Horizon Zero Dawn

[Mr. GOH!]

Man, some of the robot dinosaurs just wreck you if you if you're careless.

[deanb]

Yeah, from the above video he was pretty cautious, with many complaining it made for "boring viewing" in the chat. He'd noted he hadn't died in 20hrs of gameplay so far. However he met his first death when taking on a thunderjaw(?) as one of his challenges, though did okay against a...oh yeah it's in the title of the video...a stormbird.

 

I'm only early in, picked the game up this morning, ran the install and currently in the prologue. Young Aloy is cute, though I feel her head is too big. Liking a lot of the intrigue already set up. Totally gonna go back to the cave area when I can. Done all my things for the day so going to be diving in for the rest of the evening. The long grass moves soooo prettily.

[Mister Jack]

Thunderjaw? Stormbird? This is sounding like a playable hair metal video. Man, I want this game.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

[deanb]

 

So I posted this earlier to Twitter where it was promptly garbled to hell so uploaded to Youtube. Just love how it all moves.

[SomTervo]

Truly beautiful game, yeah.

 

And there is a day/night cycle, it's just often pushed/pulled for mission context. Just like Assassin's Creed when day/night time suddenly swaps to be appropriate to the mission.

 

The gameplay in this honestly just gets better and better the more you play it. The more you get Overrides and the more different types of machine and environment crops up.

 

Horizon and Zelda: BotW right next to each other is... Insane.

 

 

I'll believe all that when I see it.

 

^^^

 

You see? You see?!

Edited March 3, 2017 by SomTervo

[Mr. GOH!]

Yeah, there's totally a day night cycle and Aloy makes pithy comments on the transitions. I guess spending your first couple decades as an outcast only three or four people will speak to makes you more likely to talk to yourself in aphorisms.

[Hot Heart]

Some of this might sound a bit "well, duh" but it seems there's some solid non-spoilery advice here:

[Mister Jack]

 

Both games look pretty great to me but I hope Zelda doesn't cut into Horizon's sales too much.  Fresh new IPs need to succeed.

[TheMightyEthan]

I doubt it will simply because the Switch is new and no one owns a Wii U, whereas the PS4 has trillions of units in the wild.

[CorgiShinobi]

While it wouldn't be factually correct to say everyone who got a Switch also got Breath of the Wild, I wouldn't doubt a majority of Switch owners have Breath of the Wild. Just from my personal experience of waiting to pick up my pre-order, nearly every Switch was coupled with Breath of the Wild. Like I mentioned in the Zelda thread, people were assuming I was getting it for Switch when, nope, I was sticking with Nintendo's now-prior console the Wii U.

 

While the PS4 is already established in market, a video game is a video game and not everyone has the same taste. Hell, not everyone has the same priorities because there are a lot of great games coming out in March. If you've got limited time and limited funds, you've got to make hard decisions. It's a big market so there will definitely be consumers to buy what you're selling. The success however isn't strictly based on how big of a market you find yourself in. It's how well you can appeal to the wants and needs of the consumer. I wouldn't worry about Horizon success. It'll do fine.

 

That said, I actually don't see the two directly competing now as Horizon ends up competing to what other PS4 titles there are or will come out. It's just that Breath of the Wild is the new hotness and it's getting all the (well deserved) love. If you only have a PS4, you're probably looking into Horizon, though there are some other tempting titles weeks away. If you only have a Wii U you're looking at Breath of the Wild (because what else is there). If you've got both, it's up to time, money, and taste. Both are open world so you've got to pick which one you want to dive into for the next 50 (or 100) hours. After that, did you want to pick up one of the recently released titles or go back to that previous title you had to pass on?

Edited March 4, 2017 by Atomsk88

[deanb]

BotW isn't going to cut into Horizon sales at all. They're both exclusive titles, and one of them is releasing on a console with like 50 million consoles out already and not on a system with a company that for some reason seems to like making artificial scarcity their shtick. Also one of the games either requires owning a low-selling console or splashing out hundreds on a brand new console.

 

Anywho when picking it up the GAME guy mentioned it'd been selling like crazy already, 

 

About the only thing that's going to compete with is mind share, and Zelda being Zelda and on a new console is going to be winning out there.

 

As for the above video from HotHeart

 

While it has a decent opening tutorial to go through most of the mechanics, especially those uniqueish to the game, it does skip on many of the other minor mechanics I guess hoping you'll explore and pick things up as you go through. "crafting" items n stuff I guess is pretty much standard fare, very much Far Cry like in how it's done. Already had the hiccup of selling items to traders that are used for buying weapons/outfits though

 

Oh one thing it missed out was that all the weapons and armour are essentially the same "attack" and "defence" regardless of level, rarity, etc and the main perks are in stuff like the elements it can use, how it's used and what modifications you can attach. So if you're struggling it's kind of "git gud" rather than grind a chunk on low level things and buy the better weapons like you would in an RPG.

[deanb]

Oh to add to the above, especially on the "selling items to traders" thing. If it says it's used for "trading with merchants" then don't sell it unless you really need the shards as they're items used to buy higher level gear. If it just says "selling for metal shards" then sell away as it's essentially "junk" items.

[deanb]

https://clips-media-assets.twitch.tv/24665816464-offset-1755.5829999999999-16-854x480.mp4

 

Not my video, but pretty hilarious.

 

Also the OST is up on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/5ZAaYcFudS0BtKhWJqeMCH

 

Also..Cauldron is fricking cool. Certainly answered a question I'd been having

 

i.e "how the hell do these machines get made, not like they're reproducing...are they?"

 

 

Though it is one of the quests where I'm a bit like "yeah, pretty sure the suggested level there is a wee bit too low". iirc it's lvl 8, I was lvl 12 and had a fair bit of difficulty towards the end. But as noted on Twitter it's kinda helped me sharpen a few of my skills up for future encounters.

 

oh and a tip of my own. I'm gonna spoiler it since I'm sure it's an "exploitable" or whatever, but I've found it makes hunting animals a decent chunk more manageable

 

rolling, unlike in most games, actually makes you go faster than even running. So just roll up to boars n the like and they'll usually never have a chance. Can also be used to escape more difficult encounters.

 

[Thursday Next]

Already had the hiccup of selling items to traders that are used for buying weapons/outfits though

 

I like that the inventory screen tells you which items are for what, so anything labelled "Selling for Metal Scraps" and "Trading With Merchants" is a keeper, while anything that is just "Selling for Metal Scraps" you 100% know you won't need again.

 

I also like that you can make a specific crafting task an "Errand" so if you really want that extra ammo capacity you can create a mini-quest of your own for it.

 

This game is just pure excellence in every aspect. I love the world building, the artefacts from the old world, the design of the enemies, it's all great.

 

There's something about combat with a bow and arrow that *feels* skillful, I don't know why, but it's so much more satisfying than a gun.

[deanb]

 

Fallen in love with Meridian. It's by no means perfect, but it's the kind of town/city I want to see in the next TES title. Also the layout is really nice too, it's not too big that it's a slog to go through, and its design in circles makes it pretty easy to navigate. If I was to count it probably doesn't have enough people living in it, especially as most are guards, but it's a nice enough population and far beyond what you get in TES games. Looks pretty too. It is quite the difference from the early part of the game with the Nora.

 

I'm kinda interested to get more datalogs to see what sparked the religions of this world, especially in places quite close to each other. Like the "creation story" for the Nora I can kinda get given there's a big ass robot octopus thing embedded in their holy mountain and shit like

"immaculate conception"

certainly helps fuel their religion. But the Carja I'm curious to see how their "sun-god" came about (Though I guess sun-god is a pretty standard god). Got a quest to hang out with the Bur-ja and I imagine they've different religion too (though I've a feeling it'll be close to the Nora).

 

My only continuing beef is the weird "platforming". Like the proper platforming areas around vantages and long necks (<3 longnecks) are fine, but in the average open world stuff it's really nit and miss on what Aloy can and cannot climb. Like I fell off the docks at Meridian, and while I could climb up onto a boat, I couldn't climb up onto the dock despite the same distance. And with rivers and such some rocks she'll use to climb out the river, and some I need to find a sloping bank to get out. It's annoyingly inconsistent.

 

Cauldrons are pretty great too, though a bit miffed the "boss" at the end of my first kinda just shat out all other mechanics of the game. Still managed to take it down, but it wasn't easy and took several tries.

[Mr. GOH!]

C'mon, Thursday. The game isn't unadulterated excellence; the voice acting and character animation in conversations can be pretty mediocre. I love the game a lot, but its many successes make its few shortcomings glaringly obvious.

 

Edit: But, to reiterate; the combat is magnificent. I'm around level 25 and going after multiple large machines in one go still feels exhilarating and dangerous. Whether using the bow or one of the other weapons (I like the slingshot, personally), combat is always fun and fast-paced.

 

The bits of text from the old world are great, too. Seems like the Ancients had it coming.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Mr. GOH!

[Thursday Next]

I disagree, I've yet to come across a single aspect that in any way diminishes my experience. My only slight gripe is that going from Nora to Carja is one hell of jump in difficulty so I've burnt through my resources... Stormbirds and Thunderjaws and Tramplers oh my. But that's my fault for running headlong into fights rather than prepping appropriately.

[deanb]

Birds are a bit of a pain. I find the best thing with them is the rope caster, a couple usually pins them down (not done a big bird yet mind) and you can whack them. Though the "Critical Hit" pop-up doesn't always show when you'd want it too which can mean you'll do a regular attack which weakens the ropes. I quite like tramplers, make okay mounts. Bummed a bit that they don't have like a "charge" or dash or something given they do when they're just regular beasties.

 

My big resource I burnt through was err...edge water I think it is, for the tear arrows.

[Thursday Next]

I'm finding crocodiles most troublesome, largely because there always seems to be several of them at once.

[deanb]

Crocodiles rear up before they're about to shoot, so just plant an arrow in their gullet. They're also pretty bad against fire, if you can clear some of their armour and get in a fire arrow they'll usually write around for a bit.

[Thursday Next]

It's the fact that there always seem to be ~3 of them that is my issue here.

[deanb]

Kite them? 

 

Anywho there's a patch out that fixes a couple issues with quests, but the biggy for me is it turns out that the track showing requiring you to be kinda close isn't a feature, but a bug they've now fixed. Seems a lot of people thought it was by design too

[Thursday Next]

I thought that was a feature too!

 

Edit: I will never get over the fact that these toys are gone even though they would be the perfect partner to HZD.

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by Thursday Next

[Mister Jack]

I'm really digging this game so far.  It's a far cry from Guerilla's past work.  Also, this may sound weird but while I've played games where you hunt animals before, this might be the first one that really makes me feel like a hunter, if that makes any sense.

 

On a side note, I like how they handled the whole "climb the radio tower to expose the map" thing you see so often in these open world games.  I don't really like that trope in general, but if it's gotta be in there, then this is a clever way to do it.

[deanb]

Tallnecks are great. And there's only like six of them in the whole game. My fave so far was one doing a path around a pool full of Snapmaws and after circling a bit I just went for a mad dash up their little central island, leaping from an outcrop onto the tallneck before any of them could reach me.

 

As for feeling like a hunter, I'd guess the most comparable game to this is Far Cry, which hunting is mainly done for getting a new wallet. Here there's better sneaking facilities than just "stay out the way", and identifying weakpoints other than "hit it with a lot of machine gun fire until it dies".