Horizon: Forbidden West Review
The start of 2022 brought along with it the new installment in the Horizon universe. Developed by the now renowned Guerilla studio, and with a great track record of immersive and technologically impressive titles exclusive to the Playstation ecosystem, Horizon: Forbidden West does follow in the footsteps of its predecessor Horizon: Zero Dawn... at least in most regards.
The world
As we have come to expect, the world of the Forbidden West is extremely detail-dense, full of interesting landmarks and absolutely huge ( almost dauntingly huge for on-foot traversal). Played on a high resolution display, one can observe astounding vistas full of little bushes, leaves, and crevasses, and all of them are (mostly) within reach!
This astounding size comes at the cost of the uniqueness of hand-crafted environments. There are hand-placed landmarks dotted about the landscape, but between these one can spot the usual plains, deserts and forests that are entirely unremarkable and full of enemies ( we will get back to this).
The combat
The combat is largely the same as in Zero Dawn. Enemies huge and small, each deadly, each with their own weak points. These weak points can be exploited usually with well-placed elemental shots for huge bonuses and advantages. This all sounds rather good, and it mostly is; but the problem manifests itself in the ways this game tried to innovate.
Most of the enemy types present in the past games are once again present here, with their usual behaviors and exploits. These past encounters are familiar and well balanced. The problem however, comes with the new enemy designs: these feel overengineered.
Horizon Zero Dawn spoilers on enemy design and purpose
One of the most awe-inducing moments in Zero Dawn was when I learned how each metal-animaloid had its own purpose in the ecosystem, how it had a set role to achieve and its form was merely a result of the learning of the Artificial Inteligence that made these decisions.
In this iteration though, some of the new creatures feel like they are created only to have a bigger and more badass adversary for Aloy to encounter. They are bigger, have more guns and claws, and acid spitting valves, and camo options and ... anyway.
This was a huge bummer for me, as it was not what originally fascinated me.
The number of enemy encounters has also been significantly increased. There's huge pockets of titanium-alloyed boys seemingly all over the place, with little reason for their presence in that space.
The Story
The story is unfortunately kind of lukewarm again. The characters are pretty great: Aloy is back to her fantastic self, and she is surrounded by a decently engaging cast of supporting characters.
The disappointment here is the actual plot. Without spoiling anything ( you can read the spoiler in the section below) the story doesn't really go anywhere. It feels very much like Kingdom Come: Deliverance in this regard: the story was made solely to provide room for a sequel. I did not feel any closure or satisfaction from reaching the end, and I consider this to be Forbidden West's greatest flaw.
Plot Spoiler-ridden rant
From my point of view, the story mostly felt like a character study which didn't really do much to flush out Aloy, with an unsatisfying conclusion. You go around chasing the bad guys for 25h, and find out just how bad they are ( not really fun) and then at the end you find out that your efforts have really not achieved anything. The big fight against the Nemesis is still coming and is seemingly hopeless yet again.
I dunno about you, but I am a tiny bit bored of this trope.
The story does get better in my opinion with the DLC, which I will do a little review of as well, but as far as the main game is concerned, I was left a bit dissapointed.
Conclusion (Grade: A-)
Even though I had fun in the game, by the time the end credits rolled by, I couldn't not feel a little bit let down by the whole game. I expected to feel the same highs as its predecesor, and mostly felt like only the world lived up to the hype, and even that with the caviats of repeated enemy encounters.
The story felt uninspired and by the end I was a little tired of the huge enemies that take 100 arrows to take down.
