Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

I actually finished a game! I am trying to get through my backlog and so I put in H:ZD after a few months off and I was actually quite close to the end. Last night I finished it up!!!

It's a worthy game for it. It's strong for nearly the whole run, with the possible exception of the very last fight. Though some people like that, too. Congratulations on the finish!

It is an incredible game. I loved it for 99% of the game. I have loved seeing your reports of hunting different enemies. All in all it was very much worth is but I find the "check box" mentality of end games to be frustrating.

I tired New Game + kind of expecting that the enemies would be tougher since I had such great weapons but apparently they are still the beginning game levels which meant I was cutting through them like butter. And somehow that made me lose interest.

I am actually more interested in replaying regularly. Not for awhile but I could see myself doing it because it was quite fun.

After some binge playing for a couple days I finished the main story line for Horizon Zero Dawn. I was getting game fatigue from it so I stopped doing side quests and focused on the main quest. I think I ended up being level 38 when I finished. I think it said I was only 33% complete.

I was somewhat on a roller coaster ride with this game. I started out loving the game, but then it waned. I think part of my problem was that I never really took the time to master many of the weapons. I pretty much stuck to the long range bow and the 'regular' bow. I would use the shock tripwire too at times. My problem is that I just don't like switching weapon multiple times during combat. I think if I used each new weapon more as I got it I would have better appreciated my options. I did need to rely on a shock weapon in the final battle, in addition to the other bows.

I think the voice acting started off stronger too and I became less fond of any side characters I met. I did love all of the different environments.

Some game developer also needs to solve some problems common to these types of games. First, incorporate exploring into the game and less icon chasing. Second, make the finding of resources more fun than running from icon to icon. Third, I hate 'detective vision' in games. HZD wasn't too bad with it - but there has to be a better way.

All in all I liked the game. I did too much side stuff early on that caused me to fatigue and I should have put more effort into learning the weapons.

Horizon Zero Dawn Documentary - Noclip

Did we all know about this?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...

I am on the fence about actually pledging.

Wow I had no idea on that. I loved this game and i really want to buy the game. However, I don't really have board game friends locally so i'd never really use it. Still thinking about it.

I also asked in the board gaming thread and they had some poor reviews of Steamforged's Dark Souls licensed game, so that probably decides against it. Oh well.

Frozen Wilds has been on the back burner for an age. Glad to say I’ve finally returned to it and it is glorious. Fantastic new creatures/robots and some really fun fights. I highly recommend getting back into it. Having finished the game I started new game plus then, as soon as I could, I went straight to the DLC.

I've come into temporary possession of a PS4 and have been playing through this. Just over 20 hours in and I'm loving it. Absolutely gorgeous game. I'm really enjoying combat on hard difficulty. Forcing myself to use the various bows and gadgets.

Aaaannnndddd this is coming to PC!

We expect to see the game on both Steam and the Epic Games Store when it launches (although that may not be finalized yet). It will be the first Guerrilla game on a non-PlayStation platform since Sony purchased the Netherlands-based studio in 2005.

Sweet! I don’t have a PS4, so I had written playing this game off. Definitely putting it on a wishlist.

There are hardcore PlayStation fans on Twitter who are convinced that this will somehow mean the demise of console gaming, which is... certainly a take. As I am primarily a PC gamer myself and accustomed to hearing periodic doom and gloom about the state of the PC gaming, I didn't know this type of alarmism existed on the "other side."

Oh, absolutely. Every previously-exclusive fart in the wind that gets ported to a new kind of hardware is the death knell of console gaming at we know it.

Hold your farts forever, publishers.

I mean that's one of the rallying calls for the console gamers that Sony has all the exclusives and Microsoft has none because literally everyone in the entire world has a beefy gaming PC and can play all of Microsofts games. Imagine the horror they will endure if Sony released PS4 and PS5 games on PC!! they'd be just like Microsoft!! oh noes!!

Middcore wrote:

As I am primarily a PC gamer myself and accustomed to hearing periodic doom and gloom about the state of the PC gaming, I didn't know this type of alarmism existed on the "other side."

Oh yes. The console wars are alive and well on all sides.

More accurately: anonymous sources say H:ZD will get a PC release. Nothing official has been said at all.

Evan E wrote:

More accurately: anonymous sources say H:ZD will get a PC release. Nothing official has been said at all.

I highly doubt Jason Schreier would be reporting this unless he had multiple reliable sources confirming its accuracy. I also can't remember the last time he reported on a something like this that wasn't true.

If any PS4 exclusive were to come to PC, Horizon makes the most sense. We already know Death Stranding is coming this summer, and both games are powered by Guerilla's Decima engine. The leg work to get that singing on PC has already been worked on.

That is pretty amazing. I hope Sony goes further and further with this, and end up like Microsoft.
Re-releasing a game on another platform years after its initial release is not exactly there yet. But a tiny step in the right direction at least.

Middcore wrote:

There are hardcore PlayStation fans on Twitter who are convinced that this will somehow mean the demise of console gaming, which is... certainly a take. As I am primarily a PC gamer myself and accustomed to hearing periodic doom and gloom about the state of the PC gaming, I didn't know this type of alarmism existed on the "other side."

Yeah, it is completely silly.
I mean, if I could play all games on PC, I would probably not buy a console ever again, but plenty of people would, because they like consoles more than PC.
And my lost console sale (which afaik they often sell with a loss anyway), might very well be offset by me buying more of their games then (compared to zero, if I dont buy your console, or your games at all).

The less exclusives in gaming, the better, imo.

I don't have a problem with exclusives in gaming, but you have to assume that they have a time-limited utility for businesses whose principle means of making money is selling third-party content. Sony makes the bulk of its PlayStation money from third-party games (actually, from third-party microtransactions, but that's a different topic). Sony, like Valve and most other storefronts, mostly exists as a conduit between customers and the products of other companies and siphoning off some of those transactions, so after one of their games has been out for a couple years, how much utility does it still serve as a driver of hardware sales? The people who roll up late in a generation just to play the exclusives aren't contributing much to their main business, anyway, and they're buying those games at a discount. Does Sony make more from someone buying a late-model PS4 with some bonus pack-ins or from that same person plunking down full-price for a port on another platform? I guess it all depends on the hardware margins.

That's how I look at it too, Clock. I ended up buying Horizon Zero Dawn for $20 to use on my friend's PS4. If I had known this was coming out on PC I may have waited and paid the full price for a new game.

They'll release HZD on PC and then release the sequel as an exclusive on the PS5.

LarryC wrote:

They'll release HZD on PC and then release the sequel as an exclusive on the PS5.

Dont be a downer.

Oh, that's absolutely what I expect them to do.

Disgaea and Tales... games have been on PC for years now. Valkyria series more recently. PS4 is still going strong

LarryC wrote:

They'll release HZD on PC and then release the sequel as an exclusive on the PS5.

Yup. It's just like Clock described above. HZD is almost completely tapped for profit now. You can pick it up for dirt cheap, and it has already sold most of the consoles that it was going to sell. Bringing it to PC opens a new revenue stream and gets people excited for the upcoming sequel. If even a small fraction of those PC players pick up a PS5 because of it, that's a huge win for them.

But I wouldn't expect God of War 2 or Spiderman 2 to come to PC anytime soon, if at all. On the other hand, I think it's only a matter of time before we get a Dreams announcement for PC.

Speaking of picking it up for dirt cheap, I got a new physical copy of "Complete" at our local EB games for $Cdn20. It's been a while since I used my PS4 for anything other than Netflix or Disney+.

It's been a fun ride so far, though I'm not sure I'm "doing it right." One thing that I find that modern open world games lack is explanation of the side quests and map markers - they just sort of drop them there and you can check them out. Like "Here's a Tallneck quest icon on the map," with little explanation for what that is or why I might care. I'm hoping that the sidequest encounter that led to my first Bandit Camp is not an anomaly.

I'm also a bit "classic Assassin's Creed" in my brain; imagine my surprise when the Quiet Kill option didn't result in an instant death, and therefore alerted a whole herd.

I'm into it, though. It's my jam - I'm just working on finding my "game legs", so to speak.

The Tallneck is only explained by Aloy saying "A signal?" and then approaching "The signal is coming from the Tallneck". From there it's just kind of assumed that you gotta climb that Tallneck. The collectibles are eventually kind of explained. All sidequests have full stories behind them.

There map makers bandit camps, collectibles (Metal Flowers, Banuk Figures, Cups, and Vantage Points), Tallnecks, bonfires, cities/villages, merchants, hunting sites, and cauldrons/dungeons.

There are some skills that increase your silent strike damage. They still aren't enough to take down some corrupted machines on the harder difficulties.

I've picked up PS Now for the PC so I can finally play this gem I've put about 15 hours in so far and absolutely love it.

It has been a long, long time since I've completed side quests just because they're good quests.

Hopefully it can hold the same standard all the way through (which your comments suggest it does)

Have a good Sunday, everyone!