Just as you think the story of this game can't get any more ridiculous, it reaches new depths of absurdity. If only Guerrilla would recognize that ridiculousness and embraced it. Instead they execute this game with a deadly lack of levity and it's all so overtly serious and dull. Never more than now do I lament the loss of studios like Japan Studio and Sony's other weirder creative studios because if more of Horizon, God or War and TLOU2 is what we are in for from the majority of Sony's studios, the future seeds decidedly humorless and grim.

Suffice to say I really didn't have a good time. Sony has done an excellent job of late backing projects that feel soulless, derivative, and that feel like actively negative and draining experiences. From Days Gone to Kena: Bridge of Spirits to HFW I have had a bad time with Sony games in the last six months, and toward the end of each I've simply wanted to escape. I worry about the future of what seems like an increasingly homogenized approach to game design and game stories coming out of Sony and its studios or partners.

Several critics have already better articulated my problems with this game, so I’ll just include some point form notes I made while playing along with links to some of my discussion of the game here on Grouvee.

• The game makes liberal use of decontextualized indigenous imagery, emptied of meaning and made to serve a largely aesthetic function. The common argument against this criticism is that the people of the game are not emulating real indigenous people because they exist in the future and have no knowledge of indigenous cultures, thus they have organically replicated aspects of indigenous culture and society. The problem with this is the Guerrilla is very much a studio in the here and now that has chose to borrow heavily from indigenous cultures to construct several of the groups within the game. But as I say, they decontextualize that culture, detach it from real peoples. And the problem with that is that indigenous people have long had their culture taken from them, reframed by colonizing forces, and re-ascribed to them in ways that remove their agency. Thus there are no indigenous people, no indigenous representation in HFW, there is only images and cultural elements that have been codified through colonial appropriation to stand in for "savage", "tribespeople", "Indians" and the like. HFW is just more of that, a borrowing, hollowing out and then further codification of colonialized versions of the "North American Indian". And when an entire game revolves around a white character that knows more than everyone else because she has access to the knowledge of "civilization", it's hard not to read representation of groups like the Tenakth in unfavourable ways.

• A disappointing sequel to a game that took the Ubisoft open world formula and polished it to near mechanical perfection, and yet the sequel manages to be about as janky as some Ubisoft titles.

• A silly and ludicrous story that is played deadpan. Jumps sharks that are jumping other sharks and doubles down on the worst elements of the first game.

• The devs have no faith in the player. Explorer mode hand holds the player’s hand through every step of the game and Aloy verbally walks you through the solution of every puzzle in the game. What then is the purpose of the fucking guided mode?

• Climbing has taken a significant step backward. Instead of free climbing, HFW introduces additional climbing points, many of which repeatedly fail, which leads to some atrocious climbing experiences.

• Machines are still fun to hunt and fight. That alone makes the rest of this inept game partially bearable.

Some links to my ongoing commentary about the game here on Grouvee:

• On the subject of poor puzzle design and atrocious climbing
• On the game's tendency to solve even the easiest puzzles for you
• A list of bugs encountered in game
• A selection of videos illustrating common bugs in the game
• On getting stuck moving on flat terrian
• Excerpts from Malindy Hetfeld's review of the game illustrating several issues I have with HFW
• On jumping the shark
• On the conventionality of the game plus more bugs

Forbidden west is a magnificent game, a worthy followup to Zero Dawn and it's DLC. What they've done is taken the base experience of Zero Dawn and improved upon it, a lot. Everything is more expansive, more polished and more fun. The graphics sometimes look absolutely mindblowing on PS5.

There are some great new additions to the game, in form of (side) activities, new machines and the improved climbing system (which is still far from perfect, but a step forward from the previous game) and the story was much better written and engaging (there are some real wtf moments this time!), this includes the side quests! Many of them are very well written and fun to do, and the pacing of them is a lot better now.

Ofcourse there are some, small, flaws; I had to reload the save a few times because an NPC was stuck in place (they seem to be patching these rapidly), one of the achievements for platinum is semi-bugged (you normally get the destroyers for combat machines killed during the story, but the npc's can get credit for your kill and then it does not count. in that case you have to clear almost the entire arena to kill one) and those melee pits are still as nonsensical as in the first game; some of them make you do ridiculous melee combos that you would never otherwise use in the game. All in alll they are mostly minor issues, i'm looking forward to the DLC a lot! To see where the story goes from here, but also to play more of this awesome game.

This is a very popular game and plenty has been written on it so I don't feel the need to write nearly as involved of a review as I normally would.

The worst thing about Forbidden West is that it came out right before Elden Ring. If it had come out a year or so earlier, I think it would've generated so much more buzz and people would've talked about it much longer. But while it took the open-world formula and, in my opinion, greatly expanded, adapted, and massively improved it in a way that made it feel fresh, Elden Ring did the same, but even more so...and came out a week later. I was definitely interested in both and planned to finish Forbidden West in a week as I knew once Elden Ring dropped, I wouldn't touch it till that was done (and I was right!). That said, I found Forbidden West engrossing and a lot of fun and honestly had 0 issue finishing it in that time frame (okay I did actually finish it the day Elden Ring came out but cut me some slack, it's was a 40-hour playthrough while I was working full-time that week). But anyway, I don't want to just compare the game to Elden Ring, but had to get that out of the way as it shaped a lot of how I viewed the game in retrospect and how I think the community buzz treated it (or didn't), in lieu of its immediate successor.

As someone who enjoyed Zero Dawn a lot, I think there's a lot of the same things to appreciate in its sequel, that are greatly improved in most every way. The general look and feel is much the same: you control Aloy exploring a massive open world full of enemies, points of interest, dungeons, and side quests on your way to completing the main story. But things felt so much more streamlined in a way that was hard for me to quantify. Movement and combat just feel better and more fine-tuned. I found platforming to be more interestingly done and generally felt less clunky. The points of interest had more unique geography to make them far less repetitive, and the world, while I throw no shade at Zero Dawn, looks way better and has much more in the way of vistas. It's still an open-world game and that's a genre I'm getting tired of, but I felt like this entry breathed new life into the style, interestingly by mostly just doing it better, rather than massively modifying the formula. And frankly, it's just cool to see that. Sure innovation can be good, but I have always felt there's really something to be said for design that just takes a concept and does it very well.

The best thing about Forbidden West to me is its environmental visuals. I'm a little sad that on PS5 I tend to not take many screenshots to share here and I don't really want to use someone else's from online, but this game is gorgeous. It's probably in the top 5 for graphics of games I've played, but beyond that, it has great art direction for the landscapes; the vistas are simply incredible. In combination, I think that makes Forbidden West the best-looking game I've played on a holistic level, even now as I write this review over a year later. I can't really overstate the serenity I had of just traveling through the game under a star-filled sky, looking on the detailed rendering of a beautiful landscape in the distance. It's a game about people surviving and rebuilding a world nearly destroyed by mistakes that blatantly parallel ones made on a global level today, but one of the main themes of these games is the beauty and resilience of nature and Forbidden West expresses this theme visually even better than its predecessor.

I have heard some complaints about the story, but I mostly found it pretty engrossing and it was one reason I was able to play through the game so quickly. I worried that with the revelations of Zero Dawn, there wouldn't really be that much of interest in the lore to learn and explore narratively with a sequel, but this game certainly opened things up a lot and I'm interested to see where things may go in the next one as, admittedly, the game does end on a sort of cliffhanger.

Overall, I found Forbidden West a plenty enjoyable experience. It's not perfect and some of it is done better elsewhere. But above all, it's a very beautiful game with themes that are as pertinent to our times as they are heavy-handed in the narrative.

2017 war Horizon Zero Dawn trotz seiner generischen Open World mit Ubi-Soft Formel ein sehr gutes Abenteuer und der technische Show Case für die PS4 Pro. Dabei wurde das Spiel durch eine komplexe, mysteriöse Geschichte getragen, die erst langsam den aktuellen Zustand der Welt mit ihren Maschinenwesen erklärte. Nur wenige Wochen später zeigte Zelda: Breath of the Wild jedoch eindringlich, wie eine offene Welt hinsichtlich organischer Erkundung besser aufgebaut werden kann. Für den Nachfolger reicht es deshalb nicht nur in die Fußstapfen des Vorgängers zu treten. Man erwartet von dieser Marke eine klare Weiterentwicklung der Open World Spiele.

Technisch ist Horizon Forbidden West der erwartete Show Case auf PS5. Landschaften und Maschinenwesen sind bzgl. Animationen und v.a. Texturen erstklassig. Die NPC-Animationen fallen außerhalb der Cut-Scenes im Vergleich schwächer aus. Die cineastische (Über-)Beleuchtung, in Kombinationen mit den Lens Flare-Effekten bei Nacht, ist dagegen wohl Geschmackssache. Die musikalische Untermalung hinterlässt einen guten Eindruck. Die neuen, effektreichen Elektro-Beats in den Kämpfen bereichern das musikalische Ensemble und bilden einen gelungenen Kontrast zu den Orchesterstücken. Lediglich überlappende Audiospuren von Aloy während Questdialogen fallen beim Sound negativ auf.

Bei der Story kann Forbidden West leider nicht an seinen Vorgänger anknüpfen. Klar, das Geheimnis um Zero Dawn und die Erschaffung (oder Vernichtung) der Welt ist gelüftet. Leider schafft es die Geschichte, um eine neue Bedrohung im Westen, nicht dieselbe Faszination auszuüben wie die Urgeschichte und verheddert sich gegen Ende in SciFi-Bla-Bla. Dafür sind die zahlreichen Charaktere deutlich besser in Szene gesetzt und bekommen mehr Tiefe als im Vorgänger. Generell ist die Inszenierung in den Cutscenes und Dialogen die gravierendste Verbesserung im Vergleich zu Zero Dawn. Dies gilt insbesondere auch für die Nebenquests, die hier sogar an Witcher 3 herankommen.

Kommen wir nun aber zum Maschinen-Elefant im Raum, der Open World. Hier tritt Guerilla absolut auf der Stelle und nimmt weder Elemente aus Breath of the Wild noch aus den Entwicklungen der klassischen Open-World Spiele auf. Die Karte ist immer noch vollgepumpt mit Quest Markern und abseits dieser Marker gibt es eben auch nichts zu entdecken. Die Charakterinteraktion beschränkt sich neben getriggerten Questdialogen auf kleine Grußformeln. Eine dynamische NPC-Interaktion wie bei RDR2 sucht man vergebens. Schlimmer noch: NPCs folgen nicht mal einem Tagesablauf und stehen wie angewurzelt in der Welt. Der Tag-Nacht-Ablauf wirkt nicht so organisch und nachvollziehbar wie in BotW und wird im Zuge einiger Hauptquests auch mal künstlich beschleunigt.

Aber auch im Gameplay sind die Altlasten zu spüren. Das Klettern in der Welt ist trotz größerer kletterbarer Bereiche hakelig. Zudem beharrt man auf dem (ausufernden) Looten von Kisten und Pflanzen mittels gedrückter Dreieck Taste, obwohl dass Looten selbst nicht sauber animiert wird. Das Blitz-Looten aus Ghost of Tsushima hätte der Ermüdung beim Sammeln hier Einheit geboten. Die Kämpfe gegen die Maschinen bleiben dagegen ein Highlight. Leider gibt es aber hier im Vergleich zu wenig neue Kreaturen. Bei der Fortbewegung in der Welt sind das Schwimmen und Tauchen eine gelungene Neuerung und bilden im späteren Verlauf die Basis für die besten Momente des Spiels. Das absolute Highlight der Erkundung, auf das ich aus Spoilergründen nicht eingehe, kommt dagegen viel zu spät im Spielverlauf.

Dies alles klingt nun sehr negativ. Dabei ist Forbidden West für das Jahr 2022 trotzdem ein gutes Open-World Action Adventure und ist für all jene, die auch heute noch gern die Feierabend-Open Worlds a la Assassins Creed abgrasen, das beste Spiel dieser Machart. Das Genre nachhaltig prägen wird es aber nicht. Vor 5 Jahren stand Horizon Zero Dawn trotz neuer Marke und interessanter Welt im Schatten von Breath of the Wild. Dasselbe Schicksal droht nun auch Forbidden West, denn das „Next Big Thing“ der Open World Spiele steht in den Startlöchern. Ob Elden Ring die überbordenden Erwartungen erfüllen kann und die Open-World derartig weiterentwickeln kann wie 2017 Breath of the Wild? Der Test wird es zeigen.

Playtime: 135 hours (~95% completed)

Played: 2024

Expectation: I loved Horizon 1 but this got some mixed reviews so i was a bit unsure.

Intro

HFW is the sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn. You play as Aloy, a girl from a small tribe in a post-post-apocalyptic Earth. HFW is a third-person ARPG in which you fight robot animals, do quests, gather resources, upgrade weapons, develop skills, learn about the past and try to restore the planet.

The Good

• Ashly Burch is amazing, after playing this i wanted every protagonist to be Aloy instead of some grumpy dude.
• Also loved her and Seyka.
• More memorable characters than HZD.
• Looks amazing, especially the environments.
• The story is good, even though it is nowhere near as interesting or touching as HZD.
• Vastly improved melee.
• Lots of new enemies.
• A bunch of new weapons.
• Absolutely zero technical issues.
• Bigger map.
• You get to fly eventually.
• Excess loot goes to your stash instead of being wasted.
• Balance seems a bit better.
• Bandit camps are really fun.

The Bad

• The arena is really awful, hard and not worth it.
• Melee arena tutorials are bad.
• Burning Shores DLC is a bit underwhelming, aside from the main quest.
• I had to look up where to go a couple of times because of unlikely jumps.

The Ugly

• You still have to gather 20 million rat's arses to upgrade ammo pouches.
• Upgrading weapons takes so many parts that it becomes a real annoyance.
• Crafting ammo gets annoying because you can't just craft excess ammo to put in your stash for later.

Conclusion

HFW is just a good sequel. More of the stuff you liked in the first game, a bunch of improvements, and they fixed the bugs. The story is a bit over-the-top in one regard, but i liked it. Despite some flaws, it's an amazing game. I was actually disappointed that i was done with non-arena/trial content after "only" 135 hours. I wanted more bandit camps, more quests, more Aloy & Seyka, etc. Despite having some of the trappings of Ubisoft open world games, it never gets tiresome. If you like hunting big monsters and exploring a unique post-post-apocalyptic world, play HZD then this.

Some more screenshots:

I really really (really) liked Horizon Zero Dawn (as can be seen from my review). I was really looking forward to the next installment. To a large degree HFW delivers. The vistas are still beautiful, the lands filled with things to see and do and the main plot is quite engaging. Finishing it gave me a real sense of accomplishment..

However, whether it was because this game isn't as tight as the first or just because nothing can out-original an original, I wasn't as keen on this as I was on the first one. For one example, I lost all sense of urgency in the latter part of the game, and found the post-climax walking-around-the land to be somewhat ridiculous, as people refer to the plot device of the next game, but only in passing, even though it's a major thing.

I also found that there were a lot of things to do that were just busy-work, at least for me as an alumnus of HZD: The hunting grounds felt boring, the Strike mini-game felt tacked-on, and the Rebel Outposts looked interesting, but the structure of these missions didn't cohere well with the story. In general, by the end of the game I pretty much had it with fighting robo-animals. Quite a few of the tribal towns seemed the same (especially in Tenakth territory).

There are still many cool and fun things (gliding and flying,m for one!), a few very varied characters. Emotionally impactful bits of story and an interesting cultural take on the Quen. Recommended!