Horizon Forbidden West - Grapple + Glider = Aloy 2.0

[glb]

Platinumed this last week, and while I had some real high points with the game, by the end I was rushing through to get it done, and just wasn’t as into the story as much as I was for the first game.

 

Overall think it’s a really fun game, and with a break I’ll probably be well up for the DLC. Sometimes fatigue just kicks in and it did for me around the 80-hour mark. 
 

I don’t know if that even is a criticism of the game, or just a shifting attitude. I’m doing another play through of A Link to the Past, one of my favourite ever games, and that’s only taken around 20 hours, but for the first time I’m noticing little bugbears. Over-consumption is probably the root cause- too much of a good thing - and I did binge great swathes of Horizon FW.

 

When a third game arrives I hope the combat is a little refined (Aloy’s dodge became a little unwieldy in bigger fights) and maybe the map is smaller, but denser, maybe with even more verticality.

[Timmo]

Grabbed this for £21 from the Turkish store yesterday. Graphically it’s extremely beautiful! I’m impressed so far, although it does feel like I’m going to start getting annnoyed at the number of cutscenes. We’ll see. 

 

@Pob What difficulty would you recommend? Generally when I’m playing games like this I like to feel like I’m vulnerable to dying but still strong. Glass cannon. 

[Pob]

11 minutes ago, Timmo said:

Grabbed this for £21 from the Turkish store yesterday. Graphically it’s extremely beautiful! I’m impressed so far, although it does feel like I’m going to start getting annnoyed at the number of cutscenes. We’ll see. 

 

@Pob What difficulty would you recommend? Generally when I’m playing games like this I like to feel like I’m vulnerable to dying but still strong. Glass cannon. 

The hardest setting, without a doubt. You won’t feel strong at the start and you’ll need to rely on stealth to destroy machines, but stick with it and you’ll unlock some more powerful attacks. I’d also strongly recommend turning off auto-aim and also the ‘undiscovered’ and ‘collectibles’ icons on the big map. Let yourself discover things naturally. 

[Timmo]

3 hours ago, Pob said:

The hardest setting, without a doubt. You won’t feel strong at the start and you’ll need to rely on stealth to destroy machines, but stick with it and you’ll unlock some more powerful attacks. I’d also strongly recommend turning off auto-aim and also the ‘undiscovered’ and ‘collectibles’ icons on the big map. Let yourself discover things naturally. 

Thanks! I’ll adjust those later. I’m up for the pain. 
 

Final question for now - do you think this or Ragnorok as the better game?

[Pob]

25 minutes ago, Timmo said:

Thanks! I’ll adjust those later. I’m up for the pain. 

 

More recommended settings:

 

Set the HUD so that it disappears when not needed but can be called up with a stroke of the touchpad. I was finding myself constantly looking at the compass when it was always onscreen - much more immersive just to check it every now and again

 

Set the collectable items so they only appear on the HUD when you ping your Focus. Otherwise the screen is littered with distracting plant pickup icons all the time and it becomes overwhelming.

 

In the accessibility settings, find the setting that keeps the climbing markers ON all the time. It's quite arbitrary which surfaces are climbable so it's helpful to have that always on.

  

25 minutes ago, Timmo said:

Thanks! I’ll adjust those later. I’m up for the pain. 
 

Final question for now - do you think this or Ragnorok as the better game?

 

Great question! I've been thinking about it a lot. I played Zero Dawn and GOW 2018 within a year of each other at the tail end of the last generation. I loved them both, but found that I did tire of Zero Dawn towards the end, whereas GOW 2018 stayed amazing all the way through and took off into the stratosphere for the end-game. GOW just had more depth to its gameplay. It's an absolute all-time classic.

 

However, I prefer Forbidden West to Ragnaork. On the surface both games appear very similar to their predecessors. In Ragnarok's case it is very similar, just more bloated and with some quite boring bits inbetween the (still stellar) combat. FW, on the other hand, is refined in every way. Combat is much improved, as is mission design, environment design and general balancing / economy. The only criticism I have is that there's just too much of it. It's all of a very high quality but there are two, maybe even three, games' with of side-content here. It's worth doing side missions when you first get out of The Daunt (the smallish training area) as a way to gear yourself up so that combat becomes more manageable. But once you're feeling a bit more powerful don't feel like you need to do it all. It can be exhausting.

 

I would class FW as the best 'traditional' open world game I've played. Not MGSV or BOTW good, but as good as generic open world games get. I loved it.

[Timmo]

11 hours ago, Pob said:

The hardest setting, without a doubt. You won’t feel strong at the start and you’ll need to rely on stealth to destroy machines, but stick with it and you’ll unlock some more powerful attacks. I’d also strongly recommend turning off auto-aim and also the ‘undiscovered’ and ‘collectibles’ icons on the big map. Let yourself discover things naturally. 

Just to check something, do you mean Very Hard or the Ultra Hard difficulty that was patched in?

[Pob]

4 hours ago, Timmo said:

Just to check something, do you mean Very Hard or the Ultra Hard difficulty that was patched in?

Very Hard. Didn’t know there was a new one. 

[Thor]

Just started a replay, I see they've fixed the fuzzy visuals that were an issue at launch. Nice.

[superfunk]

Burning Shores is now on the PS store for pre-order at £15.99. Trouble for me is that you need to have completed the game to access the DLC story. I have completed the game, but then my PS5 broke and I ended up buying a new one and none of my stuff was saved. 
 

As much as I enjoyed the game, I’m not sure I want to do a full replay, even in story mode. Why can’t I just go straight to the new stuff?

[gospvg]

19 hours ago, superfunk said:

Burning Shores is now on the PS store for pre-order at £15.99. Trouble for me is that you need to have completed the game to access the DLC story. I have completed the game, but then my PS5 broke and I ended up buying a new one and none of my stuff was saved. 
 

As much as I enjoyed the game, I’m not sure I want to do a full replay, even in story mode. Why can’t I just go straight to the new stuff?

 

Yeah they did this with Frozen Wilds also which was annoying.

Do you have PS+? If yes your save file may be in the cloud.

[Mawdlin]

Just finished the main story in this and it was much more enjoyable than I was expecting. It never achieved the heights and brilliant unravelling of the mystery of the first game but they did a good job keeping my interest.

 

But... they really did throw a Belfast kitchen sink at this. There was just so much gubbins that it all ended up feeling like junk. After a couple of hours I switched off noticing what it was or how it could be useful and just pressed the universal collect all button hoping it would come in handy. That's not how collectibles and resources should work in an effective and game enhancing way.

 

The climbing also felt arbitrary and illogical. Why can I climb certain parts of a sheer cliff but not the boulder right next to it? Also, getting stuck on the lip of an outcrop for no apparent reason, shuffling along till the game decides it's ok to surmount wasn't much fun at times.

 

I remember loving the relic exploration in the original game but after three in this I lost interest. They all asked me to push a square block somewhere. Yawn.

 

So a few missteps, sure, but the plot and stunning visual fidelity kept me interested till the end. I pumped a good 50 hours into it so it did something right.

 

Solid 7/10