Mecha-Dinocalypse on the horizon, or at least dawning on anyone?

That’s all he does now

1 Like

Well I’d say he’s earned it.

1 Like

Carpenter sued over that Lockout movie for being a ripoff of Escape from New York but he stopped his lawyers from suing konami cause he likes Metal Gear Solid

7 Likes

What a bad ass.

I got this game because I just moved to my own place finally (with a couple of roommates) and my dad got us a 4K TV with HDR. Playing back and forth between a regular 1080p tv and that 4K HDR TV you can really tell just how much of a difference that HDR makes- the game looks radically different on the two TVs. It’s quite amazing just how much more gorgeous this game is with HDR.

I admittedly had little interest in this game because I don’t enjoy the standard AAA open world RPG template that every game follows and this game didn’t look much different. The new TV and the overwhelmingly positive reviews tipped me into trying it out and, well, it follows the standard AAA open world RPG template. The setting and characters pulled me in more than I expected they would and I would like to see how the story plays out but the overall experience feels fairly by the numbers despite the robot dinosaurs. There’s a large world to explore but there isn’t much to see or do other than find the collectibles (which I did not know existed until I bought some maps from a shop that ended up listing the approximate locations of them). There are no interesting land marks or sights to point out within the large opening area of the game. It’s quite beautiful, yes, but it’s just a bunch of forests and plains.

For as long as the opening of this game takes you predominantly fight 2-3 enemy types and two of those types usually run away on sight, meaning for all the hours I’ve played (I’ve just done some exploring after finishing the The Proving, so while technically it’s not far into the story my actual game time due to just running arond is probably around 5-8 hours) I’m still just fighting the simple, first enemy from the beginning of the game! These Watchers just kind of lunge at you and occasionally use the Solar Flare from Dragonball- they aren’t very involved or challenging but I imagine they eventually serve the purpose of Jaggis gnawing at your feet while you’re fighting something bigger. I could see the combat being fun if the enemies get more involved because it sure gives you a lot of tools that you don’t really need for quite a while.

Due to that I’ve steadily been trying to increase the game’s challenge by increasing the difficulty level and turning off HUD elements. I’m glad it lets you individually adjust each element between always on, dynamically appearing, or never appearing because there is a lot on the screen at once and several elements are redundant or superfluous, making specific game states (enemy awareness, stealth status) explicit with icons rather than you following just very clear visual cues in-game. I suppose this lets them accommodate both casual players and people who don’t want as much hand holding but by default there are so many icons on screen that it makes the game a bit of a mess visually. The screen doesn’t have any space to breath.

I suppose I’ve primarily criticized the game but I don’t really dislike it so far. The setting is cool, I like the concept of the combat and the robot dinosaurs and I hope that gets develops further, but so much of it is the safe game design we’ve been seeing from the genre in years.

But boy does it look good! If everyone starts copying the new Zelda instead of Assassin’s Creed then Horizon 2 sure could be cool!

a lot of Sony’s US teams seem to have really nailed the technical stuff this cycle while not doing too much of real interest mechanically. halfway there!

1 Like

The Netherlands has become a US state sooner than Puerto Rico did. (Guerilla Games are in Amsterdam)

1 Like

Oops, my fault for mentally associating them with sucker punch. I guess that makes sense as otherwise I couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t been absorbed into Santa Monica.

ahaha I can’t believe Sucker Punch still hasn’t announced

So I’ve broke 30 hours on this and I think I’m on the last main story quest. I’m going to finish it tonight, at least that particular quest, and then get the super duper powerful old world armor and be nigh-invincible for the rest of the game (I’m going to 100% complete platinum trophy this one I think).

In most ways it is a Far Cry lawnmower sim type open world game because I guess that’s what people expect open world games to be. It does not let you put the icons on your map like in Breath of the Wild (I really hope that design decision becomes the new standard for open worlders going forward) but dang if fighting robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow isn’t pretty fun!

1 Like

I figured out this game takes place in colorado. that’s like three video games now. we’re moving up

you can find mile high stadium which is kind of cool, except mile high stadium 2 is an ugly blight

1 Like

And Utah!

My enjoyment with this game keeps teetering back and forth. Whenever I start to get bored with the combat by figuring out the optimal strategies for whatever robots I’m fighting and I consider quitting the game it introduces a new robot that has more numerous, more interesting attacks and my interest gets revitalized again. But I’m sure these enemies too will become easy at some point and the cycle will continue (I already see the best strategy for the aerial robots is to just apply an elemental status effect and they crash to the ground, open to attack). Perhaps the game is at its best when you’re combating several enemy types at once, something it hasn’t done much of in these first 15 hours (I just got to the desert).

I do like the emphasis on aiming for specific weak-points on the robots as opposed to just pelting them with as many arrows as you can. There are body parts you can destroy to disable specific attacks and elementally charged parts can be shot with same-element weapons to set off an elemental explosion ( for example you can shoot an ice canister with an ice arrow to cause an explosion that freezes everything in the blast radius). But as far as raw damage output goes you don’t do much if you just shoot the side of a robot. Their metal plating blocks the majority of damage, leaving your arrows to do damage somewhere in the teens. If you blow or tear off any of the metal plates on a robot you can do a bit more damage if you hit that spot but if you really want to do damage you have to aim for the eyes, where you can do around 70 damage with a good shot. The game trains you in this with the first few enemies you fight, who have very large eyes that are easy to target from a distance.


But now I’m fighting enemies like these:

Part of the challenge of later enemies is that hitting their eyes requires significantly more precision. The eyes of that rhino are recessed and hidden behind the horns on its head so you can’t shoot it from head on. The glinthawk bird is small and constantly flying around so it’s difficult to lead your shots on. This is where your abilities to lock a robot in place with something like shock element attacks or tie them down with rope become more important to combat. That isn’t difficult to manage when you’re dealing with only a couple of robots however, since you can take your time to focus on one at a time. That’s why I’m hoping larger brawls become more prominent and I can’t take time lining up my shots without the threat of being trampled from behind. Destroying body parts could be more important since that limits their abilities to hinder you when aiming for eyes.

And boy is this game gorgeous.

2 Likes

The combat mechanics in this game are fun enough such that I haven’t minded playing it for around 55 hours so far and I don’t really feel like I’m far into the story (part of this could be because I’ve been running everywhere instead of fast traveling and traversing the map takes roughly 30 minutes to get from one end to the other, and that’s when you’re ignoring fights along the way). But I think it’s held back by the design of the open world and it’s lenient difficulty (even on very hard).

Robots don’t spawn randomly anywhere but rather inside specific areas designated as “[X] Sites” (Snapmaw sites, Grazer sites, Thunderjaw sites, etc). There is randomness where exactly in the site they’ll be positioned when you come across them but to be honest that doesn’t really matter much because the majority of these sites are open spaces. You rarely have to contend with the environment and your position within it, and that really detracts from the encounter variety over the long haul. In almost every encounter you can use the same strafing and dodging tactics and not worry about running into a wall or getting backed into a corner nor can you lure an enemy into a bad position where you can gain a momentary advantage. There are a few spaces you encounter that feel explicitly designed and they stand out in contrast to most other encounters you’ll be facing in the open world.

As far as my complaint about monster leniency, this is probably in part due to the lack of environmental challenge but contending with enemy attacks is too simple. Every enemy has a small variety of attacks which admittedly are fairly different and they can all catch right up to you by either running or doing lunging attacks so it’s not like you can just constantly run away and take pot shots in the open plains, but dealing with all of them is as simple as pressing dodge while holding left or right. And while technically this is how you do things in games like Monster Hunter and Dark Souls too, it’s not just not as satisfying here. I feel like I need to be more wary of how close I am to each particular type of robot and not have the comfort of knowing I can press dodge to save myself anytime.

I’m sure GG is trying to straddle a line between MH style challenge and a more casual, AAA approach to fighting several monsters at once and I guess I’d just like it more towards the MH side of things. When fighting multiple enemies it certainly is easier to get hurt but that’s because you’re liable to be hit by a monster from outside of your field of view. If you just make sure to try and keep everything in view it shouldn’t be too much more difficult to handle, maybe just a bit longer while you wait for a moment between all enemy attacks before taking shots with your weapons.

I’m in the middle of a mission that’s explaining the What Happened In The Past and that story is fine but I feel like most of the story quests are either fighting humans (no one wants to do that in a game with robot dinosaurs) or walking through ruins listening to a dozen audio logs (not a very exciting narrative technique). Most story scenes are Bioware style talking heads too.

Edit: I’m not sure if I mentioned it already but this game looks phenomenal.

I’ve got some videos of weird glitches and stuff that have happened that I’ll post later. This is a surprisingly climbable game even if the geometry doesn’t look it. It’s got Assassin’s Creed style climbing mechanics but only on very specific things on certain walls so it’s not like a general use system. However it feels like object geometry is often long and flat enough that you can jump up obstacles in ways you probably weren’t meant too (I have a video where I skipped fighting all the enemies guarding ladders by just jumping up the side of some debris to the goal, which had a Kill All Enemies button).

4 Likes

Yeah, I think the open world really hurts their ability to match Monster Hunter. There are a couple areas with cliffs where you can see it start to work, but I think they’d have been well served to build the world more like Dragon’s Dogma. As it stands I can choose to engage or disengage almost at will. Water is sometimes interesting with the crocobots, cliffs can work well with the buzzardbots, and I like how the chickenbots can suddenly escalate a managed fight.

Been liking this game a lot. I really can’t understand anyone who says it’s mechanically shallow. The weapons really push you to play sneaky. While getting in close. Different weapons have really pushed me to try different things while relying on the shots with my arrow.

The economy is fairly tight I’m always feeling behind and really choosing things I can’t afford. Unless an upswing happens I don’t know how I’m supposed to afford some things, which is different to how I usually experience games.

Currently, I’m looking at fast travel. I thought the limited uses was interesting and avoided it. But the unlimited fast travel is interesting. I’d actually avoid it if it wasn’t so much cheaper in practice than the normal ones.

1 Like

The Frozen Wilds wins “Best Snow Scrunching Sounds” of 2017.

1 Like

:thinking:

truly the terror of the plains (I’m not kidding either)

This thread was really from 3 years ago! Where are all the Horizon heads at now? There’s at least a couple more since then. There’s a new one of these coming out and it has even more grass!

I started a new game+ a few months ago after getting the frozen wilds dlc but I haven’t gone back to it yet. I should do the dlc at least before this comes out (which will probably be a few years).

1 Like