Horizon Forbidden West Is Dope

Horizon Zero Dawn was one of my favorite games that I played in 2019 so I was eager to get my hands on Forbidden West and scooped it up on release day. It unnaturally took me over five months to beat it, but I finally have. So I played Horizon Forbidden West on the base PS4. I heard the PlayStation 5 version is ideal, but since I still don't own one and I was really pressed about getting this game on release I chose to get the PS4 version. In the years since Zero Dawn's release I noticed a graphical upgrade. The textures in the environments in Forbidden West have a higher res and one thing that bothered me in particular with Zero Dawn is how waxy the skin looked on black characters aside from Sylens. This isn't an issue anymore in Forbidden West. Every black character's skin texture looks believable as skin. I wish the hair looked as believable, but I already discussed that in my 4C Pixels article. There are also more textures in the skin as well. Aloy's freckles are more prominent and distinguished and faces feel fuller in shape.

My PS4 struggled loading this cutscene

Forbidden West still looks gorgeous on the PS4. To make a quick note though I have heard that the PS5 version runs better. Forbidden West is more graphically intensive and larger in scope compared to Zero Dawn and as a result suffers a bit in performance. The initial load time when starting the game is a bit long as it can also be when fast traveling depending on how far you're traveling across the map. I'm used to it though. I played video games back in the PS2 and especially PS3 era when it was common to have long load times so it doesn't bother me as much as others. Also there tends to be a lot of pop-in in the world map. This is common in open world games, but I know some people care about it. I didn't really notice it most of the time with one major exception. At the start of a cutscene towards the end of the game the textures took a good solid fifteen minutes to load. I wasn't even aware anything was wrong at first when I thought I saw was a mountain landscape over the horizon, but when the textures loaded in with vegetation and the characters I realized that the game was slowly loading the scene. That was the worst I gotten out of my entire experience, but overall it was fine. I did experiences some glitches here and there and Guerrilla Games were good about adding patches and by the end I experienced very little issues. I would definitely recommend getting this for PlayStation 5 if you can, but I think the PS4 version is good enough if that's your only option.

As for the content of the game itself it's damn good. Horizon Forbidden West improves heavily on Zero Dawn. The map is bigger, the skill tree has been expanded, there are new machines, mounts, and mechanics. One of the things I noticed immediately was the new free climbing system. In Zero Dawn Aloy could only climb surfaces that were distinguished climable by yellow structures like knobs, or bars. In Forbidden West those still exist, but Aloy can climb structures more organically. If something for the most part looks climable it is. You just have to tilt Aloy in the direction of a wall and she'll start climbing up ledges. The climbing isn't completely fluid though like from Breath of the Wild where I believe everything can be climbed. You can Press R3 and yellow highlights on a structure will tell you if it can be climbed while red x's will indicate that it cannot be climbed. As you probably saw in the reveal trailer Aloy will also get access to a grappling hook in the beginning of the game that will make climbing structures easier. It can't be used anywhere, but it helps and the zipping sound it makes it satisfying especially when you leap off into the air by pressing O right after and fall gracefully through the sky with your new glider.

That's right, there's also a glider in Forbidden West. With just a jump and the press of the square button the shield wing you can use to cross over gaps or glide across the skies to travel in speed and style. It can be quite enamoring to jump off a high mountain and just take in the beautiful scenery as you glide over a forest with human killing machines below you.

One of the better things Forbidden West improved on was the combat. One of the complaints about Zero Dawn was that the melee combat was too basic. Guerrilla addressed this in the sequel as now there is a combo system for the spear attacks. In Zero Dawn player's just had a single press button for Aloy's spear strike with little to no variations in animation. In West, basic attacks can now be strung together as combos, you have heavy attacks, charge attacks, and aerial attacks. These melee attacks can even be upgraded and there are challenge rooms for mastering them at various towns on the world map. This is a massive improvement over the original. The melee combat still doesn't grip me though. I used ranged attacks whenever I can over it, but it's good for this type of game.

The best part of Horizon Zero Dawn was hunting robot dinosaurs and its still the best aspect of Forbidden West. There are so many new weapons in Forbidden West that it's crazy. I had so much fun testing out all the new weapons and traps and each weapon type feels different to use. The ones I used the least were the bolt shooters which I didn't really use in Zero Dawn either, and the shredder gauntlets. Perhaps I just wasn't using them right, but I felt like the shredder gauntlets barely did any damage. I also used the ropecaster far less in this game compared to the first. For most of the game I forgot I had it and it felt like it was nerfed. It may be due to there not being many upgrades to it over the course of the game, or less stormbirds, but I didn't really find it useful until I got the Elite Ropecaster towards the end of the game.

Utilizing traps is one of the keys to hunting machines in the Forbidden West

Playing as a stealthy trap master was the best way to play this game. Carefully mapping out machines routes, setting up traps, and turning machines against each other offered great tension. Now, I did break out into just shooting when I failed to set up properly or got caught on accident, but even the ranged combat is just as fun. I didn't have a problem with the human combat as others did in the original, but it is better in Forbidden West. There are different enemy types and enemies also use the raining fire arrows which is annoying, but it makes you more careful about approaching other hunters. I also feel like this game is generally harder than the last. Zero Dawn definitely could be difficult at times and it may be just me misremembering, but I feel like Forbidden West is far less forgiving even on the standard difficulty. You have Apex machines to worry about now which are stronger versions of machines that often turn up at night, though they can appear in the day as well. If you're not careful you can be taken out in just a couple of hits.

But that's also where the RPG elements come in. While Guerilla Games called Zero Dawn a RPG, it did lean more into the action/adventure genre to me. There are a lot more elements to RPG statistics this time around, though I'm still conflicted on calling it a straight up RPG. You do have a deeper skill tree this time around, towns where you can buy weapons, armor, loot, side quests, and there are more modifications for increasing weapon and armor stats. Each weapon and outfit you get can also be upgraded at least three times by crafting improving the weapon or outfit's damage or resistance and elemental affinities. Upgrading equipment can be addicting, but also grindy. You could be lucky like towards the beginning of the game to have all the necessary materials to upgrade a weapon or outfit by just playing naturally, but by the middle of the game it's rare you'd have enough materials to upgrade a weapon or outfit you get. Needing to get items isn't a bad thing, but it can require a lot of grinding just to get a single material. You may need four small machine cores for upgrade material which are dropped by smaller machines like redeye watchers. That would require you to go to a location where they spawn, kill all of them and search their corpses. Small machine cores can't be detached and have a small drop rate so if none dropped within that herd you either have to get it to respawn or go to another area where more small machines are and kill them until enough machine cores drop.

It gets very repetitive, but at the same time I feel compelled to upgrade my best equipment since I want to be a strong as possible and machine hunting is still fun, but since it took me so long to beat the game I just ended up giving up on making my current set as strong as possible. 

There are a ton more weapons and armor in Forbidden West and they all can be upgraded.

As an RPG this game is story intensive. Horizon Forbidden West picks up not long after the events of Zero Dawn. The world seems to be facing doom as red infectious plants grow throughout the land slowly killing anything in contact. There's also a rebellion with the Tenakth and the mysterious Zenith. The journey of the Forbidden West is quite long, but I enjoyed most of the story. I do feel sometimes there is a bit too much, but most of the story content is optional. Like with Zero Dawn when you talk to a NPC you have multiple options of dialogue you can choose from which can lead to even more dialogue options. If you don't want all the extra lore and context and just want to hop straight into a mission you can just pick the dialogue with the yellow diamond next to it. It can be a lot after a while so with a lot of side quests I tended to just skip it. Forbidden West does do a great deal with world building. You feel completely immersed in this post-apocalyptic world. The cultures are nuanced filled with their own traditions, practices, and aesthetics. The data points also make a return. There are still a lot of them to collect, but I feel like they dialed back from them in this entry.

I found myself thoroughly entertained by the end, but I was bummed out by a Hollywood trope that I never liked that occurred in the story. Still, though it was overall a very good time. Horizon Forbidden West is one of the best games I've played and I didn't get to other aspects of the game like being able to change the color of outfits, face paint, cooking, and various overworld missions like ruins and rebel posts. Horizon Forbidden West is chock filled with things to do. I'm not sure with how much I have right now if I'll be able to delve into this again.

9/10