Horizon Forbidden West - Review
Following the 2017’s popular action-RPG, Horizon Zero Dawn comes Guerrilla Games’ sequel, Horizon: Forbidden West. Is it as good as everyone was anticipating? Is it truly the 10/10 game that some other review sites are stating? To answer that, we’d have to go to the very beginning. Horizon Forbidden West does this well by welcoming players old and new by recapping a high-level overview of Zero Dawn’s narrative. What happened, how have we gotten here, what to expect moving forward.
This sequel picks up roughly six months after the events of Zero Dawn … sending the main protagonist Aloy, to find more answers after stopping Hades who was trapped by Sylens in the post-credit scene. Additionally, the blight is still prevalent across the land - killing and infecting animals (both mech and organic) and overtaking the fauna, which Aloy follows to investigate. At least that’s how it starts off, until Aloy sets her way across to the forbidden lands in the west, where she encounters the Tenakth who have claimed the west as their territory. And just to make it a little more complicated, the Tenakth comprises of three different clans, who also reside in different environments. The sky, the lowlands and the desert. Without giving too much more away, and due to politics and differences in tribes (and environments), Aloy’s journey sees players traversing through the different environments giving players a chance to experience the world to put a complete stop to Hades, Sylens, and new enemies that you’ll come across. **Potential spoiler alert**, let's just say Aloy’s ‘primitive’ weapons may not necessarily be strong enough to go head on with them.
If you enjoyed Zero Dawn’s narrative and Aloy’s journey to be the chosen one, you definitely won’t be disappointed with Forbidden West. There’s familiarity with all the action, controls and exploration. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of handholding through the game, making it a little easy to navigate and get through world and quests. For instance, all environmental ledges you can grab still have a distinct yellow colour. In addition to this, Aloy now has the ability to scan the environment which indicates where you’re able to climb on surfaces such as cliff faces. That being said, the climbing mechanic is still very limited as it is still only on ledges that are indicated by the yellow prompts, whether they’re initially first hidden, or obnoxiously in plain sight. So, if you were thinking it’s open world much like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, where you can climb close to anything, think otherwise. Not only that, but collectible items to build up your inventory such as berries, trees to build arrows etc have a distinct butterfly floating around them. And though it doesn't intrude too much to the gameplay, it does definitely make it feel all too easy in guiding you a little too much.
Jumping and climbing up the side of mountains feels almost too automated as all you really need to do is hold up with the occasional press of the jump button to bounce onto higher ledges at times. So long as you hold the joystick in the direction you’re wanting to go, Aloy climbs her way up like an experienced monkey scaling up a tree. In addition to climbing, being able to swim is now a feature… in some instances where you either use it to hunt for treasure, or even escape and/or hide from amphibious mechs. Nonetheless, this mechanic is definitely a great addition to the game play experience. The only call out from my experience in controlling Aloy is whether you’re running around, scaling the yellow indicated cliff edges, or swimming, she feels somewhat sluggish. Almost as though I was driving a tank or a boat. It could be the fact that the controls just feel a little too automated as previously stated, but it definitely lacks finesse.
With an open world action-RPG, you can definitely expect to have a simple guided marker which you can toggle on or off depending on if you’re wanting to follow the main quest, or if you’re wanting to complete your side quest, errands, jobs, salvage contracts etc. These give you experience points and items where you’re able to craft and upgrade weapons, armour and so on. These games are so similar that one of the errands has you searching for items for a chef to be able to cook on, which reminds me of a particular game with a main character that’s ‘of Rivia’.
Unlocking abilities and advancing in your skill trees are exactly what’s expected from this franchise. So much that unfortunately it doesn’t feel like there’s anything new and innovative but will leave you feeling as though Guerrilla Games are playing it safe. For the franchise itself, it’s definitely an improvement… but for the gaming industry, it’s bringing it up to standard, which isn’t a bad thing by any means.
One thing that Horizon Forbidden West has improved on is its visuals. Apart from the minor flickering in shadowy and lighting conditions during cutscenes I experienced, the in-game graphics look fantastic. Whether you’re standing on the edge of a cliff and looking past the horizon or just taking in the landscapes and waterfalls, this is definitely quite a beautiful game. The time they’ve taken to fill in the details can definitely be seen. That being said, the standard of graphics and visuals towards the end of the PS4 lifespan has been quite similar, if not extremely close. This leads me to question whether Horizon Forbidden West was always intentionally made for the PS5 platform, or if they had really made it for the PS4 and just decided to simply port it over when Sony announced the release date of their ‘next gen’ console. Nonetheless, it’s still quite a beautiful game to look at.
This sequel is definitely a great continuation and will make fans of its predecessor very happy. Picking up 6 months from Zero Dawn, there are a lot of familiar faces you’ll meet through the game and exploring is definitely encouraged while adding extra environments and new mech-animals which is always fun to experience. It's more or less the same game with added extra features and updated quality of life. The only concern is the simplicity of the gameplay and lack of innovation in comparison to today’s gaming standards. Forbidden West definitely honours Aloys first journey and stays true to its franchise. It’s also definitely an extension and improvement… but the question is: “is it enough to keep the fans loyal” after the hype and spectacular visuals have died down? Is it enough to keep players exploring the wilds of the Forbidden West? That’s something only you will be able to decide on. One thing we definitely know is that the game is absolutely visually stunning, with moments where you’ll just take a back seat and enjoy the view of the Horizon.
The Score
7.0
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
+Absolutely stunning visuals and design
+Honors its predecessors by keeping it very familiar
+New environments, mech-animals and quality of life improvements
The Cons
-Could be a little too easy for some players
-Controlling Aloy still feels sluggish like you’re driving a boat/tank
-Hasn’t evolved too much since it’s first game, no dramatically new gameplay
