Horizon Forbidden West is absolutely superb (Review) [No Spoilers]

this video is brought to you by surfsharkvpn stick around to the end of the video for a special offer they're making available through my channel all right let me start here i don't score games but if i did horizon forbidden west would be a solid nine and a half and if you were to tell me you thought it was a 10 i'd be like fair enough man i can totally see that i am blown away by how good this game is as someone who loved horizon zero dawn i really can't believe just how much of a step up this is in most aspects not all but most and i think the scale of gorilla games achievement here is astounding i liken it a lot to mass effect 2. now i'm not saying it's as good as mass effect 2 because that's a dumb comparison they're totally different games i'm talking about the leap in quality and scale that exists from mass effect 1 to 2. mass effect 1 was [ __ ] incredible but it was also a little rough around the edges a little narrow in its structure and scope it certainly had some quirks that could have done with some work looking at you mako so along comes mass effect 2 keeps what works fixes all the busted [ __ ] massively broadens out the scale of it and injects it with this massive dose of cash so the production value of the sequel was just off the charts that's exactly what horizon forbidden west does it protects and improves what previously works it fixes what was broken it broadens out aloy's adventure into a sprawling sci-fi epic and it sets it in a world so beautiful you can scarcely believe that a 500 console can produce it these aren't the only comparison points to a bioware game though funnily enough where horizon zero dawn was largely a story about aeloy and her singular struggle forbidden west pivots eloy's focus to one of coalition building both figuratively and literally aloy cannot succeed in her quest alone so she'll travel far and wide in an attempt to unite the desperate and warring forces of the forbidden west in so doing she'll turn to friends new and old and as she assists them a closeness emerges that is different to the relationships she formed in the previous game that's reflected both narratively and structurally as your companions become the beating heart of this game driving for not only the game's most emotive moments but also some of its most worthwhile side quests all of this sits alongside one of the best open worlds i've experienced in a video game and i say that as someone that is very wary and weary of open world game structures at this point as many of you know the unparalleled beauty of it how dynamic it is how diverse and surprising each of its activities are how much it invites exploration and discovery you can mount machines to travel faster but i almost never did because the density of this world meant that i would have just been hopping off my mount within a few seconds anyway i conquered this landscape almost entirely on foot because that meant i could soak up as much of it as possible i haven't been able to say that of any open world game in a long ass time the defining characteristic of this world though is its savagery and i'll say again what i said horizon zero dawn there is no better combat in any open world video game than this combat right here it is a totally different model of enemy and encounter design than any other open world game is using no other open world game can match the flexibility of approach the ferocity of your foes the spectacle of it all unfolding horizon condenses the thrill of a 20-minute monster hunt into 90-second bursts and those thrills could happen absolutely anytime or anywhere no two encounters are ever the same and even the crappiest of low-level machines can produce challenge and spectacle that few open-world games can match just because i believe this is an astounding experience does not mean that i believe that it is a perfect experience obviously horizon forbidden west has some technical problems that are pretty rough sometimes they might piss you off depending on your tolerance for them its narrative might be a little too sci-fi for people personally i certainly didn't connect with its plot as much as i did its characters and its side stories i don't believe the game goes far enough to strip out some of the unnecessary complexity in the game's item and loot economy and some of the expansions to the game's combat model seem to push things further toward rock paper scissors in a way that can needlessly slow things down but despite these shortcomings horizon forbidden west is remarkable with the recent acquisition of activision blizzard by microsoft many people were like oh sony is doomed they're gonna get outspent by microsoft and google and amazon their days are numbered horizon forbidden west arrives at the perfect moment to remind everyone that that line of speculation is complete [ __ ] money alone does not produce a game like this this only happens with careful cultivation of talent and technology horizon forbidden west is yet another example of sony's winning strategy of securing amazing studios and then just standing back and letting them make what they want to make if those studios can keep making games like this then sony are going to be just fine this world is your legacy elizabeth i won't let it slip away [Music] i tested horizon forbidden west on the ps5 the game is also available on the ps4 but i didn't get a chance to test that it's not available on pc yet but you have to assume that a port will come one day i did review it with the day one patch active on the ps5 there are two graphical options resolution mode which promises 4k resolution and 30fps and performance mode which promises a dynamic resolution aimed at hitting 60fps i played performance mode because lol 30fps i was extremely impressed by how consistently that frame rate was maintained no matter what i was doing whether i was arriving in a new intricately detailed village staring out over an endless horizon or fighting half a dozen machines with particle effects and debris splashing wildly about i never dropped any frames or if i did the drop was imperceptible if you're playing this on a ps5 and in performance mode you can absolutely expect a silky smooth experience that smoothness does come at a cost most notably how hard that dynamic resolution scaling will kick in obviously the wizards at digital foundry will do a far better job of analyzing this than i can but even my untrained eye could often see instances where objects in the medium distance would appear extremely grainy similar to the effect you see when nvidia dlss is putting in the work to dynamically scale and rebuild an image like dlss it's most noticeable on more intricate objects like ground clutter or foliage but sometimes you could see it on character models or structures the biggest issue is pop in which i'm sorry to say is a big issue very often and it only gets worse the further you get into the game now i will stress i played this on the day one patch so if this is going to improve then it's not going to happen anytime soon most likely pop in is a regular feature of this game's world you will have already seen some of it in the footage i've shown you the example i'm showing you here is one of the more egregious examples but it's far from the only instance of it being like this so look is this bad yes but i'm so regularly overawed by how good this game looks and how beautiful every space is and how intricate every character and every enemy design is that i just don't really care about this like if you're gonna dislike this video game it's not gonna be because of the pop-in and if you're like myself and you love this game then you're not gonna give a [ __ ] about the pop-in it's not great it would have been nice if it were otherwise of course but the overall experience more than survives these technical glitches when the rest of the game delivers in the way that it does i think it's important to keep stuff like this in perspective outside of that i encountered only minor bugs and stability issues there was one recurring issue where fps would drop substantially and it would not fix itself until i restarted the game i recall this was an issue with the first game at least on the pc ports this is not a general frame loss issue that occurs regularly this is an obvious bug of some sort because the loss of frames is huge and sustained and a reset fixes it it only happened to me maybe three times during my playthrough but it was a little annoying beyond that i had the regular bugs you can expect in an open world game like enemies would do weird [ __ ] and a button prompt wouldn't pop up all minor stuff so like i said i think this is an overall very sound package technically speaking and so long as you don't mind some pretty crazy pop in you should have a pleasant experience playing this on day one at least on ps5 i can't comment on ps4 speaking of ps5 horizon forbidden west makes extensive use of the dual sense controller and the more i use this controller the more i love it obviously as you draw your bow back you can expect the adaptive triggers to push back more or less so depending on which weapon type you're using often you'll be prying open doors and that too will engage the adaptive triggers same goes for the grapple which is a very regularly used exploration tool and that resistance you feel in the triggers as you use it isn't a game changer but it's just a nice touch it helps communicate the exertion that alloy is experiencing so yeah i like it the controller speaker is putting in a lot of work during your playthrough every time you draw and fire your bow your controller is sounding off same with pulling out and using your grapple same with utilizing your focus and scanning targets you are regularly hearing your controller reflect the on-screen action and i think it sounds good arguably the biggest benefit of the dual sense though is the haptic feedback and this absolutely sells certain moments in the game in a way that actually does manifestly improve the experience when you step into the cover of tall grass the controller will sort of shimmer to simulate that when massive projectiles land nearby you you feel their thud through the controller when you're in a cauldron and certain areas or terminals are brooming with energy the controller is just going nuts when that's happening the dual sense is communicating something to you in a way that no other controller is able to do right now and i'm more sold on the fantasy of those locations when i can literally feel how much power is coursing through them i know that not everyone is sold on the power of the dual sense i know many think it's just a gimmick i get that but horizon forbidden west is certainly one of the best showcases for the power of the dual sense so if you're into that then you're really gonna love this the final shout out has to go to horizon's expansive suite of options both general and accessibility focused you have a huge amount of control over what appears on your hud and when it appears and most importantly a toggle for those gps guides that put down lines to steer you toward quest markers you can turn those off entirely and i really recommend doing so for reasons i'll explain later there are controller options like preset button layouts dead zone settings and the ability to control how much vibration occurs in different settings if you're finding your dual sensors is getting a little carried away there's a huge range of audio options including audio mix settings the ability to trim specific sound types like enemy machines or the sound of your own weapons and on the visual side of things there are toggles for both camera shake and motion blur allowing you to turn it off completely love that as for accessibility huge number of options here one of the most impressive accessibility menus i've seen in a game you can control how much the game is slowed down when you're bringing up your weapon wheel you can toggle an auto heal option that will automatically use healing potions when you fall below half health there's even an option for co-pilot allowing a player with a second controller to step in and begin controlling alloy at a moment's notice the thing about these accessibility options is they're not just for people with a disability they're for anyone who wants to tweak the experience i did slow down combat more when the wheel was open because why not like i don't think that breaks the game i just turned that on because i was like sure that sounds good let's do that i left pretty much everything else the same but there's one option that might interest you called easy loot which basically means that anytime you kill a machine all of its components are lootable even if you didn't shoot that off that would be great for someone who wants the challenge that this game brings but doesn't want to have to go through the material grind these are really excellent settings from both a technical and gameplay perspective and they speak to just how much love attention and care gorilla games have poured into every part of this experience [Music] the forbidden west is a place far to the west of eloy's nora homeland further west still from the city she saved it's a savage land of warring tribes of rolling deserts and frosted mountain tops and dense forests and sandy coastlines the forbidden west is a marvel seeing all of it here in 1440p resolution probably on a tiny phone screen no hdr youtube compressing the ever living [ __ ] out of it it cannot in any way do justice to the lived experience of this world when you finally get to journey through it yourself the forbidden west marries density and detail with a sense of scale in a way that few games can match what in other games would be a level of detail reserved for internal spaces only forbidden west delivers in its open spaces distant objects on the horizon that would be sky boxes and other games are real climbable landmarks here it's like what todd used to say about those mountains except you know actually true there's just so much to see in each of these spaces like the forested areas for example any frame you look at is like 10 different plant varieties tall shrubs and trees swaying in the breeze gnarled trees dense foliage a flowing creek with the best water effects you've ever seen volumetric fog sitting low and god rays shining through it all the coastline my god it's just so beautiful i just sat there and watched the sunset there because it was just so good to watch i climbed the tallest mountain i could find and gazed out over the infinite horizon i ran alongside the wreckage of machines the size of stadiums i've seen things you people wouldn't wait that's the blade runner montage again okay point is it's just not the technical grunt of the ps5 that makes this possible it's the extraordinary artists of gorilla games the forbidden west is home to three tribes each of them with their own way of life their own architecture their own dress their own tattoos and face paints each new location i walked into i would take the time to survey it both from afar and up close because it was always so impressive each new character i met his character designs they're crazy their armor their faces their adornments i would get distracted during cut scenes because i was looking at these characters just admiring how much detail had been put into every one of them and don't get me started on the machines and the technology that burst them this just takes me right back to my favorite childhood cartoon dinoritis where they strapped lasers onto dinosaurs and fought each other it was the coolest [ __ ] thing ever the horizon series is just that but with the benefit of like 30 years of technological advancement and the machines are just so stunning to behold when you plan your assault and you scan an enemy from afar i promise you you will always take a brief moment just to stand there and watch those mechanical terrors because they will always captivate you especially the high-end boss enemies who are as majestic as they are deadly bottom line every single part of horizon forbidden west looks incredible owing to both the talent of gorilla games and the power of the ps5 this is a true next-gen visual experience that makes buying a ps5 feel like a worthwhile purchase if you want to see what your ps5 can do then there's simply no better game to showcase its power than horizon forbidden west [Music] one of the more interesting things about the forbidden west is that its topography must be engaged so your average open world game gives you vast amounts of square mileage but you move through most of it without really needing to think about where each footfall will land assassin's creed the witcher 3 goes to sushima the topography always allows you to ride roughshod over it literally you can just mount up point your horse towards the marker and everything will probably be fine the forbidden west doesn't work like that it's far too dense far too vertical i actually all but abandoned mounts in this game for two reasons number one i was doing so much side content that i was having to dismount every few meters anyway but also the landscape demands that you actively navigate it you have to look where you are going and steer left of that rock or jump over it you have to run around that cliff face or climb it should you glide over that gap would you even make the jump or is it better to run a hundred meters upstream to look for a safer crossing the best comparison i can draw is to death stranding which is funny because both of these games run on the decimate engine death training was a game built entirely on moment-to-moment traversal it was slow and often frustrating purposefully so horizon forbidden west is a similar concept to that but much faster much more vertical and with almost all of the frustration removed this makes the experience of moving through this world immediately more engaging because i can never turn my brain off and just push the forward button doubly so if you engage the explorer mode in the menu which turns off the gps guidance that these games often give you i always need to be navigating path finding and that alone makes this world way more interesting than most open world games i've experienced the way forbidden west handles climbing is probably going to prove to be somewhat divisive unlike an assassin's creed game where you can just climb anything endlessly unlike breath of the wild where you can climb anything until your stamina runs out and unlike ghosts of sushima where you can only climb things with specific hand holds forbidden west has a different approach altogether there are your typical handholds denoted by bright yellow paint you'll find these on man-made structures if you ever try to climb a section of a man-made structure that doesn't have yellow paint on it it's probably not climbable even if it looks totally climbable and that definitely sucks in addition any naturally occurring structures or objects like rock faces will appear totally sheer until you ping them with your focus which will reveal a number of hand holds so two sections of rock might look identical but one of them is climbable and the other one is not that isn't great either gorilla have arrived at an awkward compromise between the guided traversal of uncharted and the free-form rock climbing of breath of the wild and the result is yeah awkward you will often find yourself frustrated by alloy's inability to climb something that is clearly climbable or frustrated with gorilla's decision to make one section of a cliff climbable and not another it feels very inorganic and gamey in an experience that feels so otherwise intuitive and seamless this is a minor gripe when set against the splendor of this world and what a genuine joy it is to move about within it and i haven't even spoken about the best part of this landscape all the stuff you get you actually do if you've watched me for a while now you'll know that i have long ago hit the point of fatigue when it comes to most open world game design i find that many of these games rely on their systems to push the player toward objectives rather than inviting them there by peaking their curiosity and i think that the copy and pasted nature of side content is fun for the first 10 or so hours while you're experiencing it for the first or second time but it all quickly wears out its welcome once you realize how similar most of it is most recently i reviewed dying light 2 and i was like i think this game does a good job with side content it held my interest for longer than most other games but i'm done with it and i don't want to do any more of it i know that you can finish horizon forbidden west in around about 30 hours i think i spent more than 50 hours with it because i was constantly being distracted by and pulled towards side content and now that i am done with the game i desperately want to go back and keep playing more of the side content because it is just that good horizon really nails a sense of discovery there are many things marked on your map but there are many that are not often you'll arrive at an unmarked clearing to find some high level thunderjaw there just hidden away with no means of being able to locate it other than just knowing it was there as you explore the world you'll bump into people who will invite you to sit down with them so they can share a rumor they overheard you might be moving from one location to another when you hear the sound of distant fighting and as you draw closer you'll see that two tribes are at war and you can either enter the fray or leave them to sort it out amongst themselves as you round a corner you might discover a herd of grazing machines and as you do you'll remember that they have some components that you need and where a moment ago you were just moving at pace towards your next objective now you're silently stalking through the grass scanning enemies and planning how to bring them down most efficiently because every engagement requires that sort of forethought i can never ever predict what i will discover when i set out in any direction on this map i went a few days playing this game where i was like okay shill up we need to get the main campaign done today stay focused and then it would be like six hours of me doing side content and i'd be like [ __ ] not again it's not just the surprise of what you might find by the way it's how rich and diverse those discoveries are there are a lot of map markers in this game but almost no two map markers are the same you'll find a set of ruins and it might be completely overgrown and crumbling or it might be an ancient facility locked down or it might be submerged entirely underwater it could be a puzzle challenge or a traversal challenge or a combat challenge you don't know the map marker says it's a ruin but that's it it doesn't tell you anything else and it could be any one of those things the tallneck radar towers are another example i mean ubisoft invented this concept where you had to climb a radio tower and then guerilla games were like okay but what if that tower was alive and walked around in a big circle and he had to find a way onto it and now here in forbidden west gorilla are like okay what if those tall necks were like side quests with multi-phase sequences combining exploration combat puzzle solving and traversal each one of them is so incredible such a standout and just how epic they are to look at as well like what a [ __ ] cool idea that was for gorilla games to be like you know what big [ __ ] dinosaurs they're our radio god i love that so much anyway the cauldrons look at these spaces man look at these these are some of the best looking video game environments i've ever seen and this is [ __ ] side content you don't have to go here imagine making something that looks this good and it's not even on the golden path and that's not even mentioning how well these cauldrons play they're like the world's prettiest jumping puzzle always different and always culminating in an epic boss encounter bandit camps sunken caves high level boss hunts salvage contractors the fight club they run in a bunch of villages the arena showdown against giant machines hell there's robo dinosaur racing in this game you race machines and try and knock each other off like some sort of post-apocalyptic mario kart everything you encounter is so well designed so unique so worth your time when you see horizon forbidden west's mess of map markers your eyes are likely to glaze over the same way that mine do when i see a map like this it's exhausting just to look at this right yes it is in almost any other game it's really not like that here the standardized map markers of forbidden west do its landmarks are great to service because they could never properly convey how much diversity exists across this untamed and unforgettable landscapes [Music] still the seed rises if there's one area where i think people may feel let down by horizon forbidden west it's most likely to be the story horizon zero dawn was an origin story you met eloy as she was just a little girl an outcast from her tribe being raised by another outcast in her desire to prove herself she trains her entire life for a rite of passage but in her moment of triumph disaster befalls her people and she is sent out on her grand quest eventually it's revealed that eloy's struggle isn't one of internecine tribal conflict but rather one against a malevolent force attempting to consume the planet whole aloy's mysterious origin story serves as both the emotional bedrock of this story as well as the key to defeating this planetary threat it was a neat coming together of both the emotional inner journey and the outer struggle against the big bad guy a formula that many sony games have adopted and have had great success with horizon forbidden west begins directly after the events of the first game and i mean directly you will pick up maybe days or weeks after the first game concluded and i would say the entire opening act of this game is couched in your knowledge of the events of the previous game referencing characters and events in a way that is likely to confuse or bore those who are coming into this franchise fresh it's rare for me to say this because i think most games do a better job of this than horizon forbidden west does but i kind of think you should play the first game before playing this one so much of it is spent referring back to the events of the past reminiscing with friends about moments that you can't see or experience in this game i think it's a little too much like i played and finished horizon zero dawn two years ago on pc and even i found myself confused and struggling to recall many of the names and terminologies being thrown at me here some games like psychonauts 2 benefit from having played the first some games like persona 5 strikers kind of require you to have played the first horizon forbidden west feels like it sits more towards that persona striker's end of the spectrum so do be aware of that as you head in sadly forbidden west does mirror the first game's sluggish start many people you'll speak to will say that they checked out zero dawn and left after about 10 hours of play and i couldn't blame them from a gameplay and narrative perspective i think those first 10 hours are a real slog and the game gets infinitely better once you cross over into the desert something similar happens here in forbidden west where the first 10 hours or so are just so focused on the events of the previous game that can feel like the story isn't really going anywhere there's also a lot more sci-fi technobabble than was present in the first foreshadowing a theme that will persist throughout the rest of the game the first 10 hours or so of forbidden west is rough and i encourage you to push past them because yeah it does get significantly better after that this pivot comes again as you cross the threshold into the new land the forbidden west is a brilliant and expansive landscape to explore yes but it's also where you'll begin to assemble your party of companions now i don't mean companions in the bioware sense where they fight alongside you but i do mean companions in the bioware sense where you build an ensemble of friends and foes to serve as allies in the coming conflict this group of people starts out small but grows in time and eventually you'll have a small company of people you can return to regularly to speak to seek advice from and even aid them should they ask where elo's story in the first game was an origin story where she had to rely on her own strength alone to save the world aylo's story here is about accepting that she can't do this alone and the party she gathers to her serves as the emotional bedrock of this game the most touching character moments will happen not during your main quest but during the quiet conversations you have with these people as you check in share a quiet drink learn about their backstories their hopes their dreams it's very bioware and it totally works it's a good thing too because the plot in this game kind of doesn't work the story of forbidden west is absolutely bigger and bolder and more epic by every metric but i think it doesn't get away from itself the interesting thing about the world of horizon is the tension between human and machine the fragility of humanity their spirituality their politics their families their clans all of that set against the cold uncaring mechanical steel of the machines and the ai that programs them i think that tension is somewhat lost here despite guerrilla's best efforts there is a story of people and factions and humanity but that story is then plugged into a very very high sci-fi story that i won't spoil but it's a lot it's a lot more sci-fi than the first game and i like sci-fi by the way i love it but i think sci-fi is only good sci-fi when it asks how will the technology of the future make humans better or worse good sci-fi uses technology as a means of probing the human condition and none of that probing is really happening here it's just a lot of sci-fi nonsense i think where a more grounded story would have served eloy and her companions far better almost as compensation for this i have to shout out the side missions in this game they're absolutely superb almost every time so often in these open world games the side quests are just some narrative dressing culminating in go here kill some stuff collect some stuff come back very rare to find anything like that here almost every side mission is multi-phased combining dialogue exploration traversal combat and more these feel like main missions in other open world games for real they also matter when you do side missions your companions will comment on the fact that you did those things new dialogue options become available that weren't there before these aren't the companion side quests by the way these are just the regular side quests that your companions feel compelled to comment on but then there are also companion side quests and these are great they're special they connect you with the deepest hopes and fears of your companions if you like doing those companion missions in bioware games then you're definitely gonna love these overall though horizon forbidden west narrative is a lot more patchy than the rest of the game is it's a challenge that's exacerbated by the expectations that come with it being a sony game this is a publisher that has put out some of the best written most emotive games of the past decade and forbidden west will surely be compared to uncharted and the last of us and god of war when those comparisons happen it will fall short but i think there's still lots of great stuff to enjoy here especially if you take the time to explore the open world speak with people and help them when they ask for it forbidden west shines in the quiet moments off the main path so do go searching for those you won't be disappointed when you do so all right time for the coup de gras the killing blow horizon forbidden west combat as i mentioned before i've long said that the combat in horizon zero dawn is the best combat in any open world video game there are like a billion reasons for that and it would take me an entire video to fully describe why but ultimately it comes down to the expansive capabilities of both enemies and alloy and how much variation becomes possible when you set those in different landscapes consider assassin's creed valhalla or even the witcher 3. when it's time to fight something i know exactly how that fight is going to go humanoid enemies or monsters i know their limited capabilities i know my limited capabilities they'll have a swing at me i'll dodge or block or parry i'll counter with a three-hit melee combo maybe a heavy attack i'll fire an arrow maybe cast a spell whatever but like you can see this you know what this is and you can play it in your head just from watching this you know exactly how this is going to play out and it's going to play out exactly the same way for 30 40 60 300 hours that's not a criticism by the way that's just how it is in games like this even goes to sushima which has very refined melee combat far more sophisticated than either assassin's creed or the witcher you know generally speaking how each moment of each encounter is going to go now take something like monster hunter at no point during any fight do you know how that fight is going to go you don't know where you're going to be fighting them or how much you'll be able to use the topography to your advantage you don't know which of their huge number of moves they're going to pull out you don't know whether they'll enrage in that moment or raw you don't know when you might be able to hack off that tail to disable their tail swipe you don't know when another monster is gonna rock up and join the party you don't know [ __ ] you're just hanging on while all this is happening constantly forced to adapt to the rhythm of battle set down by the monster not by you that's the thing right in most open world games you set the flow of the engagement enemies engage you on your terms that's not how it works in horizon the mobility of these machines their intelligence their ferocity their movesets you are always on the back foot you are marching to the beat of their drum not the other way around the enemy design that facilitates this is absolutely the secret source just looking at these things is impressive enough but when you start to see what they can do in a fight man like i really wish i was fighting them right now they all have so many moves so many surprising capabilities that just come out of nowhere 50 hours deep in this game i was fighting enemies that i'd fought dozens of times before and i was still being surprised by them busting out moves that i'd never seen and the way these moves are linked to their anatomy is genius because part of your strategy becomes targeting their body components like in monster hunter removing a machine's tail means it can no longer swipe at you removing the giant cannon on their back means they can no longer shoot you with it i love the pre-planning that goes into every engagement as you target and highlight different body parts to both disable their attacks but also deal maximum damage here in forbidden west alloy's combat capabilities have been significantly expanded but i don't think all of those expansions were a success the biggest change is to melee combat which has been completely overhauled here and is far better than the atrocious melee combat of the first game but it's still not good it still feels like the redheaded stepchild of range combat as melee does very little damage even when fully upgraded and the combos that are available to you are pretty unsatisfying worst of all all of those combos are locked behind the warrior progression tree it's possible that plenty of people will play through this game with the absolute worst version of what is already a pretty average melee combat model a lot of this stuff should have been baseline capability melee combat needs all the help you can get in this game and the bare minimum components of functional melee combat being stuck behind a skill tree was a very bad idea furthermore i think some of the new weapons and ammo types at alloy's disposal push combat more towards a game of rock paper scissors rather than just letting you use whatever you want to use and getting on with it i definitely felt that using the wrong elemental type here was punished a lot more than it was in zero dawn so i spent a lot more time with my game paused in my menu jumping back and forth between weapons to exploit elemental weaknesses than i would have liked when this stuff works it feels fantastic but i think a combat model that focused more on precision on maneuverability and on combos would have been preferable to one that feels like a real-time jrpg where you're constantly matching up elemental damage and weaknesses finally i gotta say all of the looting that this game demands man it sucks like it's too much you are running around for 50 hours clicking on twigs and berries you have an arrow pouch that can hold 20 arrows at the start and then you have to pause mid combat to craft more arrows when you run out like you know there's not even a crafting animation when you're doing this what is the what is any of this for does gorilla think that this is immersive this is very bad like it's the worst part of this whole game when i spoke about horizon zero dawn in the past i complained about all this stuff and i'm like why is any of this here how does this make the game better it doesn't it's just useless crappy old world open world [ __ ] and it should have been removed with this game but it wasn't and that really bums me out anyway bottom line combat in this game is incredible it's like the best and if you ever looked at monster hunter and thought that looks cool but we're intimidated by its clunkiness or its grind then for the love of god play this game this is absolutely what you've been searching for i'm running out of time the land is dying all right so let's bring this home sometimes you just have to sit back and think about what it took to make a video game and quietly marvel at that horizon forbidden west is a game that invites that sort of quiet or like guerrilla games has 360 employees apparently obviously many more people will have contributed to this project than those 360 but let's just say it's like a thousand right i still can't understand how you align the work of a thousand people to produce something like this how do you make a world this massive and yet this dense how do you fill it with side activities that fall within predictable categories but are anything but predictable when you experience them how do you make it look this [ __ ] good how do you weave side quests with main quests with companion quests such that everything is referencing everything else and your deeds in one part of the game are reflected in so many other parts how do you design this many enemies with this many moves how do you give aloy so many distinct means of approaching an encounter without any sort of pressure to play or fight one way how do you unify all of this in a single journey that has such spectacle and heart both in its ten-pole moments and in its quiet sidebars i don't know man i legit don't know it's always humbling to play through games like this it makes you realize what a remarkable accomplishment video games can be so yeah horizon forbidden west it's one for the books when the history of this console generation is written this will be one of the ones we talk about trust me on that [Music] you ever lose 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Channel: Skill Up

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Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, gaming news, #gamereview, #reviews, #gameplay, video games, videogame review, game review, horizon forbidden west review, horizon forbidden west gameplay, horizon forbidden west before you buy, horizon forbidden west impressions, forbidden west review, horizon forbidden west ps4, horizon forbidden west ps5, horizon review, horizon ps5 review, horizon forbidden west trailer, horizon forbidden west cutscenes, ps5 games, new ps5 games

Id: xdFGdR28Gp8

Length: 38min 17sec (2297 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022