Horizon Forbidden West (2022)

Getting into this a bit more now, got past the rather long intro and I'm now in the forbidden west. Love the vistas and overall presentation. I really appreciate a good photo mode too, been able to capture some shots during the first few hours.

I like how I spotted this mechanical bird whilst exploring and then next minute I was able to scale up the structure to sneak up on it. The free climbing in this game is quite impressive!

I love this game but some of the melee arena tutorials are unbelievably awful. They want you to perform certain combos. If you, for some completely 100% unknown reason do something the game things is wrong, it just says "wrong imput". And you have to start over. Just. Literally the worst and most impossible "tutorials" i have seen in the 1600+ games i've played. Zero guidance. I passed one just by accident. No idea what i did differently. I had to do a certain combo that involves "wait". No indication what they mean. One second? Half a second? 3 nanoseconds? None.

And you can't fight the actual arena boss without completing these shitty tutorials. I've only managed to get to the first one and the boss fight was infinitely easier than the tutorial. Just... why? Just let me fucking fight the boss.

I started Horizon Zero Dawn but never finished it and was intrigued by the sequel so I fired it up. Boy am I sorry I never finished the original as there is a huge amount of interesting world building reveals that they just dump on you in the beginning. A bit disappointed they do this via a voice-over recap as opposed to organically in the world reminding the player what happened and give some character perspective on it.

While the world, history and characters seem intriguing, I am not sure about the actual gameplay. I haven’t had much of a chance to do any given the long setup and tutorializing. I am cautiously optimistic but know that these open world games require quite a commitment to see them through. The gameplay needs a good loop to propel me through.

Found a pretty cheap physical copy in a second hand shop today and have been meaning to check out the sequel for ages so picked it up.

Hoping its something my partner enjoys too as she usually watches me game when she's not playing something. Really interested to see if they improve everything that the first game got right or if it's just the same thing with a few new features and a new location.

This is an extremely delayed update, but here goes! I was finally able to snag a PS5 back in mid-March and this was the first game I booted up. I found I bounced off it after about 10-12 hours - you never want that! Never a good feeling...

I was relatively hot off the heels of playing and thoroughly enjoying the Frozen Wilds DLC from the first game, so maybe it was a case of too much of a good thing, but my main two points of friction was that I felt like I was too 'squishy' when taking things into melee range, and I just couldn't for the life of me figure out that skill tree. I banged my head against that and re-spec'd a few times and nothing really felt like it was clicking.

Having just read a really positive review posted here, I'm going to make time to get back to it..

The power of being susceptible to influence (and maybe wishful thinking...)

If you have read my review of Forbidden West you know I liked the game a lot, but not as much as the first one. This DLC fixed a lot of things of the main game. Aloy doesn't speak to herself as much and no longer spoils puzzles (unless you're really struggling) and the gameplay bugs are a thing of the past.

But what I really loved of this DLC is that we finally see an Aloy able to fall in love. Its cute as hell. I also really like new mechanics like diving with the Seawing and the Zenith weapon.

You can read my full review in spanish of the DLC in GamerFocus.

Other thing that really helps the DLC is the smaller map. Perfect for exploration without getting overwhelming like the one in the main game. Sadly, it looks to similar to an area of the main game.

That said, the final boss fight is a fucking spectacle. OMG.

I wrote a guide (in spanish) about how to get all the Pangea Dinosaur figures and the answers to the Dino Digits puzzle on the Burning shores expansion.

If this could be useful to you, you can find it here.

I will have my review of the DLC and maybe a couple more guides soon.

I kinda wanna watch the fake Jurassic Park-ish movies that they talk about in the game.