Horizon: Forbidden West (Horizon Zero Dawn Sequel) PS5

johnny_ultimate

As an aside, the Metacritic user experience is getting worse and worse and worse. There are so many no-name sites just stinking up the reviews list - sites that seemingly exist only to give AAA games perfect scores. With this one I had to scroll numerous times just to get to even very positive reviews from sites I recognised!

I liked Horizon Zero Dawn but I didn't love it. There were some aspects about it which were crap and I let them off the hook because the game was such a departure for Guerilla. It's commendable to take such a risk. It would be unreasonable to expect them to go from shooters to open-world and knock it out of the park in their first try.

It's five years later now and they're not first-timers in the genre so I won't let them off the hook so easy.

EoinMcLovin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118628007#Comment_118628007

Yeah just went to metacritic there and totally agree. At least with opencritic they give you a more condensed list of review scores with ability to expand a score for more detail

https://opencritic.com/game/12361/horizon-forbidden-west/charts

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118627878#Comment_118627878

Same, I got bored of it quickly as the characters felt totally wooden and hollow to me and therefore I couldn't get myself into the story.

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118627991#Comment_118627991

Reviewers had the Day 1 patch.

Vicxas

ACG, which would normally align with my opinions loved it, but did outline the bugs and crashes.

Not ashamed to say i pre-ordered this, was always going to play it as i loved the storyline.

Grumpypants

I (touch wood) haven't hit any crashes. So that could be a local issue ACG ran into. But there are some bugs alright, but most are small enough. Nothing that took me out of the game. When I read the list in the day one patch I can't say I noticed any of them. The size of this world is amazing so I'll take a few small bugs.

The main gripe is the camera is a bit janky in close spaces. It seems to be locked X distance above the character or terrain. So when you are running over bumpy terrain or trying to turn in small spaces it can get a bit hoppy. And when you get in close combat (as ACG mentions) that can get disorientating when there is a lot happening.

The world is massive and there is a lot going on, it is overwhelming at times. There is a lot of lore, lots of talking (loads and loads of talking). Sometimes by the time they get to the end of a conversation I've forgotten what or who they are talking about.

I spent 14 hours in the prologue, which is the same location as the first Horizon game. Then it opens out into the "West" and this space is massive. It is daunting when you first arrive. I felt like I'd made so much progress into the story already, and then they just throw you into an area multiple times bigger and say now the game starts.

It is really good. If you liked the first you will like this. If you didn't like the first, it's not going to convert you.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118628467#Comment_118628467

Can you focus on the main quests and power through without hitting a difficulty barrier, or do you have to grind through side quests and other things?

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118628573#Comment_118628573

I wasn't on the lookout for that so far, as I was doing side quests as they popped up so my rank tends to be a bit ahead of the curve.

But from what I see the main quests are all given a "recommended rank". I've done some of them that were two or three ranks higher than my current rank and gotten through it okay. But generally, I will look at the side quests that are under or at my rank and clear those and then move on.

So I would say you can more or less stick to the main quests and not hit a wall. A lot will depend on how much XP you get on those quests to keep your rank moving up and unlocking the skills.

But I don;t see a hard wall blocking progress unless you do ten house of grinding. The story is a bit like mass effect where you have to go off and do smaller portions to gather your friends up in your base. Most are gotten through the main quest, but I've also just stumbled on some just wandering about in the open and now they have joined too (main characters not generic NPC guys).

So while you definitely don't have to get bogged down in grinding out pointless side quests to keep moving, I've found that they do have some good side quests that add to the main story in a decent way. So I wouldn't avoid them totally.

It does have that Zelda "oh what's that interesting looking thing over there. I should go look at it" feel that keeps you doing lots of other stuff.

EoinMcLovin

https://youtu.be/AtTLrfdchoo

____

Discussion and footage of the flying mounts seems to be embargoed, because none of the big sites mention it or show it. I've seen a short clip and it kinda looked on rails tbh. I doubt they got full-freedom flying mount over the whole map working on the PS4 but I would love to be proven wrong.

TitianGerm

Is there no ray tracing in this? Don't think DF mentioned it at all

Sad Professor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633099#Comment_118633099

No. It looks amazing all the same. Shows that optimisation for next-gen consoles can really pay off.

Vicxas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633383#Comment_118633383

I'd say if it wasnt cross gen we would have seen Ray tracing in it. Cant wait to see it in GT7

TitianGerm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633383#Comment_118633383

Ray tracing adds an awful lot to the shadows and reflections though. I always give it a blast with that option ticked first. Then I just play at 60FPS.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633396#Comment_118633396

There was ray tracing in Spiderman though. So I'm not sure that it's cross gen matters?

johnny_ultimate

Ray tracing comes at a heavy cost, and unless you're technical wizards like Insomniac it's maybe not always worth the compromise on console at the moment. Whatever about the game's quality as a game, every video I've seen of this suggests the game looks like an absolute stunner with pretty peerless level of detail in the environments so I think Guerilla chose their rendering budget well (same with Housemarque and Returnal - absolute stunner of a game, more so than some RT heavy games I’ve played).

I do think more developers should push for the kind of thing Insomniac has with their performance ray-tracing modes, but a game like this would probably need a higher-end GPU to push ray-tracing properly at a decent frame rate (see Dying Light 2).

Vicxas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633432#Comment_118633432

Forgot Spiderman had Ray tracing in it, so i could be wrong on that

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118628007#Comment_118628007

Yeah, TBH, I usually avoid aggregate sites for this reason (Or the opposite, review bombs) and stick to sites I know/trust. I am really looking forward to this. Replayed Zero Dawn just before Christmas when it and Frozen North hit PSNow (I had the original without DLC) to catch up. And it still looked great. Some facial animations were a bit iffy by today's standards but, was still a great game.

I only found out a couple of weeks ago that Aloy is voiced by the white tester in "Mythic Quest" That's some serious meta casting :) I mean they would show flashed of Zero Dawn in the show but I never put 2 and 2 together. My only real issue with Zero Dawn was the voume of Aloy's voice. Found it hard to hear her at times. Not during cut scenes but during gameplay.

So yeah, Zero Dawn a couple of months ago. JUST finished Ghost of Tsushima (Sunday evening) and next this. Good times. And it's why I love Playstation's focus on single-player games (I'm full-on Murthaugh when it comes to online twitch-reaction FPS. I'm too old for this sh*t)

Quick opinion question. For those with PS5: Will you be playing in Performance or Fidelity mode? (I also got the upgrade of Uncharded 4 and am interested to see if I notice a difference in fidelity)

awec

Would ye need to complete the first one to understand the story in this?

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633685#Comment_118633685

review I read suggests no but you would obviously get more out of it (inter-character relationships etc) if you had. I believe it's still part of PSplus or PSNow or something

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633725#Comment_118633725

I have it, but couldn't get into it at all, mostly due to the wooden-ness of the characters.

Might see if I can just find some recap video or something.

johnny_ultimate

I watched the Digital Foundry video and honestly don't quite get the reasoning behind their recommendation to go with 30 FPS over performance. IMO upscaled 1800p is a perfectly fine resolution for a good TV and the performance gain from 60 FPS would be infinitely preferable to a straight 4k image. Performance trumps resolution 99.9% of the time for me.

They're the experts for sure, but really the 60 FPS sounds clearly like the superior option to me - especially if the level of detail and assets are otherwise identical outside a drop in image clarity.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633797#Comment_118633797

I was thinking the same. I think while it surely looks amazing, the 30fps would annoy me to be honest. Framerates that low are so in-your-face and immersion breaking, I find it hard to overlook it.

Penn

Yeah I skimmed their article on it and most of their reasoning just felt like stuff you'd only notice if you were directly comparing different versions, and if you were really looking and analysing these types of things. The game will look spectacular regardless, so I'm definitely going to go for 60fps. It was the much better option in the first game, particularly when using the Focus.

Vicxas

Would you really notice that much of a difference between 1800p and 2160p?

TitianGerm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633947#Comment_118633947

Not as much as you'd notice the difference between 30&60 FPS.

johnny_ultimate

Don't get me wrong - I think the Digital Foundry guys are great and do invaluable work. But a lot of the time the differences they note are things you'd only really notice if you zoom in or are sitting right up at the screen. Sure it's their job to nitpick these things, after all.

Definitely in this case the visual differences seem very minor for the vast majority of players... but the jump in frame rate would make an immediate and obvious difference in fluidity.

Niska

Slight tangent, but the rumored Lego Tallneck has been seen (incl. Aloy minifig):

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/02/horizons-tallneck-is-getting-its-very-own-lego-set

Rumoured price is $79.99, so probably the same in Euros. Or (joke) you can get the PS5 version for $89.99 (/joke).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633947#Comment_118633947

Digital Foundry have a comparison tool. I can't link directly to it but it's halfway down the page, it gives you a little slice of each image and you can pan around. Very illustrative.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2022-horizon-forbidden-west-the-digital-foundry-tech-review

In static shots the difference is not subtle. However the difference is probably not so pronounced at normal viewing distance and in motion. For me 60fps is the way to go regardless, it's just so much better for things like aiming and timing shots etc.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118633947#Comment_118633947

There are probably other visual effects that are disabled on the perf mode but I reckon you would only see them if you really tried hard to see them.