Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition PC Review _Buy_ Wait for Sale_ Never Touch

 the dreaded scrapper is a fierce beast it's known for eating everything and worrying about [ __ ] it out later it's so sweet jesus sit back my friends

and imagine a game where you're a decked out cave woman wearing the parts of creatures you've smashed off of them like some kind of rebellious walmart

shopper beating the crap out of store mannequins and owning whatever broke off of them not exciting enough well add to that that you're doing this all while being chased down a rocky cliff by a murderous robotic turkey that looks like it stole the front end off a dyson bladeless fan and then glued a cpu overclocking kit to it that my friends is the first like 30 minutes of horizon zero dawn this is a game that has you play as aloy exploring a mysterious land filled with robot dinosaurs that are so scary they don't even need to transform and this game already succeeded in 2017 when it came out for the ps4 it comes out this week for the pc on steam and the epic game store it's for 49.99 that includes horizon zero dawn as well as the expansion also thanks to sony for a review code for this game as you guys know i don't do reviews that are two minutes long or filled with sponsored bullcrap so that means when i get a code even from the devs i go out and get a code myself i'll be giving that away to somebody who watches the video so my hard earned cash is on the line just like yours let's begin graphics are up first now i do have to say sony have a day one patch that's supposed to go live prior to you guys getting this i'll update this review on the first comment if anything changes a this specifically does hit on one point i did have but doesn't change the score it was noticeable and i'll talk about that i like to imagine that when horizon zero dawn was created it was just some designers sitting back watching clan of

the cave bear and someone said you know what this needs a fine layer of neon and fire horizon zero dawn shows how much art design and world design matter even when compared to cold hard technical elements of games and their designs while it was no slouch on the ps4 at 30fps it's excellent to finally unleash

the beast and allow horizon to sort of stretch its scaly little legs and show some of the work at a higher fidelity and frame rate than was ever possible on the ps4 or the pro horizon excels in many places the world that ailoy and her friends and enemies encounter is one of captivating use of scale and color from the soaring mountains you climb precariously to perch with these robotic passerine that watch over the lands of robot dinosaur kind or if you're just creeping stealthfully through the crimson top vegetation that rings a valley floors you skirt past a group of chargers that have claimed that place as their own what many other games handle with a rough hand and a lack of subtlety that equals green grasses growing right up to the side of a blizzard white and field horizon layers out with a comforting smoothness that makes the entire world feel far more natural in every transition location changes have a natural extension of the weather types and the environments that you explore from waste deep snow in the frozen wilds to the swampy mercs that a massive human-built city seems to strive to escape from by building well straight up world building is hard you can't just plop a bunch of buildings down a bunch of npcs

and think it's going to come together but horizon zero dawn doesn't do that it captures the feeling of both nature at its finest returning that world to a

balance that's been lost centuries before due to the story elements and somehow mixes it with well robotic dinosaurs without actually appearing for the most parts comical because it is robot dinosaurs there are few things as cool as dinosaur robots maybe ninjas and pirates or pirate ninjas with robots or robotic ninjas and a pirate ship with 1980s rock bands just wailing away in the background as they sail the universe it's not like dinosaurs aren't menacing all by

themselves they already encapsulate this special place in our lizard core brain that's like a walking turn and runaway sign they are a couple tons of scaly

pure mayhem that happened to grow teeth just because mother nature saw it and thought you know what let's make that even more scary and the devs basically took that and added to it ramshackle constructed out of disused circus parts and strapped on explosive fluids and scary-ass saw blades and somehow made

dinosaurs that look like they belong horizon's creature designs take specific dinosaur archetypes and merge them and creates these new ones that are both

alien but ultimately a bit familiar for example you might see rampaging horde and stags with huge canisters of explosives rigged to their backs because

obviously that's the safest place to put explosives or swimming alligator machines with armored scaling and mysterious technology humming away in their bellies that also lets them spit freezing fluids at you each looks just familiar enough to make you think you know what i sort of remember seeing that from

grade school but then they envelop you in a shock ray that stuns you and warps the entire field of view and if you live through it you spend a good deal of your time running away thinking nope i probably didn't see that we've seen so many games with excellent designs where something always feels

off with the world and the creatures that inhabit it now a good deal of that is mastering the perceived weight of the characters and creatures in the game

world and making them feel like they're affected in the same way the player is it enforces that feeling of mass and well massiveness even the smaller scout and recon creatures move with connection to the world in horizon zero dawn i've never been attacked by a robot chicken with an eye of the storm electronic globe for an eye but i assume it looks pretty much exact like this if you watch the gdc's you can see a lot of the different animations that

they took from real creatures and patterned them into the robots here it works wonders to make everything feel organic now speaking of apocalyptic chicken destruction horizon's destruction system where you piece apart the dinosaurs and wear their parts helps add to this feeling of everything in the game world

subtly being connected explosions detonate with force beams of electricity crackle around you as parts explode off the machine and

they shower down around you and everything has a multi-layered feel to it but it's not just that it's also that horizon is a visual yardstick for color work and animation that informs the gamer of state changes in enemies verizon also goes that extra step to make everything feel and everyone feel like they're a

part of the game world whether it's a tribe's unique way of dressing or just some item within the game world one thing though if there's anything the

game is missing it's extra layers of facial animation and that's noticeable throughout here anger is usually translated as someone just speaking by really

squinting hard at somebody else it's a step down from say resident evil and fair like that but doesn't overly hurt the game animation special effects and

just the way everything comes together really does elevate horizon zero dawn that brings us to performance well the game has a number of graphical options and settings you can choose from for shadows resolution render level of detail and more i wish i had a couple more because the game's performance is

not necessarily amazing and this is of course prior to that particular patch on a current i7 at 4.7 and a 2080 ti 1440p with all the settings at maximum

was always above 60 fps there was a noticeable amount of pop in though that you could see in far off details now that doesn't matter what resolution you're at and that is a setting i would love to see added to this particular engine because it was something that happened in the ps4 version as well a 1080 or a 1080 ti would easily get you 1080p and there is a noticeable bug at 4k that they said was going to be patched when it comes to performance and while the game doesn't have dlss support it does have unlocked fps as well as ultra wide display settings that you can choose now while this performance and these issues don't pay a perfect pitcher horizon is for the most part a stunning looking game its requisite attention to color and design is a thing to behold offering this world that feels like no other and nonsense maybe far cry blood dawn is game so utterly odd me in terms of just pure eye glitz even if it did come with some caveats and that brings us to sound music and voice but what does it have to do with where i was born my hope is everything [Music] [Music] and we'll do voice first it's true that sometimes aloy can straight up just remove the frivolity of the novelty of living in a world where robotic condors

with jet intakes on their wings hang ou on rocky outcroppings just you know chilling her delivery can run from emotional to dry and while it's a vessel

for the player to experience this world this has added to the fact that a lot herself hasn't traveled out of the valley much and aside from the occasion

of wow this is awesome she exudes wanderlust a little bit like john wick exudes fear it doesn't temper your own experience that much nevertheless it is noticeable most of the side characters and npcs are fine and zero dawn running from excellent to what the hell were they thinking when compared to the other elements i would say it probably feels the most uneven of these categories if only because when lance riddick starts to extrapolate the additional policies of the story you sit up and realize just how good he is i can only assume that when lance was born the first thing he did was read a poem about being awesome lip syncing is unchanged from the original game and that means things can look a little bit rough eloy stands there with huge eyes and this astonished look on her face when someone is explaining the prices of a trader stall it's just one of the places where horizon does show its age and did even back then and that brings us to music horizon zero dawn and frozen lands music has this unique mix of heady full-throated orchestral tracks that are also layered in with a surprising amount of ambient layers that plays throughout and these sort of trade places as you're actually playing but they trade places in a more organic way than i think a lot of other games actually handle but this is a game where a pilgrimage to a desert fort might encompass these rousing string sections that fade into a deceptively low frequency base underpinning then that'll transform into this rousing battle music as the edge too close to

creatures hunting grounds it's a mix of expected instruments as well as more than a little experimentation and sustained note woodwinds during exploration

give everything this almost legend of zelda kind of feel at different times i like the experimentation that went on with the music here as well as the

traditional stuff that we'd all expect and that brings us to sound yeah so horizon zero dawn's sound work it this just shows pure prowess on the audio team from the start to the end and the way sound passes across the landscape is second to none it shows that horizon when it originally came out was lauded for its exemplary audio for a reason you'll be running down a ravine and you hear this booming sound and it'll start rhythmically playing you'll realize the ground is shaking and that sound echoes out around you and down through the valley as some colossal robotic thingamajig comes down out of the rocks each footstep a little bit like nature's heartbeat sequencing the tempo for your doom except in horizon zero dawn bpm doesn't stand for beats per minute it stands for [ __ ] pedal more as you leap on your robot retreat cycle and motor out of there sound is incredibly important when it comes to informing the gamer of the  environment circling around enemies even without seeing them or setting traps even without knowing exactly where they are is something you will find yourself doing in horizon zero dawn like the original though it does have a couple small issues one of those is that sometimes a person's gonna call out for help and they'll sound like they're right in front of you and you'll find out that they're like two hills beyond the sound of their voice is just unnaturally carrying strangely this does not seem to happen with the creature sounds and this is something that i noticed on the original and that brings us to gameplay and a bit about the story horizon zero dawn takes place thousands of years after humanity has seen a stunning collapse of civilization how or what starts out is pretty much unimportant as you are introduced to a loiner protector ross both outcasts from their tribe for an unknown reason now as you progress through the story and you begin to uncover more about eloy and her background you also begin to unearth the mysterious happenings that brought about the downfall of mankind and the rise of machines that inhabit the land almost instantly you're thrust into this native world with eloy learning skills from combat and exploration and quest making as she traipses across the 40-plus hours of the combined story taking on quests exploring the land collecting items in the game world and occasionally caveman batman detectivizing a murder or two combat is a mix of using weaponry as well as the landscape to help you take down ever larger prey as you move forward now as you level up aloy you pick from a series of skills to add to your repertoire soon gaining the ability to attack enemies from above or below or knocking two or three or four arrows into the boat any one time or slowing down time when aiming robin hooding your way through the best of them to be fair most of horizon's aerodyn's basic trappings are not that original it doesn't really shake the ground when it comes to how you interact with the skills and the systems in the game and those skills aren't really revolutionary that is for sure

where horizon excels is the unique world view it presents in the organic way in which it's reflected across both the visual and exploration aspects

from battle heart and warriors sitting on thrones made from court out centers of creatures that you recognize to the way the game's religions hearken back to a cause and effect kind of worship that happens when no one understands what the hell is going on each machine has a job and while mysterious at first you slowly begin to piece together everyone and everything's place in this cycle of life you have hobo robotic crabs with massive storage bins on the

back and they collect organic samples in the field to be used by machines in other locations you have tallnecks who slowly traipse around the landscape climbable machine zebra towers from which alloy can then discover more of the game worlda world that while years past its expiration date still holds a lot of traces of the past and that reflection is something you see now stealth works at its most basic here in game play with particular locations and grasses being useful for a lawyers places she can hide and also use various tactics to foo enemies away from or towards her as she needs regardless of which for the most part you're probably going to be having them come towards you aloy can use every part of the enemies anyway which sees you running around smashing the

machines to bits and wearing their pieces or aiming at particular parts which has a higher chance of dropping unique scrap this is where the game

forcibly channels a monster hunter light kind of feeling to it with weaknesses and strengths to elements playing out depending on the creatures and their locations to add a layer of strategy though horizon uses something that i really like and that's that most enemies have a particular location that if destroyed or targeted with a particular type of elemental attack does a huge area of effect explosion for example if you punch through the chest of robotic chicken and puncture the canisters inside and that piece explodes it sends out a shock wave that stuns other enemies in the group turning animals

into weird mobile weapons that well still look like animals but you get my point even without a true lock on and using either the mouse and keyboard or the

controller it's not hard to figure out ways to lead groups together and use your enemy's weaknesses as your own strength you're consistently exploring the world finding new humans to get quests from discovering new parts of the culture and thereby new places to explore and new creatures or story snippets to grab a hold of all the while you're just looking at that next fire pit that you can see on the map thinking you know what i can make it it's not all killing

though sometimes on missions aloy will have to use her honed ability to track as well as the device that inescapably is tied to the technology of the past

world occasionally helping other villagers at times others tracking down different enemies and more often than not getting into battles along the way the question is though did horizon make the jump to pc with all the positives of additional hardware and fidelity of movement or did it bring along some baggage for the trip it does have some issues and we do need to talk about them first is mouse and keyboard and the user interface which is not amazing

the game uses a radius dial for weapon switching and while the circle sounds simple i mean it's a basic shape once you throw four weapons on that circle each that shoots different ammo and then see how easy it is to try to craft together fire arrows when a dynabot is rampaging behind you vomiting frozen globs of something at your back as you're sliding down a rocky outcropping trying to finesse one choice from a possible eight or more that can appear is never really the easiest with mouse and keyboard it may be easier due to level fidelity when actually aiming but you should remember that every weapon has a handling ability meaning a well-placed arrow can still shoot very wide if you have a low stat for that weapon so when it comes to control i would say mouse and keyboard does help a bit but it's not the ace in the hole also the entire inventory system is just sort of a mess you know it must be an issue when it's

brought up at multiple gdcs by the developers themselves for example upgrades to ammo carrying and item carrying are all separate even though they aren't really visually any different upgrading each item is a chore as you have to go into each one separately and it gets cumbersome figuring out which one you actually need resources for crafting which you get from killing creatures is also overly complex for what they're doing with items having really odd

descriptors which can make understanding what you should and shouldn't keep really confusing in fact many times it feels a bit like an mmo with some items sold for scrap and nothing else other scrap items traded to merchants that the game warns you about before you ever meet them causing you to hold on to everything like a reverse santa carrying a sack across the land other items that you can sell but they're pieced out awkwardly in the inventory at some point you're probably going to be just like me and say screw it i'm keeping everything just in case which then leads you to have to upgrade your resource carrying capability which is strangely not connected to your other items carrying capability it's not horrible it's just complex and cumbersome for no real reason also while the game does have a number of weapons and types like casters which you can use to put trip lines in the game world where enemies hit them and set off traps you also just have normal traps which you can lay pretty much anywhere then you have your bow your sniper bow and your heavy bow which also has a various make and model from different tribes or even rarer ones this can be augmented like armor with various augments you find around the

game world but it's not unusual to have three bows in your pack with one hot swappable and find a spot where you really sort of needed the one that's

just sitting in your inventory it feels like a bit of overlap lastly the ai i test games on all difficulties from easy to hard to see how it all feels

first the ai in the game doesn't really utilize new movements or techniques depending on difficulty it's mostly purely hit points and damage based

and while the machines themselves are always enjoyable to take out and have a tendency to easily attract others which can turn a normal hunting expedition into traversal through the bowels of a robot lizard the human ai continues to be the weak spot while the dinosaurs are leaping over your traps and flanking you and basically worrying less about discreet hazards more about that age-old question how many of these fat cave people can i fit in my mouth right now the humans never really offer a great challenge but how does all that come together and that brings us to fun factor horizon zero dawn doesn't really completely change anything about the open world third person action game genre what it does is it offers an enticing story and some of the coolest monsters and environments in a game and battle against those monsters is awesome it's got a mostly excellent graphical presentation and a story with some real world parallels that i found interesting it comes together more than the sum of its parts and basically you're smashing a bunch of dinosaurs like a damn jengapuzzle anyway which is also a blast it has its issues but it is a pure lesson in childhood come to life it's a pleasure to take down a giant robot with

a couple hit points left using traps to lure them then their own weaknesses to take out additional machines that might creep up in the meantime and then you see that explosion of sparkling parts as they pinata out around you in wearable items it is a beautiful game to explore it's a tremendous world to discover

and i didn't mention this but i forgot you can also ride the dinosaurs well some of them you can't write them all that's probably for the sequel horizon

zero dawn two the [ __ ] just got realez and speaking of real that brings us to the rating as you guys know i rate games on a buy weight for sale rent or never touch it again rating system with rent being replaced by deep deep sale on pc titles if that's the rating i give it so taking into account this is a 49 game and includes the normal gain and the expansion i still think it's worth it despite some of those performance issues especially at 4k this is something that they said there's a patch coming i'll inform you guys in the first comment i think the performance isn't absolutely amazing but certainly at 1440p and below it seemed to run fine and that apparently is a particular glitch for the 4k gaming i still was able to run it at 4k and get solid fps but it was not as solid as i would want what i did get to do though is just absolutely have a blast horizon has a composure that lacks in many other titles where some open world games have this almost innate irritability whenever nothing is happening on screen horizon has a bit more of a sedate feel

it's no ghost of shashima far from it but it's a bit more even-handed and judicious when it comes to its allotment of encounters even with that long draw distance and a world that's just chalk full of terraforming terror bots it makes it feel like something i want to continue to explore it gathers

everything together the mystical the mayhem the robots the neon and puts it in a package that is really enjoyable so that's it for me if you like the video give it a thumbs up if you dislike it give it a thumbs down maybe check out patreon you know as times go on everything's demonetized youtube's absolute crap hell tick tock might even be banned from what they say i would love for you guys to come by discord it helps more than you know another way that you can enjoy a little bit of acg is check out the swag that'll come up at the end of this video as you'd see it now these are different designs that i'll be doing based on games that i've really enjoyed these were inspired by ghost of sashima you should see those there'll be a couple probably inspired by horizon zero dawn as well just things that captivate me and remind me of the way that we might play these games every single one of the shirts have some kind of design or element that indicates the way a person might play it whether it be a tank or a cleric or a fighter or a paladin but all named and designed based around

the game world itself versus the typical archetypes we may see so anyway that's it for me hope you guys like the video peace out and enjoy the rest of your week