Horizon Zero Dawn

[deanb]

sooo...?

[TheMightyEthan]

I will make comment once I finish.  

[Ap3xLyfe]

Loving this game so far!

[TheMightyEthan]

It's really good, by far my favorite Guerrilla game ever, and PlayStation's best 1st party game in years. Best since at least The Last of Us, and possibly as far back as Shadow of the Colossus.

[deanb]

 

So if you have 8hrs to spare then this is a thing for you. 

 

I'm not really keen on it, it's a pretty cinematic game for sure but you'd never expect anyone to go for an 8hr film (LotR was kinda pushing it at 3hrs) so I'd say if your aim to truly make a "movie" version of it rather than a "series" you'd need to be super brutal in your edits and remove a fair chunk of the cruft. Like jumping about and Nils pops up and he's purely side-quest fodder so can strip him out, makes me feel there's plenty other sidequests in there. There was a "Uncharted: The Movie" made a few years back and that's around 2hrs long which is a decent length.

[Mal]

 

[TCP]

On 1/31/2017 at 7:24 AM, deanb said:

*looks as PS4 sales*
*looks at Wii U sales*
 

Hmm, I dunno.

 

edit: should note I'm responding to TCP here, not GOH (he's wasn't there when I posted).

 

Looks like Zelda outside Horizon considerably. 

[deanb]

Where'd you pull that image from? (I asked Google and they suggested some weird Japanese site). I mainly ask for it having BFII as one of the top selling games of the year is a bit ?

Though it does say being US sales, which I guess maybe makes sense given EU charts (given our console affinity towards PlayStation) does put HZ:D right after FIFA n COD (even Crash sold more than Zelda). Though still yet to see even a US-only chart that puts BFII anywhere. (And global charts will never put NBA or NFL anywhere high given the single-country focus).

 

VG Chartz puts the global sales at 4.9million for Zelda and 4.3million for HZ:D so hardly a considerable outselling. Especially given the long arm of Nintendo software (if you remember the launch period HZ:D did outsell Zelda, which was the main discussion of the "HZ:D is dead at launch cos people are gonna go n buy Switch in droves at launch").

 

And hey, it even got some DLC 

[TCP]

That's the NPD's for 2017.

[deanb]

I'm gonna guess that's neither the "narcissistic personality disorders for 2017" or the "Norwegian petroleum directorates for 2017".

 

I did eventually find an article with it and seems to imply that they only use data supplied directly from the developer?
https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/18/npd-2017-the-10-best-selling-games-of-the-year/

 

Quote

NPD doesn’t have the exact numbers, but if developer PUBG Corporation shared its sales data with NPD, the battle royal shooter would shoot to the top half of this list and would have a decent shot at making No. 1. PUBG has surpassed 30 million copies sold worldwide on PC and has already had more than 3 million copies sold on Xbox One.

 

Which might, aside from the US Xbox lean, explain why there's not a single Sony game on the list. Battleront II being in the top 10 is something I just cannot wrap my head around, even on a US-only list. Like it did abysmally, EA changed their profit expectations for the year based on the poor sales, and yet it seemingly outsold crap tons of other games?

 

[Hot Heart]

Wasn't it already established that EA have totally fucked up sales expectations though? I seem to remember it on an article relating to Dragon Age: Inquisition and possibly ME: Andromeda, too.

 

I should also add that I have been playing this game and enjoying it.

 

 

I especially like the Witcher-like approach of reading up on the different types of enemies. Plus, it doesn't really hold your hand with the mechanics and lets you figure stuff out for yourself.

 

Also, this.

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Hot Heart

[TCP]

My understanding has always been NPD data comes from multiple sources but digital sales only come from publishers. 

Not sure where Horizon would be on the list but obviously Zelda would be ahead in Japan and probably Europe as well.

[TheMightyEthan]

NPD gets data from retailers for physical copies, relies on devs for digital.

[deanb]

@Hot Heart I do like the rock-paper-scissors approach to the enemy types/affinities which mean that reward swapping out to different ammo types.

And yeah the interaction between the machines (and with other humans) is pretty cool.

 

@Ultra TCP As already mentioned in Europe HZ:D was the better performing game. It is a European game after all (which led to some sweet promo art), and as mentioned we have a higher affinity for PlayStation. And ultimately it doesn't really matter anyway since as originally discussed (like a year ago) you're not going to find them stepping on each others toes given they're first party games on two different platforms and not like a multi-plat shooter game releasing right on top of each other as you tend to get with COD and [any other shooter game].

[TCP]

I disagree. Even if they're on two different platforms, two open world games like that will totally step on each others toes. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I'm with Cowboy on this one. Not that it necessarily happened in this case, but that in general being on different platforms doesn't prevent them from competing.

[Thursday Next]

Nintendo only competes with other platforms when it comes to share of wallet, it almost never competes on a like-for-like basis. Doesn't matter if it is an open world game or an FPS, a popular Ninty game drains the wallets of people who might otherwise have bought something, anything, on another platform.

 

Dean's correct in so far as the venn diagram of people who consciously and specifically chose Zelda over HZD likely has a small overlap. However, TCP and Ethan are correct in that people who can only afford one game a quarter likely chose Zelda as their one game, thus squeezing out HZD (and everything else that released in that quarter).

[Mister Jack]

I'm sure I'm in the minority but I actually had more fun with Horizon than with Zelda.

[Thursday Next]

I don't have a Switch, but I totally hear you on HZD being awesome. I've nearly (I think) finished the Frozen Wilds.

[deanb]

I'd say if you're on a tight gaming budget, at the time of Zeldas launch you either had to be in the minority with a Wii U, or go n spend a few hundred on a Switch. (which'd be why at launch HZD was the stronger selling game, and BotW, as with many Nintendo titles, going for that long tail).

 

@Mister Jack Not the first person I've heard saying so. I think the general point people have is they feel Zelda wasn't as...well rounded and long-lived. Like with HZD each encounter is pretty dang cool, and the mixed interaction of the machines helps with making encounters unique. How you deal with a thunderhawk is totally different to...I forget its name but the stealth one. Whereas I'm to understand with BotW there's an underwhelming variety in enemies beyond re-skins.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Beyond both being open world action adventure games they're really quite different. I would say I liked Zelda more (I mean, I've played it all the way through twice, but now that I've platted HZD I doubt I'll ever go back), but they're both excellent.

[Thursday Next]

Just finished the Frozen Wilds DLC on Ultra Hard. Fuck. Me. That was a challenging fight.

[TheMightyEthan]

Wow, I thought that fight was a bitch on normal...

[Thursday Next]

Had to change my build up a lot. The Ice Rail cannon with max damage and some handling is a god-send. The lack of a health bar is especially cruel on UH as you have no idea how close you are to finishing. Here's a vid of when I took it down (needless to say, this was not on my first attempt).

 

 

[deanb]

 

Always down for more Horizon. Currently on a replay, including with Frozen Wilds which I bought ages ago and never got around to (I'm really bad with DLC/expansions like that) Certainly a lot tougher than the main game, but some neat additions. Also a friend is playing through for his first time and it's been a fun thing to chat about during lockdown. He's rather enjoying it (as some in Discord will have seen :P)

 

 

Also this comparison is too easy to make:

 

Speculation so far is

Spoiler

Sylens isn't corrupting machines per-se but semi-uncorrupting (they go from red to yellow). As usual his motives will remain mostly chaotic neutral, but kinda help and hinder Aloy.

The fact that there's storms n shit n meteorites are that it could be related to the source of the "Signal" (which a lot of folks reckon came from Oddyssey; the colony ship that was a concurrent plan to Zero Dawn that presumed destroyed).
Probably have another sub-system going haywire like Hades n Hephaestus. "Aether" was the air/weather controlling one so could be that fucking up.

 

Not really speculation but this is set in California and surrounding region.

 

Also the first game had limited "real animals" and was waved away in-game as being due to the destroyed Apollo since humans were meant to clone the rest of the stocks and the base AI only made base animal stocks. Wonder if they'll cover the increased animal population. Like I don't even think the first game had birds (if turkeys don't count)