REVIEW -- Horizon: Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world action role-playing video game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 on 28 February 2017 in North America, on 1 March in Europe and 2 March in Asia. The plot revolves around Aloy, a hunter and archer living in a world overrun by robots. Having been an outcast her whole life, she sets out to discover the dangers that kept her sheltered. The character uses ranged weapons and a spear and stealth tactics to combat the mechanized creatures, whose remains can also be looted for resources. A skill tree facilitates gameplay improvements. The game features an open world environment for Aloy to explore, divided into tribes that hold side quests to undertake, while the main story guides her throughout the whole world.

Note: Credit goes to SunhiLegend on Twitter for the AMAZING gifs used in this review. He captures the beauty and awe of this game perfectly.

Plot: (FULL Spoilers)

Setting

The story is set approximately one thousand years in the future, in a world where humans have regressed to primitive tribal societies as a result of some unknown calamity. Their technologically advanced predecessors are vaguely remembered as the "Old Ones." Large robotic creatures known merely as "machines" now dominate the Earth. For the most part they peacefully coexist with humans, who occasionally hunt them for parts. However, a phenomenon known as the "Derangement" has caused machines to become more aggressive towards humans, and larger and deadlier machines have begun to appear. There are three tribes that are prominently featured: the Nora, the Carja, and the Oseram. The Nora are fierce hunter-gatherers who live in the mountains and worship nature as the "All-Mother." The Carja are desert-dwelling city builders who worship the Sun. The Oseram are tinkerers known for their metalworking, brewing, and arguing.

Synopsis

Aloy is raised in the Nora tribe from a young age. As a child, she obtains a Focus, a small device that gives her special perceptive abilities and the ability to interact with machines and Old One technology. After coming of age, Aloy (Ashly Burch) enters a competition to win the right to ask the Nora Matriarchs about the identity of her mother. Aloy wins the competition but the Nora are suddenly attacked by cultists. Aloy is almost killed by their leader Helis (Crispin Freeman). When Aloy awakes, a Matriarch explains that the cultists had control of corrupted machines. Aloy also learns that as an infant she was found at the foot of a sealed door that the Nora worship. An Oseram foreigner called Olin (Chook Sibtain) informs Aloy that the cultists are part of a fanatical religious group calling themselves the Eclipse. They worship a demon called HADES (John Gonzalez), who allows them to corrupt machines. Olin indicates that the reason Aloy was targeted by the Eclipse was due to her resemblance to an Old World scientist called Dr. Elisabet Sobeck (also voiced by Burch).

Aloy enters Faro Automated Solutions and discovers that the world was put into peril nearly one thousand years ago because Faro lost control of its automated "peacekeeper" robots. However, the world was narrowly saved thanks to Project Zero Dawn, which was spearheaded by Dr. Sobeck. Aloy is then contacted by Sylens (Lance Reddick), a researcher interested in what happened to the Old Ones. Aloy eventually learns that Dr. Sobeck was sent to an Orbital Launch Base to complete Zero Dawn and Sylens reveals that the base is located under the Citadel, the centre of Eclipse power. Aloy heads for the base and inside she learns that Zero Dawn was actually a vast underground system of databases, factories and cloning facilities all controlled by a single artificial intelligence named GAIA (Lesley Ewen). Once all life had been extinguished, GAIA would develop a countermeasure to deactivate all of the Faro robots and then build its own robots to restore the Earth's biosphere. Once the planet was habitable again, GAIA would reseed life on Earth based on stored DNA and teach the first human clones not to repeat their predecessors' past mistakes. It is also revealed that HADES was one of GAIA's subsystems designed to enact controlled extinction if the outcome of Zero Dawn was not favourable for human existence. Aloy reaches Dr. Sobeck's office, where she downloads a registry to give her access to the door from which she was born.

Aloy helps the Nora tribe fight off the Eclipse and then she enters the door beneath the Nora mountain. She finds a recording left behind by GAIA, revealing that a signal of unknown origin caused HADES to activate and seize control of her functions. As a last resort, GAIA self destructed her own core to stop HADES. Without GAIA to maintain the terraforming process, the entire system began to break down, so as a contingency plan, GAIA created Aloy with Dr. Sobeck's DNA profile, in the hope that she would find GAIA's message, destroy HADES, and restore GAIA's functions. Aloy learns that Dr. Sobeck sacrificed her life to ensure the Faro swarm would not find GAIA. Aloy manages to obtain the System Override necessary to destroy HADES. Sylens admits that he was the original founder of the Eclipse, originally tempted by HADES' promises of knowledge. Aloy surmises that HADES wants to send a signal to reactivate the Faro robots so that they can wipe out all life on Earth again. Aloy kills Helis and stabs HADES with Sylens' lance, ending the war. Aloy then journeys to Dr. Sobeck's home, where she finds her corpse, and has a moment of mourning for her mother. In a post-credits scene, HADES is shown to still be alive, but trapped by Sylens, who intends to interrogate HADES to find out who sent the signal that activated it in the first place.

Gameplay:

Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world action role-playing game played from a third-person view. Players take control of Aloy, a hunter and archer, as she progresses through a post-apocalyptic land ruled by robotic creatures known simply as "machines".Aloy uses a variety of ways to kill enemies, such as setting traps like tripwires using the Tripcaster, shooting them with arrows, using explosives, and a spear. Machine components, including electricity and the metal they are composed of, are vital to Aloy's survival, and she can loot their corpses to find useful resources for crafting. Ammo; resource satchels, pouches and quivers; resistance, antidote and health potions; and traps are all amenable to crafting. Weapons have modification slots for dealing more damage. A Focus scan allows Aloy to determine the machines' susceptibilities, identify their location, the particular level they possess and the nature of loot they will drop. One machine, the Stalker, can enable cloaking technology as a means of averting the gaze of Aloy's Focus scan. Machines attack by way of defensive and offensive measures, and will in either case react to a perceived threat by charging at it with brute force or projectiles. As they exhibit the behavior of wild animals, some machines are inclined to move in herds and others, possessing the ability of flight, do so in flocks. Unless hacked with the Override Tool, machines will not exert aggressive force against each other. Aloy also engages in battle with members of the cult known as the Eclipse, who are occasionally flanked by corrupted machines. Aloy may dodge, sprint, slide and roll to evade her enemies' advances. Aloy can also hide in foliage and ambush nearby enemies to ensure immediate takedowns. Swimming can be used to reach enemies stealthily or places otherwise unreachable on foot. Further, she is essentially able to hack a selection of machines with the Override Tool, turning them into makeshift mounts or travelling companions. Explorable ruins called Cauldrons exist to unlock additional machines to override. There are three categories in the skill tree—"Prowler" concerns stealth; "Brave" improves combat; and "Forager" increases healing and gathering capabilities. To level up, Aloy attains experience points from individual kills and completing quests. Upgrades in each category result in more adept use of the skills learned, with "Prowler" leading to silent takedowns, "Brave" to aiming a bow in slow motion, and "Forager" to enlarging the medicine pouch.

Feats like this are simply breathtaking to watch and perform in-game.

The game features an open world with a dynamic day-night cycle and weather system that can be explored without loading screens. The map is composed of forest, jungle, desert, and snowy mountain regions. Mountainous terrain is traversed with the employment of parkour, which is aided by the use of zip-lines installed throughout the world. Corruption Zones constitute areas that heighten difficulty and are populated by corrupted machines that behave with more aggression. To uncover more of the map, one must scale large giraffe-like machines known as Tallnecks. Twenty-six robotic creature designs are present in the game. Save points and fast travel can be accessed by interacting with campfires, once discovered. The quest structure unfolds to accommodate the exploration of tribes, while the main story covers the entire world. Side quests involve Aloy in tasks like gathering materials, coming to the aid of individuals in danger of being killed, solving mysteries, assuming control of bandit camps, eliminating criminals and more difficult machines, accomplishing various challenges at any of the five Hunting Grounds, and obtaining an ancient armor that makes Aloy almost impervious to (most) damage. A dialogue wheel is used to communicate with non-playable characters. Collectibles include vantages that offer visual information of the Old World; metal flowers, which when acquired contain poetry; and old relics such as ancient mugs and tribal artifacts.

The Verdict: 

I have no shame admitting that this game is easily my personal early pick for Game of the Year for 2017. If this game doesn't get any high marks in that department, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

Visuals

This isn't a cutscene, this is ALL actual gameplay.

Simply the most gorgeous game to date right now on the PlayStation 4. This game takes full advantage of what the console is able to do and pushes it to the absolute limit visually. Not for one instance that I saw a frame rate issue or the graphical quality dip in performance either as this game looked amazing from start to finish. It's not a surprise that people love using the Photo Mode to take screenshots of the in-game scenery. Many times I found myself just standing in one place and allowing myself to take in the scenery with these vast environments and so much life within them. There's so much about this game to look at with such awe and wonder. I haven't been this impressed with an in-game world/environment for a VERY long time.

Narrative

I've been running away from colleagues and the critics' comments about the "political agendas" within this game like the plague, much like Aloy here.

I was told by friends and colleagues at launch that this game has some political/SJW (social justice warrior) agenda, but to be quite honest, I didn't see that at all out of the roughly 80-100+ hours of gameplay I spent in this world. Aloy is raised as an outcast to her tribe, only to be thrown into the whole scope of the world when the only person that treated her like a normal person was killed saving her own life. It starts off as a revenge plot but grows into a narrative for answers about Aloy's own mysterious origins and what happened that reduced their world to this post-apocalyptic state dominated by these fearsome machines. After the opening act, I thought we were in for a simple revenge plot against the cultists/rival tribe that killed the man that Aloy considered her father and only family that she has known after being treated as an outcast her entire. Instead, I was delighted to be with Aloy from start to finish as she discovers her own origins being the successor to Dr. Sobeck and the horrifying events that led to the machines nearly wiping out mankind to extinction.

I appreciated that Aloy wasn't written so poorly in her characterization that she was merely motivated by revenge, but instead, it was merely the catalyst to discover the origins about herself and to explore the rest of the world that she was restricted from seeing. I honestly don't see why there was so much criticism and outcry that the main character here was female anyway. This narrative would have worked if Aloy was male or female. It's not biased or skewed in either direction in terms of gender equality. I found myself laughing at Aloy's social interactions though, which were a given from how she was raised and shunned from the rest of the world and her tribe within the Nora. At first, I thought it was Aloy was legit being an asshole to the numerous guys that she would meet that would casually flirt with her, but later I figured it out that she's completely oblivious to this kind of social interaction with people. She's like any Shonen Jump hero (Luffy from One Piece, Naruto Uzamaki, Goku from Dragonball, Ichigo from Bleach and so on...) when it comes to being unable to identify characters of the opposite sex attracted to them. I'm sure that aspect of the social interactions within this game was a feminists' dream as Aloy didn't take any shit from anyone - male or female and she definitely wasn't following any orders other than her own. Even when Sylens was directing/advising her throughout the game's narrative, her witty banter/commentary would definitely remind her friends and foes who's the boss (insert Sasha Banks' ghetto snap here) of this story.

I felt that Aloy was a fine example of a female heroine. She definitely wasn't a Mary Sue. We saw her vulnerable in her emotions, due to the hardships of this journey, to finding herself outgunned and overpowered by adversaries on several occasions, namely against Helis and his forces before teaming up with Sylens after Rost's noble sacrifice to save her life. Aloy is vulnerable and more importantly, human, given by the player's decisions or rather dialogue options throughout the narrative. So, if you want her to be kind and compassionate to everyone that she encounters, you have that choice. Alternatively, you want her to show no mercy, you can do that as well.

If I had any complaint about the story, there were at least two story missions that laid on the lore and history of the world pretty thick and gave you little time to digest all of it before throwing Aloy into the next big plot twist. It felt really rushed during those times of the story during missions and it really made me wonder, especially towards the end of the game. Exactly what happened to GAIA's other subroutines if HADES was able to break itself free from her maintenance and parentage to form it's own individuality and act on its own? I suppose we'll get the answers to that and possibly to the origins of who activated HADES in the first place in the upcoming Frozen Wilds DLC.

Gameplay

I adore this game's enemy AI. Well, for the various machines, yes, but the bandits/humans not so much as they tend to do the same careless things over and over. That goes double for AI companions during side missions, who merely stand around and do nothing for the most part while Aloy is busting her ass in combat. That being said, when all of these factors come together, some truly magical stuff happens, such as starting at the 17 minute mark in the video below.

In the video above, a simple Corruption Zone battle against two Corrupted Rockbreakers turned into a free-for-all, when wondering bandits and even a Behemoth (that I NEVER encountered before this point that just happened to be wondering by) came into the battle. If that wasn't enough, the next zone I came across had another Behemoth forcing me into combat, but I managed to trick the group of bandits on my trail to fight the Behemoth, Snapmaws, AND Longhorns in that area until they met their untimely demises.

Combat is the meat and bones of this experience, mixing both stealth and long-range combat to dispatch your foes. Aloy can perform light and heavy melee attacks too, but I highly recommend not even bothering with those until you get the bottom-tier melee abilities on the skill tree as Aloy is going to essentially have the same combat strength with her spear the entire game as she doesn't receive a new spear until the last story mission of the game.

Players will become very familiar with Aloy's bow as that is going to be your lifeblood in combat against these various lethal machines. Fortunately, Aloy can set traps (tripwire mines and various elemental traps) and cause distractions with lure calls and throwing rocks. Later in the game, you can even apply elemental effects to your weaponry to inflict massive damage to Aloy's foes as long as you know their elemental weaknesses. Aloy's Focus device provides her with a rundown of stats on just about everything hostile that you encounter from human adversaries to every machine type in the game as long as you scan these foes when you encounter them. Targeting specific points of interest on those targets will detail specific weaknesses that will aid Aloy in taking them down easier or optimizing her damage output with every arrow fired from her bow.

Some of these encounters will be hectic and frantic as players will have to devise ways on how to deal with multiple hostiles at once. Fortunately, Aloy can learn an ability that slows down time and gives her more time to fire her bow with deadly precision to enemy vitals. If that's not enough, Aloy also can acquire the ability to fire up to 3 arrows at once, adding more damage to a single shot from her bow.

Combat isn't just limited to the bow as there's multiple weapons to acquire and use, such as slingshots that can affect a wide area on multiple targets at once, dealing massive elemental damage or even machine guns (best used on human opponents) or a pseudo-shotgun that can blow off enemy components/vitals with ease if you rather fight your adversaries up close and personal. Aloy can even pick up and use mortars, gatling guns, and explosive launchers dropped heavy-gunner hostiles or blown off particular larger hostile machines to even the odds even further.

If that's not enough, Aloy can even use Corruption Arrows and the Override mechanic to turn hostile machines friendly and obey her commands. Some can be used as mounts to traverse the environment and cross the map faster, while others can be overridden to aid Aloy in combat.

Aloy's ability to override machines is dependent on the completion of the four optional Cauldrons.  Cauldrons are special dungeons in Horizon Zero Dawn. They're marked on your map with blue triangles, but are generally not truly revealed until you get near them.

Clearing a Cauldron grants you myriad rewards, including the ability to override new machines!

Below you will find a chart with Cauldron locations and a list of override unlocks, plus what you should expect. (Credit: IGN)

	Cauldron SIGMA	Cauldron RHO	Cauldron XI	Cauldron ZETA
Machine Overrides Unlocked	Sawtooth Scrapper Grazer Lancehorn	Shell-walker Snapmaw Longleg Ravager	Glinthawk Stalker Behemoth Bellowbacks	Stormbird Thunderjaw Rockbreaker
Level	8	12	18	20+
Location	North of Mother's Crown	South of Daytower	South of Meridian	North of Cut-Cliffs
What to Expect	Watchers Shell-Walker Bellowback	Watchers Longlegs Ravagers Snapmaw	Cultists Watchers Ravagers Stalkers	Stalkers Watchers Thunderjaw
Rewards	4000 XP 1 Skill point	6000 XP 1 Skill Point	8000 XP 1 Skill point	10000 XP 1 Skill point

I cannot stress enough how much fun the Cauldrons were in this game. If the Frozen Wilds DLC adds anything more to the game, I hope we get at least one or two more Cauldrons, along with a few more new machine types. Each Cauldron is like nothing you've seen before in this game as they are more clues to the world that was wiped out. Some of them may be easy to overcome, others require a ton of preparation and your wits (on top of your best gaming reactions) to conquer. These are definitely some of the most rewarding experiences in the game.

I don't want to sell the various (sometimes feeling like they are endless when you look at all of the icons on the world map) sidequests short, but there is plenty of fun to be had with those as well. Some of them partner Aloy up with a potential ally (depending on your actions and dialogue options that will aid you in story missions towards the quest's end), others will have Aloy hunting for rare components from various hostile machines (alternatively, there's an entire Hunting Club sidequest devoted to various means of dispatching hostile machines within a time limit for rare rewards, including unique weapons you cannot get anywhere else in the game by any other means) with various rewards and or tracking down bandits or lost villagers, or simply put, some of these missions will put Aloy in the middle of a double cross from so-called allies. The latter happens so much that even Aloy makes a joke about it during one of these missions. A lot of these sidequests have their own self-contained narratives, such as an internal family rivalry/petty jealousy or other wondering hunters like Aloy looking for redemption or to prove their worth.

Sound

Believe it or not, but sound plays a HUGE factor in combat and stealth in this game. The audio changes dramatically when Aloy approaches an area with hostile machines and changes again when the machines are aware/alerted of her presence nearby. There's just a lot of audio cues that players will be familiar with from their time with this game. 

The music definitely highlights the visuals to this already amazing game, making it a joy to watch hear.

Play It or Don't Bother?

Don't worry, Aloy. You dodged a bullet there.

I cannot rave about this game enough. Definitely go out of your way and play this if you don't play any other PlayStation 4 exclusives this year. Guerilla Games have crafted a love letter with this game for players with this game and have been steadily at work, constantly rolling out bi-monthly patches and fixes for gameplay issues or minor crashes/glitches. Fortunately, I never ran into any of those issues (outside of the Stormbird freezing up during the final story mission) that could have possibly hampered my enjoyment of this game.

Horizon: Zero Dawn takes the sense of excitement that was found in the Tomb Raider (Square Enix reboot) series and adds a sense of wonder and visual awe from start to finish. As you guide Aloy throughout her journey, you will be challenged to use your wits, tools, and best weapons to pave your to victory. With so much territory to traverse and explore, players will be wondering throughout this world for a very long time, ensuring that they didn't leave no stone unturned within the confines of this massive region that is just begging to be explored from coast to coast. Players shouldn't be concerning themselves with anxiety about faux reports of this game having a political agenda that Guerilla Games is forcing down their throats. There's an amazing game here to be played and experienced. Believing all of that nonsense about politics is merely going to deter you from playing one of the best games to come out in 2017. This is a story about one woman's journey to find answers about herself and why the world she lives in is overrun by mechanical beasts.

There's a lot to love about this game in terms of gameplay with a little of something for everyone - exploration and collectibles for completionists, stealth tactics for players who rather use traps to pick off their enemies without being spotted, while balls to the wall/Rambo means of combat to take the fight up close and personal with wreckless abandon.

Despite having announced the Frozen Wilds DLC during E3 week, there's more than enough here to justify the $59.99 price tag at launch. At about 80-100 hours of gameplay in, I'm merely 82% completion of everything in the game and still have stuff I haven't done or discovered. There's enough here to do, along with multiple difficulty settings that will have players busy for months on end.

What are you waiting for? Go out and experience this game for yourself.