After beating the Final Fantasy XII HD remaster in the first week of September I decided I'd take my sweet time and savor the next game I played. The grinding and fast-forwarding was pleasant and nostalgic but after so many hours I was ready for the open world action RPG gameplay that Horizon: Zero Dawn had been promising for months. Not too long after finishing the tutorial aka "The Proving" Horizon sets you off on a vague adventure to rid the world of its problems. Without cranking up the difficulty beyond Normal I quickly realized that the games difficulty was more or less artificial once you'd acquired all weapon types and had a little practice with each type of machine. Your 'Focus' and spear give such an upper hand against human opponents it becomes comical. But I'm honestly not here to review the game, or giggle about how easy it can be... My experience with Horizon was easygoing, casual, and the thrill of exploration never wore off across 50+ hours because the game is ceaselessly beautiful. So, here are some pictures and thoughts on how I spent my September evenings, chillfully scrambling and rolling my way through this robot-manufacted post-Earth terrarium. Was playing on a PS4 Pro so the images are in 4K but won't necessarily reflect the HDR settings I had applied when taking the screenshots. Spoilers everywhere.
And that's it. 53 hours later I'm done with this game. The story was perhaps better than comparable games like Tomb Raider/Rise of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 3 but Aloy was robotic, asexual, and purely interested in justice above all else. She is the anti-Geralt and perhaps too wooden to warrant another starring role, though when I was able to choose her heart over her head in dialogue options she came across like a fully decent human being. The game is incredibly beautiful, too. Anyhow, I'll likely fully review the game this coming week even though I think a quick little photo safari is all the game needs to sell its value.
Next up is Dishonored: Definitive Edition for PS4, a game I never finished on PS3 but am quickly discovering great love for and of.
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