Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

Go for the sneaking skills first. They're very handy in the beginning.

Blind_Evil wrote:
Spoiler:

The revelations about the nature of Project Zero Dawn were awesome. The method of delivery was the opposite. Audio logs have been a tired storytelling method for half a decade and this whole dungeon was nothing but then and text dumps with boring human encounters peppered throughout.

Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. I avoid most of the collectibles in open world games like this like the plague, but the entire HZD story and bits of side lore drew me in in a way that had me happily tracking down each and every one.

That’s one of the main reasons I get a bit defensive about the game not getting more love than it did. Any game that has me change my perspective about a common, but wildly over-rated/over-utilized mechanic that much...

Well, as much as I love them all, Ghost of Tsushima isn’t doing it, AC: Odyssey didn’t do it, God of War didn’t do it. I can’t think of a single one since the original FFVII.

To be clear, I’m not saying HZD definitively better than all of those games, but it is definitely among my personal Top 10 games of all time and I’ve been gaming since the days of Pong.

same to me. The modern story of HZD bored me to tears, but the entire backstory told entirely through audio clips and text dumps (and a couple of animated sequences) was WAY more exciting than the avalanche of fetch quest.

I finally got a chance to play a few hours again today and started the last Frozen Wilds mission. The final boss is tough! Angry bear! Any tips for it? Other than the tried and true, aim for components.

Never get hit. There's a reliable way to avoid all its attacks. If you can do that, then you can just whittle it down with bombs until it's dead. Nothing special to it. Of course, targeting components is the more elegant way to do it, but you don't have to.

Believe it or not, “don’t get hit” is a strategy I have already considered but found myself unable to perform. I also tried gitting gud and L2Ping and neither of those worked either.

I think the strategy I used was this:

Run away while notching 3 hardpoint arrows, turn toward bear, jump to slow time, target weakpoints and release in midair. Repeat.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Believe it or not, “don’t get hit” is a strategy I have already considered but found myself unable to perform. I also tried gitting gud and L2Ping and neither of those worked either.

It may come off as a negative or bad comment. However, I also have to really agree with it but more change it to. Practice just living vs the creature/boss you are facing. Same thing I would say in darksouls when you are having issues. Spend a few attempts attacking 0 times and just dodging as long as you can. Learning the enemies move set and attacks are much easier when you are not also trying to attack. Once you learn all the types of attack and situations it's much easier to get a good run where you can dodge enough to win the fight. Also will make you a lot more knowledgeable about when you can get away with attacks and when you can not.

So as much as saying "not getting hit" is probably wrong. I believe the intention is more "focus on not getting hit rather than attacking". At least for a little longer "intention" still does mean something in this world.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Believe it or not, “don’t get hit” is a strategy I have already considered but found myself unable to perform. I also tried gitting gud and L2Ping and neither of those worked either.

The more detailed suggestion would be a specific manner to avoid its attacks. Each of its attacks has a specific solution that can be deployed and practiced. You could stay away and use frost attacks to freeze it and then pepper it with bombs while strafing to avoid its long range attacks. That works. That's not the only thing that can work, but that one works fairly well. Each of the long range attacks has a solution for avoiding getting hit. The medium to long range body slam requires you to dodge out and then re-establish distance, but the fireballs can be just be strafed around.

I'm not sure exactly how you want to beat it, is the thing. If you just want to beat it, stay at range, use freeze attacks and damage attacks, and strafe and dodge to avoid damage.

Specifically for Fireclaws and Frostclaws, they have shock cannisters on their asses at the back, so if you really wanted to be fancy, you could bait out the swiping attacks, dodge in between the legs after you see the tell, then target the cannisters with shock arrows and then pummel it with damage while it's stunned. Repeat 4x. However, this is a lot harder to do than just strafing and dodging attacks without a specific direction or time pressure. "I can't deploy any defensive measures" isn't a thing you can survive on the final boss. You have to be able to strafe or dodge at least some attacks. If you have a strategy you want and you have an attack that gives you problems using that strategy, then a more specific defensive solution can be suggested.

It's a relatively forgiving fight, for all that. There are freeze cannisters in the environment you can shoot and deploy, and you can even just outright use heal potions to heal through certain attacks if you find them too bothersome to avoid. But you can't just heal through all the attacks. You have to avoid at least some.

I finally started playing this a few days ago. I had played it back in 2017, but apparently barely scratched the surface - I hadn't even completed the "defeat a Sawtooth" part of the main story, from just before the Proving. I think I was getting frustrated by the occasional trio of Scrappers.

Now, I play with the Scrappers before scrapping them. I've climbed a Tallneck, delved a Cauldron, liberated a Bandit camp, and cleared a Corrupted Zone. I'm quite enjoying my time with it now.

I honestly have no clue what the story for this game way. No judgments....I just loved running around, exploring, and doing sidequests while listening to podcasts.

Garth wrote:

I honestly have no clue what the story for this game way. No judgments....I just loved running around, exploring, and doing sidequests while listening to podcasts.

See that is funny because outside of like Last of Us I hardly ever care about stories. However, I loved the HZD story. Just something clicked with me. Everyone is different.

Preloading on the PC! Wooooooo!

100GB ouch. I mean I have the space but ouch.

My big issues with this on PS4 was the controls felt like the bow would be so much better with a mouse. I hope I was right.

I aim to pick this up on the next sale so in theory I will have beaten a game or two by then.

i think it is more like 70 GB.

I'm going to wait a few days before playing. Just for patches.

Patience is a virtue

I played it earlier in the year on the PS4 before the PC release was announced. It’s currently my GOTY. Funny that because of the PC release I won’t be alone in having it high on my list.

I also loved the story and lore. It clicked with me and I found most the characters fun. Really hope the sequel has a PC release sooner than 3.5 years later.

Just wanted to clarify for some people. I have seen and heard some reports of it being a bad port. I am about 3 hours in and I can say this. The game is not optimized overly well which is where I think they are coming from. I have a pretty beefy computer with 2070 TI and on near max settings (turned down reflections to low and clouds to high) on 1440P I am getting 60-80 FPS. Which is low for my hardware but fine for gameplay. So if you have lower hardware it might be a scare (although with steam refund policy is it?)

First time loading there was like a 20-30 minute shader install/loading sequence. Loading right after starting the game takes a minute but the loads after that are quick.

However, other than that so far the port seems good to me. Some nicer graphics etc and plays fine. Mouse/Keyboard felt a bit weird (almost went to controller) for like 30 min but now feels fine.

For the most part I'm enjoying it. It's good but could be better. Don't like the effect they use on the side for the cutscenes in ultrawide mode. Just feels kinda lazy.

Like I said, overall I'm still enjoying it, but I really do feel like it's been a bit on the lazy side as far as moving it to PC.

22 hours in and I'm really enjoying it again. I was initially kinda sketchy about whether I should have waited and did I really need to play it again after the PS4, but I'm glad I'm playing it. Even made it to the Frozen Wilds this time and immediately got my butt kicked!

Had an amazing moment on the weekend. My kids were watching me and they saw a Thunder Jaw for the first time. "Dad you're not really going to fight that thing are you?!?!"

Moments later when I took it down, the look of amazement on their faces was better than any trophy the game could give me. About five minutes later, my 11 year old is starting up her own playthrough on the PS4 version

BlackSabre wrote:

22 hours in and I'm really enjoying it again. I was initially kinda sketchy about whether I should have waited and did I really need to play it again after the PS4, but I'm glad I'm playing it. Even made it to the Frozen Wilds this time and immediately got my butt kicked!

Had an amazing moment on the weekend. My kids were watching me and they saw a Thunder Jaw for the first time. "Dad you're not really going to fight that thing are you?!?!"

Moments later when I took it down, the look of amazement on their faces was better than any trophy the game could give me. About five minutes later, my 11 year old is starting up her own playthrough on the PS4 version :)

Great story.

It says I played 20 hours this weekend but about 8 of that was AFK dealing with a work issue. I am really enjoying it again though and other than performance being lower than I would expect I'm having no issues with the port. In retrospec I am really happy i stuck with mouse/keyboard.

Just picked this up on steam for my laptop. The Can You Run It website said it met min requirements to run. Upon loading I get a game message warning me I'm below min spec. After tweaking steam settings I get it to run and it runs fine for me on low settings. Great game. Love the story and the stealth. Got some crashes when I entered a settlement but I've read that's happening to a lot of p.c. players so we shall see.

Just finished the embrace, really enjoying it. I only got to the big city previously on a loaned ps4 but so far I'm really enjoying it, mouse controls seem quite responsive and controls was my biggest gripe on ps4.
Graphics are lovely and, despite some issues with getting it running at first, I've gotten things running pretty smoothly at highish settings.
Just a note, if you are having any issues setting up and are tired of watching the initial cutscene multiple times because you haven't been able to start a new game, alt +f4 during the first cutscene will actually bring up a dialogue window and if you choose No, it will skip the cutscene and take you to the main menu. I know that sounds like a troll but it is real (and really stupid that they made it that way) i had to do it several times when i was trying to get the game running.

Finally finished it last night. Well, the main story part at least! Off to do a bunch of side missions and finally make my way into the frozen wilds expansion.

Great game, really enjoyed it so much better this time on PC. I never finished it the first time on PS4 so I'm glad I got it again.

What was your time played blacksabre?

Currently at 42 hours. I'm level 52 and exploring the frozen wastes. I'd say it was maybe 38 hours till I finished and was about level 48 maybe?

So the PC version supports the Steam Controller. Unfortunately it doesn't do the best job with that support. Specifically, it doesn't like to give you gyroscopic aiming with any of the controller inputs. And it won't read a mouse input alongside a controller's. If you do want gyro-assisted aiming, look for the profile called "Streven's Best" and use that as a base. They did some clever things with mode-shifting, swapping in keyboard controls for all the inputs you need while you're aiming. So for general moving around you get full analog controller support, and when you're aiming you get the precision of a mouse and fine adjustments of the motion controls.

Apparently this is also an issue with using a PS4 controller on Windows. There should be a "Streven's Best" profile for that one too.

Right now this only works if you opt into the Steam client beta.

Near as I can tell the Switch Pro Controller is currently SOL on the motion control front, due to some combination of bugs in the beta API and the Switch not having analog triggers.

Just finished the game, last fight was... well, boring, but overall i really enjoyed the game. solid story, interesting twists and turns. gave me some good feels. enjoyed the combat overall, though by the end i was pretty glad to have my max stealth armor to just run where i liked (completely avoided a stormbird fight near the end, it just couldn't see me as i ran by).
frozen wilds was fun, also good story, but i didn't enjoy some of the new monsters much, scorchers ended up just not being fun for me. added weapon design was neat too.
I think that Aloy is gonna go up there as my favorite game main characters.

After four(?) attempts to get into this game, I finally managed to find the fun in it. I'm not over the moon about it like other people, but it's a decent example of what it is. I think it helped that I had an old save that left off right at the Proving. I couldn't possibly care less about the characters or story in the game so far, and the opening is agonizingly slow. But once you get out into the main world, it's fun to explore, discover the various monsters, and learn how to handle them.

I still can't stand it whenever anyone starts talking, and I have a lot of issues with the way the characters are written and the world is presented. But at least once you're out of the starting area, there's a lot to do and see and engage with in between the terrible talky parts.

I hadn't realized that it was meant to be set in and around the part of Colorado where I live, so it's been fun to spot the things they got right and the things they got hilariously wrong. I know there are... reasons... why the Colorado they're depicting in the game's timeline doesn't necessarily look like the Colorado of ours, but there are still differences that are funny.

vypre wrote:

That’s one of the main reasons I get a bit defensive about the game not getting more love than it did.

It got an 89 on Metacritic, is one of the best-selling PS4 games, and got a high profile sequel. In what way did the game not get more love?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
vypre wrote:

That’s one of the main reasons I get a bit defensive about the game not getting more love than it did.

It got an 89 on Metacritic, is one of the best-selling PS4 games, and got a high profile sequel. In what way did the game not get more love? :)

Some Jerk on the Internet wrote:

I couldn't possibly care less about the characters or story in the game so far, and the opening is agonizingly slow.

Big Meanie wrote:

I still can't stand it whenever anyone starts talking, and I have a lot of issues with the way the characters are written and the world is presented.

As a PC gamer, not a console gamer, I'm finding the lack of quick-save anywhere a little frustrating. Especially after trying to take out a pack of shredders and dying multiple times. The weird thing is that when I die I respawn in the same area, but all of the mobs and all of the things they dropped have disappeared.

But overall, oh man, I'm loving this game. I can see this as being my new "Skyrim" for the foreseeable future.