I tried "Horizon: Zero Dawn". Cracked one, because if possible I prefer to first try a game before purchasing it, especially at that price. Even if it can be refunded. I played it almost for 2 hours according to clock and... It sucks.
It looks nice visually, but that's all it has going for it, to be honest. There are lots of little things, that are just sticking nails into my eyes (and ears), that I could not continue anymore.
I understand why they start with you playing a younger version of Aloy, since it's tutorial and stuff. But... She seems quite old enough to already know that stuff (that is how to survive), because if the setting was real, she would have been dead unless she knew that. That is if you consider those robots as actual and active threat.
But somehow she does not have a sense of danger at all and does not know fully grasps the idea of being an outcast. And has too big of a head for a child. In a world that seems to have way more robots, than actual wild-life (besides rabbits). What are people even eating?
The story is also started quite cliched, but that could be accepted, if dialogues were not this bad. They were boooooring. And audio logs were, too. I was literally falling asleep. Wooden faces did not help the matter either.
But maybe it's just needs to speed things up and Aloy simply needs to grow-up... Maybe, but her motivation to conduct the training is quite week, at least if this setting was even a tiny bit realistic and full of danger.
You see how I've already mentioned danger several times? The thing is: the sense of a dangerous world is important. It does not necessarily need to be like Dark Souls or something. Tomb Raider reboot actually delivered the sense of danger despite Lara becoming commando pretty fast. It did that with little animations, sounds, lighting, intense cutscenes...
Here Aloy is dropped into a cave, that she is not supposed to go in and she just strolls through it. There are only a few shakes here and there. Real child in such a position would be scared. She fell into a dark place with corpses and weird lights and the world around is supposed to be filled with danger, yet she does not bat an eye and puts on some weird device on her forehead. How did she not die years ago?
And then you see that "tall grass", where you need to hide. It's see-through, no matter how you look at it. And when Aloy is grown-up, her head is sticking from the grass. How the hell those robots do not see her if they are so advanced? Why do they not have heat vision, if they were meant to attack humans?
And then there are things that break immersion further: floating violet texts, UI sounds (especially notifications), that seem too mechanical for the setting, weird path-lines.... Oh and robots, that are scared of you. And out of place campfires. And empty world.
I am reminded of 2 games here: Mad Max, which was ok in terms of gameplay and story but was ruined by emptiness of the world, but it made sense there, at least... Because desert is the setting of the game. And Tomb Raider, since it also was an open world game with female protagonist and was awesome on many levels. Horizon is a far cry from both. In fact, I think even Re:Core was way more consistent and tighly-coupled. Better buy it and support the developer, than waste way more on Horizon.
