, it should be pointed out that in the final parts of the game where the secrets of the story are revealed, a few scientific terms will be used, so for those of you not familiar with the terms, it would be wise to keep a dictionary handy so that this aspect does not prevent you from completely enjoying the storytelling aspect of the game.GAMEPLAY 9/10This section is where Horizon: Zero Dawn takes the least amount of risk and plays it safe by incorporating different mechanics from different games. To put it more simply, the overall controls and systems feels much similar to Crystal Dynamics’ rebooted Tomb Raider series, the world map has a striking similarity to Ubisoft’s Far Cry series and the mini compass looks and functions exactly as Bethesda's Elder Scroll and Fallout series. The game even offers a dialog wheel much similar to Bioware’s Mass Effect series.Even though Horizon: Zero Dawn indicates similarities to these popular franchises, somehow Guerrilla Games managed to make it work. The game functions as an open world game where you need to hunt and gather resources to craft useful material such as weapons, ammo, armor and upgrades. Hunting is a vital part of the game and doing so cleverly is key to survival and success as almost every animal is bigger and stronger than you and can easily kill you.Management of resources is also an important aspect as your carry is limited much like your resources and almost all resources have multiple uses, for instance 'Metal Shards’ act as the game’s currency, used to buy weapons and outfits from merchants and at the same time is one of the primary items needed for ammo crafting. Even the game's fast travel option is limited in the form of fast travel packs. They are easily craftable and do not need much resources but you will unknowingly burn through your resources for the packs.Few issues which we personally had with the game when it came to gameplay was the Camera angles and absence of a lock-on system. The Camera always has a tendency of angling as it saw fit. One minute the camera would be angled at the right only for it to be angled to the left which can get pretty jarring as it always tries to maintain a somewhat over the shoulder angling. Even during the platforming sections, the camera isn't panned out far enough for us to properly see where the next foot hole is to grab onto. This is one aspect which we hoped they would have let Uncharted 4 influence them. Lack of a lock-on also produces some bothersome issues. Since you will be at times fighting certain beasts which are almost the size of a bus, they can cover large areas pretty quick. So having to manually control the camera while running away from the beasts makes it a bit difficult. Even during melee combat, since there is no lock-on, we often found ourselves swinging a little to the left or right of the enemy and missing the target.VISUALS 10/10Out of all the games we’ve personally played and reviewed, Horizon: Zero Dawn has to be the most detailed and graphically impressive. Everything from draw distances to Alpha particle effects to geographical design quality to God Ray effects screams detail. Even the mechanized wildlife design to foliage design and their reactions to the wind blowing has extreme levels of detail and the dynamic weather system with different detailed geographical landscapes such as deserts, dense forests to snowy mountains creates a sense of realism which was never before seen in an video game. Guerrilla Games(the developers) should be commended for this technical achievement. This game shows us just how much potential power the aging system has if used efficiently.Now, Considering the technical aspects of the game, the resolution is rendered at a full native 1080p@30fps on the Standard PS4 and checkerboarded 4k@30fps or 1080p@30fps on the PS4 Pro. The game tends to perform almost the same on both platforms with extremely minor drops ( 29 fps from 30 fps) seen on both platforms. The Standard PS4 tends to have a few more instances where the frame-rate drops the single frame. The single drops are barely noticeable when you are playing the title.AUDIO 9/10Audio settings as with most titles are bare boned except for your standard settings, which are:Speech VolumeFX SoundMusicThe game's OST(original soundtrack) is an exceptional one with each track perfectly matching and creating the desired intensities for the scene. Voice acting is mostly done with a certain level of professionalism, with only certain instances where the intensity of the moment did not match the tone and expression of the speech. Another thing noticed during dialogs was that lips did not sync properly with the dialog. This is not much of an issue and does not occur all that much to be concerned.SCORESTORY 9/10GAMEPLAY 9/10VISUALS 10/10AUDIO 9/10TOTAL SCORE 37/1092.5% approval ratingCONCLUSIONGuerrilla Games managed to deliver an exceptional experience with Horizon: Zero Dawn and considering the success of their first attempt in an unexplored genre by the studio, it only means more opportunities and confidence for the studio to try out even more unique ideas.(The game was played and reviewed on a standard PS4 in both pre and post patch state of the game, with additional performance information collected from secondary data. All the screenshots porvided for the review were taken personally by me during my play session of the game using the in-game photo mode, ever picture was taken during actual in-game gameplay)

Review after about 10 hours of gaming! This game has justified my purchase of a PS4 Pro! After watching few gameplay demos in Youtube, I decided to pre-order this game from Amazon. This is highest price I have ever paid for a game BUT it was really worth it! Trust me, Guerrilla Games have really pushed the boundary on what can be done by game devs on a console. The PC master race guys are really not pleased since this is a Playstation exclusive! Please note that I couldn't just wait for it and went ahead with the digital purchase through PS Store.TRAINING--------I love the way training is interwoven into the game. Unlike other games, you are not put into an arena specifically to train. You start an a kid (Aloy), and you are taught the skills one by one including stealth, usage of Bow, forging equipment like arrows, foraging bushes for medicines etc. At the end of the training, you have matured to a full-blown hunter Aloy who is ready for her big mission. I've not seen any other game going to such lengths to ensure that you don't feel that training is isolated from the plot. Aloy's urge to get trained is based on her eagerness to win the 'proving' (a test of valour) so that she can ask for the removal of her 'outcast' status from the tribe matriarchs and earn the right to ask them about her mysterious birth. Let me stop here and I might get death-threats from avid gamers if I reveal the entire story :-) but I do see some similarity between the training methodology adopted in Horizon and in God of War (yet to be released version targeting the PS4 Pro).THE SETTING IN FUTURE---------------------The game is set in the future where human civilization has collapsed while the advanced machines they built roam free. The remaining humans now live as various tribes and hunt both the wildlife (for food) and the machines (for parts). As Aloy, you belong to the Nora tribe. There are about 25 different machines of varying size and aggression. This 'setting' is really well thought out by the developers as this gives them the option to explore options on 2 levels:1.) Primitive: tribal ways, weapons such as bows/spears, herbs for medicine etc2.) Futuristic: Usage of tech for scanning, hacking etcThere are specialist games that target Level 1 (God of war, Far cry etc) and Level 2 (Mass effect: Andromeda, Watch Dogs etc). What Horizon does smartly is to pick interesting elements from both the levels and offer us a bundle that's really enjoyable.GRAPHICS--------I was luckly enough to own a 4K TV (LeECO Super3 55" 4K Smart TV) and I can assure you that I've never seen this level of detailing and graphics in any other game. Part of the reason is because this game was engineered with the PS4 Pro hardware in mind with its full potential unleashed when linked up with a 4K TV. The reflections, water effects and the environments are just stunning and my wife assumed I was watching an animated movie in 4K when she walked in during a cut-scene when Aloy was training.Those who have a Full HD TV need not feel disheartened as the game would be displaying at much higher FPS and you would still find the graphics and rendering awesome.GAMEPLAY--------I've haven't played any other big adventure game in the PS4 and hence cannot provide any comparisons. What I can say is that the gameplay is as fluid as any gamer would want from an action-adventure game with an open world format. Gamers agree that gameplay is what really makes a game tick. Graphics and storyline is fine but lets face it, we are not going to be looking at the trees/leaves/water all the times claiming "the graphics is just awesome". Ofcourse, we do appreciate the shaders and the environment BUT what matters more is the gameplay and the character interactions during fights/missions. Horizon really has ensured that we are not let down in this department. The battles and puzzles are really fun and you do not get frustrated in any way by the controls.The gameplay also touches the 'human' element in us when we are required to make decisions and the options are presented to us. We can choose to be smart, patient or just forgiving. These response levels different in various stages of the game and our responses would trigger certain changes in the behaviour of other entities and/or the information they provide us. This sometimes puts us in an interesting dilemma which adds to this games amazing storyline.Crafting weapons is another aspect of the game that oozes satisfaction. We collect wood, wires and lots of other materials to craft numerous weapons including arrow heads which range from fire arrows, to stone to immobilizer power tazer wires. If you haven't done this 'crafting' before in any other game and are more used to clicking "shop" option in games to just buy/upgrade weapons, then you are in for treat when you experience this.COST----This game certainly falls in the higher side as far as cost is concerned. It isn't as expensive as 'Mass Effect:Andromeda', but is certainly more expensive than other games. But it is worth this? Do we get enough fun? The answer is a resounding YES for both the questions.CONCLUSION----------In my opinion, this is one of the best console games out there right now. Those who are worried about the price can probably wait for some more time as I'm sure Sony will release some PS4 Pros bundled with Horizon Zero Dawn for a lower price. But either ways, this is just an amazing game that really sets the way forward for the developers as far as action-adventure genre goes.The only downside for this game is that it's a Playstation 4 exclusive and will not be available for PC and XBOX. That being said, Guerrilla games would have probably received the funding for this project from Sony specificaly for the exclusivity.Anyways, the game engine DECIMA which was upgraded and used for this game development will be the focal point for Guerrilla Games going forward and hopeful they would send out similar titles on other platforms in the long run.5 Stars to Guerrilla Games and I won't be surprised if this games sweeps most of the gaming awards for 2017.[...]f you have any queries, please let me know as a 'comment' and I will try to answer you.Thanks a ton!

I would recommend going for a different game like GTA5 , TLOU, BATMAN, ETC be it if you already have all the PS4 and others then you can go for it. It has long dialogue sessions and sticky camera which is unadjustable. Graphics are beautiful and a lot of stuff to run out inventory space , many side missions enough to keep you occupied for almost 2 weeks. If their were a sequel to this game it would have made into the PS4 classics. That's all