Picturesque scenery for a great experience Horizon: Dawn review

Brief review: IGN gave this game a 9.3 rating, and I personally feel that this game, and Tomb Raider: Rise has a certain similarity in gameplay, but after a variety of experiences, you will find that this game integrates part of the gameplay of 3A games of the same level as Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider, and finally finds a new direction under its own world structure, and the overall level of the game does live up to its 3A reputation.

Excellent game screen is the most prominent feature of this game, but the game is not weak than the mainstream 3A games, such a pleasant game, it is really worth the player to try.

But some details still need to be improved, especially the bow and arrow system, as one of the main weapons, aiming inconvenience caused a certain problem.

Aloy pulls a bow and shoots, nature is full of life behind him

At sunset, waiting for Aloy Rost on the cliff

The above two are real machine screenshots in the game, the picture is particularly excellent. In particular, the parts and pieces of jewelry on the character's body fit the slightly retro tribal civilization at the same time, but also connect with the mechanical future wind.

On the left is the specific performance of mechanization, and on the right is the specialty of tribal civilization. The production team found the meeting point of two civilizations that span a great distance, and carried out quite a good integration.

Coach Rost is the main character's life coach

Players can find many references in "Overwatch", and similar painting styles can also be found in "Mass Effect: Andromeda".

However, the game also has an obvious shortcoming, in the picture quality, although not lost to "Uncharted 4", but in the character expression is greatly discounted.

The characters' joy, anger, sorrow, and joy are not well reflected in the facial expressions of Horizon: Zero Dawn, and the characters' eyes are not sufficiently expressive.

"Uncharted 4" can be called a movie-grade game, which is also related to the character expression in the game to convey the emotions of the characters, excellent actors in a play, can bring a certain degree of improvement to the play, even if it is converted to the game, it is consistent.

Direction of story

The background of the game is set in the post-apocalyptic era, that is, after the extinction of human civilization, similar setting games have "Fallout: Shelter", "The End of America", "Mad Max" and so on, "Assassin's Creed: Revelation" is also telling the story of the extinction of ancient civilizations.

The theory of "revelation" comes from the Bible's prophecy of the end of the world.

The author is currently exposed to the plot: human civilization is replaced by mechanical civilization, the protagonist Aloy is an exile of Nora, Nora people living in the valley named Wanmu Mountain, because of the loss of civilization, people in the tribe returned to the ancient matriarchal era, Aloy is a baby born in the ruins of modern civilization in Wanmu Mountain in the Middle ages.

With no mother and unknown origins, she was also discriminated against by her people and was initially banished outside the tribe, where she was raised by Rost.

Nola game gear

The Nola is a race that believes in all mothers, and outside the Nola, there are many races and even kingdoms, such as the Sun Kingdom, which believes in the Sun, and the Kargar.

After passing the intramural trials,Aloy is approved by the elders, but is attacked by a foreign enemy capable of operating machinery, and Aloy is wounded in the battle and returns to Mount Wanmu to learn of his origins.

In order to open the gate and learn his origin, Aloy travels to the outside world at the behest of the elder to find a way to repair the gate activation process.

However, this is a slightly fantastical world setting, although backward humans maintain their own not so reliable faith, but their faith is not an ethereal god, but the human has lost the modern civilization, full of irony.

In the case of limited time, I can not fully experience the story of the game, on the one hand, the volume of the game is very large, the first test players, spent more than 20 hours to complete the main line (without careful cleaning of the side).

On the other hand, when cleaning the degraded area, the author was killed many times, and the frequency of automatic saving of the game is not high, the progress of the death is read from the campfire, and it takes a lot of time to start over, so the story has not been experienced completely.

gameplay

"Tomb Raider: Rise" has made the author feel very boring, tired to run the tomb, the result got a fragment or a small skill, ran several tombs and finally gathered a bow, found that there is no their own pinch this good. In other words, the difference between whether to change is not obvious, which led to my feeling of exclusion for resource collection and feeder participation in the later period.

Horizon: Dawn has many improvements over Tomb Raider, such as machine control and mount attacks, tripwire traps.

In particular, the early tripwire trap with the Focus on the mechanical route of action, laying traps along the way waiting for rabbits, such small skills are also quite intriguing, but from time to time, the rope, berries, branches also let the author jump to the sexy Laura line, the play.

In terms of stealth, Assassin's Creed has made the grass stealth assassination more thorough and mature, in the second generation of works, hawkeye will also show the enemy's course of action, and in the Tomb Raider: Rise of the Tomb Raider, the grass assassination shot is also a common thing.

The game system of Horizon: Dawn also has many similarities with the above two works, such as ropes used to cross long distances in Rise of the Tomb Raider, and bows and arrows are also the most commonly used weapons in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Based on weapons, arrows, slingshots, and spears, the team divided the game skills into three categories: stealth, brave, and Forager.

Talent skill system in the game

Stealth gives the player additional damage while in stealth mode, encouraging the player to resolve the battle in a silent manner.

The Brave is to provide a strong frontal combat ability, more suitable for hard and rigid players. Foragers provide players with additional resource bonuses, allowing players to quickly accumulate resources to upgrade their equipment.

In my opinion, the core of the skill and weapon system is to make it easy for the player to play the game in the way they prefer.

For example, spears are suitable for melee combat, bows and arrows are suitable for fast long-range kites, and slingshots with little ammunition are more suitable for AOE, and players can also point out the corresponding skills according to their preferences, melee and long-range more happily participate in the battle.

The map navigation system is the same as the Elder Scrolls 5, so this game can be said to be made from the strengths of various people.

The bow and arrow is actually a relatively chicken rib of a weapon, even if the console game is not very familiar with the player, should also know that the handle is not particularly convenient to aim, and the bow and arrow is a relatively commonly used weapon in the game.

In the case of very fast mechanical movement and not low attack force, it is one of the best solutions to solve the battle in the long range to avoid melee, especially in the fight against the BOSS, a careless is easy to be wiped by the BOSS melee attack in the melee to a large amount of blood.

Focus is the glowing blue aperture on a little girl's ear

However, there is no proper auxiliary aiming system for the bow, and when you use the Focus (features similar to Assassin's Creed Hawkeye, Tomb Raider: Rise "survival instinct," Quantum Broken "time vision," Sniper Elite "telescope) found the enemy's weakness, intend to shoot, the enemy slightly move you need to re-aim, and you are difficult to aim at the original range of weak points in the movement, it is not easy to cause damage through predictive shooting.

Although the official also has auxiliary aiming, the author did not find a significant difference after opening and closing.

The game would have been much better if a more suitable auxiliary aiming system had been added, such as when you use Focus to find a weak point and aim, the bow would have been easier to shift to the weak point, the aim would have turned red, the head shot would have had a special mark, and so on.

Of course, players seeking challenges can also set obstacles for themselves by increasing the difficulty of the game, but according to flow theory, a good game, the difficulty and the ability of the player still need to do enough balance, can accurately and effectively use the gamepad to shoot the player there are many people, but that is a small part of the game group.

Bow and arrow caused the author's initial experience is not very good, after the main spear, and click on the brave talent, the combat experience has been greatly improved.

Huge map

As an open world game, the scope of the game map is beyond the imagination of the author, especially when doing the task of "Mother's footsteps", the author did not reach the destination for half an hour on foot.

The magnificent scenery in the space, even last year's independent game "Firewatch", which is famous for its scenery, is far from the scenic level of this game, so it is a lot of points for the game.

There are campfires in the game that provide quick saving features, similar to the camps in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

The distant mountains are all places that can be reached

The difference is that you don't need to be in the campfire area to upgrade your weapons or abilities, but moving quickly between campfires takes some resources. At present, the demand for mobile is not very high, and the impact of this design is not very large.

In the game, there are degraded areas, that is, infected machinery areas, players need to destroy all infected machinery to purify the area, many tasks are also to destroy machinery as the main body.

In general, the main meaning of fighting monsters is to obtain resources to upgrade equipment, the mission system is also centered around fighting monsters, and there is not much in the game's inherent high playability content.

Overall comment

Horizon Zero Dawn was a successful experiment for Guerrilla Games, and while the gameplay overlaps with some of its existing AAA titles, the game has also found its own new direction and new ideas.

The author's biggest feeling is that the overlap rate is slightly higher with "Rise of the Tomb Raider", although the decryption and action adventure elements of "Rise of the Tomb Raider" are not reflected in this game, but there are still many similarities in the gameplay.

A mechanical dragon snaking through the mountains

But "Horizon: Dawn" is undoubtedly beyond the "Rise of the Tomb Raider" and "Assassin's Creed: Thunder" two similar 3A games, integrating some of the advantages of the two games, into their own understanding, in the picture to make improvements, the game is more rich and comprehensive.

If you haven't played Assassin's Creed or Tomb Raider, or have only played one of them and are interested in both, Horizon: Dawn will leave you feeling right.

However, if you are a player who has been exposed to these two games for many years, then Horizon: Dawn will be worth some discount to you.

In any case, the birth of a good new IP is undoubtedly good news for players.