-Horizon Zero Dawn- [05.03.17]
Also currently playing: Final Fantasy XIII, Ace Attorney, Steins;Gate, Nioh
At this point I’ve sank a solid 23+ hours into this game so I feel like I’m able to give more of a solid opinion of this game now, despite still feeling as though I’ve only seen a speck of what the game has to offer. I’m still loving it. This game still has my full attention for many many reasons including its super engaging gameplay, (so far) pretty decent story and brilliantly thought out and interesting world. I’ll keep the graphics praise to a minimum this time since I spoke a lot about it in my last post, though the visuals still impress me to no end.
Since I’ve played a fair bit more of the game now I’ve started to come across different types of landscapes, ranging from snowy mountains under constant snowfall and occasional blizzards, to giant sandy canyons and valleys, to lush green forests and fields scattered with ruins from the old, ‘metal world’. In the ¾ hours I played today I found that I barely progressed with any quests or side quests as most of the time I was enjoying myself enough just exploring different locations, finding collectibles, battling dozens of varied yet equally intimidating robotic beasts and speaking with all kinds of npcs and learning their stories. This game is full of lorebooks and data logs scattered around the world that do a great job of explaining all sorts of things you may want to know about the game world/history.
Though I’ve been doing nothing but praising this game so far (deservedly so), I have noticed a few things that aren’t quite so great. First of all, I’ve found that the voice acting can be a little hit and miss, at times, especially during specific side missions. Alongside this, character facial animations/body movements during dialogue can seem a little clunky and... robotic, for lack of a better word. These two factors can definitely break immersion when you’re playing as they can be pretty noticeable sometimes. For the most part it’s not too bad, though. The only other negative point that’s really stuck out to me so far is the occasional instance of glitched lighting. Most of the time the lighting is drop dead gorgeous, whether you’re travelling by moonlight, in the setting sun during the evening, or walking around a town at night, lit up only by torches and bonfires. However, the issue comes when you’re in wide open spaces with the shadows of distant mountains cast out in front of you by the setting/rising sun. Occasionally when you look around, or in the opposite direction, these shadows will vanish and the entire area will be lit up by the sun for a second, presumably because the mountains behind you aren’t being rendered (I hope I explained that well enough!). This again can be immersion breaking, however realistically it is just a nitpick, it’s just something I’ve noticed several times when out exploring.
That’s pretty much all I have to say on this game for the moment, though as I’m still diving head first into it I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon. I’ll definitely get into talking about other games soon, too. This game specifically just so happens to be eating all my time at the moment :). (no really it’s tied me down and is forcing me to play it constantly send hel- )
