Horizon Zero Dawn Review

There’s something about being dropped into a brand new game world and finding it to be dense with deeply considered lore, terrifyingly aggressive creatures, and tantalizing questions that leaves an indelible mark on the memory. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of those games, and it carves out a unique identity within the popular action-roleplaying genre. Coupled with wonderfully flexible combat and a story that touches on unexpectedly profound themes, I found it hard to tear myself away from Horizon even after I’d finished its main campaign some 40 odd hours later. 

Horizon’s premise is a big mystery that begs to be solved.

A sense of urgency is established from the get-go, as Horizon’s premise is a big mystery that begs to be solved. The questions raised by protagonist Aloy and the primitive, feral machine-infested open world she inhabits kept me guessing throughout: what’s at the centre of it all? Although Horizon suffers from occasionally corny dialogue that belies its smarts, the broader ideas it prods at - the nature of creation, for example - are remarkably ambitious.
Aloy’s personality helped me care about her journey on a more personal level. Nimbly voiced by Ashly Burch (known for her performance as Borderlands 2’s Tiny Tina), she’s a charming character to watch and play as because of the wry wit that tempers her big-hearted heroism; some of my favourite smaller moments came from Aloy’s sarcastic interactions with other characters who didn’t get the joke. Though you have some say on the way she responds to situations in the interests of dialogue flavour, she remains largely a well-intentioned character, which is in step with Horizon’s broader story.

Fighting Machines

There’s much more flexibility to be found once Aloy’s out in the big wide world. Horizon’s combat is its most compelling feature, thanks to the variety found within 26 distinct species of animal-like machines that roam its great far-future expanse. These beasts have several weak points that can be scanned using Aloy’s Focus (a lore-friendly device that gives you Witcher-like heightened senses), and hitting different points can have different results that change the way a fight plays out. 

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Horizon's combat is its most compelling feature.

Send a piercing arrow into the bulging ‘cargo sac’ of a giant fire-spewing Bellowback, for example, and you'll set off a massive explosion. Down a flying, ice-shooting Glinthawk by destroying the armoured sac on its chest to temporarily freeze the bird, or shoot the cannon off the back of a tiger-like Ravager and pick it up to blast a T-Rex-esque Thunderjaw, who you only just noticed approaching from the corner of your eye during the fight. It’s breathless stuff, and there are no hand-holding tutorials telling you how to best approach the beasts, which makes for more rewarding wins.

The Big, Big Wide World

You don’t just fight machines in Horizon. While not as engaging as their mechanical counterparts, there are human targets too - many of whom populate the bandit camps peppered throughout this massive open world. Though you’re free to take them on as you please, I found it’s best to take a stealthy approach through the tall grass and pick off these heavily armed NPCs one by one. That’s a largely satisfying approach, aside from the fact that, like in other half-stealth games like Uncharted 4 or Watch Dogs 2, you can’t hide bodies. It’s a design decision that sticks in my craw when an NPC’s curiosity piques after he or she spots someone sprawled on the ground with an arrow sticking out of its chest from a mile away.
Clearing these enemy camps is one of the many incidental side activities scattered across Horizon, a variety which also includes digging in ancient bunkers for clues from the past, tracking machines through dedicated hunting grounds, and climbing to the top of a giant brontosaurus-like Tallneck to unlock more of the map. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in other games of this ilk - the Tallneck is basically a walking Far Cry tower - but thanks to the promise of XP and loot that you can trade for currency to buy better weapons, it’s all very compulsive.