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HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST


Raziel

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2 hours ago, Raziel said:

*stares intently at Horizon Forbidden West sitting on my PS4 with the locked countdown timer*

I had a bunch of vacation to cut, so I'm taking off Friday and all of next week.  I'm years old and I can't tell you the last time I was this excited for anything, let alone a video game. 

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Goddamn, it’s so good to be back in the world of Horizon. I love Aloy so much. Fucking GORGEOUS game too - it doesn’t feel like you’re missing out playing in 30fps for resolution mode, either. 60 is nice, I tried it, but I’ve got a big ol’ 4K TV and it’s just… wow.

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My jaw literally dropped when I started Forbidden West. The most visually stunning game I have ever played. I am with @Caseyin that I feel like you are doing yourself a disservice by playing this in performance mode. Trailers and review vids did not do this justice.

HZD is one of my all time favorite games, but after finishing the prologue, I can tell they tidied up everything here for the better.

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1 hour ago, Raziel said:

So far the only thing I don't like about Forbidden West was handwaving away the gear reset.  But they had to do it of course.  I do like the new Focus modes alot.

I would have liked for them to go the Symphony of the Night route, and have you wreck shit with your OP gear for a bit, then lose it via story device. I will give them credit for one of the most natural feeling tutorials ever though.

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I finally made it to the real game in HZD and I'm starting to have fun.

Tallnecks as a substitute for BOTW towers?  Check!

Bandit camps as a substitute for Witcher 3 Hanse Camps?  Check!

Tagging enemies so I can snipe them a la Fallout 4 recon snipers?  Check!

It's making me happy in the right ways thus far.  Sometimes the cutscenes feel long, though, and so far every damn side character is bland as Hell.  "I'm angry at you because reasons, or I'm OK with you because reasons I can't tell you yet because it's not convenient to the plot!"  Like...someone has to have had things happen to them besides Aloy.  I'm also surprised the Father Figure Tragic Death took as long to get to as it did.

Edited by Contentious C
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I haven't played the first Horizon since beating it, well before the DLC dropped. Jumping back into this world is enthralling due to all the beauty, but MAN, controlling Aloy feels maddening at times. I just fumbled around a basic ruins puzzle - seemingly an old hotel? - and trying to platform was unpleasant.

Luckily I then came upon the quarry full of Bristlebacks and had a good time putting down all the machines. 

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I'm still waiting for my copy of Horizon to be shipped from GameStop. They never let me down before but now it looks to be delivered by the time my days off are over. Can't wait to jump back into that world. 

GameStop got some goodwill from me because that's how I got my PS5 but never again..

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1 minute ago, StevieNippz said:

I'm still waiting for my copy of Horizon to be shipped from GameStop. They never let me down before but now it looks to be delivered by the time my days off are over. Can't wait to jump back into that world. 

GameStop got some goodwill from me because that's how I got my PS5 but never again..

I tried to preorder mine from Target online. I'm still waiting for it to arrive. I had to go into the store and buy a copy with the understanding that they'll let me return the one that shipped.

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HFW Stuff: 

Spoiler

I'm about 7ish Hours in and am starting to clear out the Barren Light quests:

Stuff I'm liking:

While I wasn't quite a fan of the handwave of Aloy's gear during the tutorial, I did notice that they kept all her ZD skills and everything you're adding are new stuff for the game.  

The combos for the Spear are great, even if fighting smaller machines with the spear is harder than it was in the first game. 

The Upgrade system is MUCH better than buying whole new weapons/outfits, although it looks like everything's way more specialized this game than previously.  

Breakaway weak points seem to matter much more, as I'm doing signifant damage to Burrowers and Scroungers hitting their back canisters than I did hitting Watchers and Scavengers last game.  And one shotting Bristlebacks with Acid Arrows is really neat.

The Grapple hook is fun and adds some new puzzle dimentions

The 2 level Focus between full scans and pulse is something I'm liking, especially since the pulse scan shows climbable walls and you don't need grapple points to climb stuff anymore.

 

Stuff I'm not:

Collision detection on climbing walls is a little wonky.

Lack of a block function/button  (although to be fair, I might not have unlocked it yet)

Riding controls are still rough, as are the climbing ones.

I'm not impressed with the "You can't access this area because you're missing the tools" doors in games, but that's more personal preferences.

 

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So, hit the FPS bug in Forbidden West.. hooo boy that was nasty.  Even worse when trying to save got hit by the "machines won't reset from alert so you can't save" bug as well.  Did end up finally saving and quitting.  I was done for the day anyway. Hopefully that gets patched soon.

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On 2/22/2022 at 5:22 AM, RandomAct said:

I've thankfully not run into any major bugs yet. I've had a couple of instances of pop-in, but nothing game breaking. I am getting a chuckle out of the Cyberpunk fans drawing some false equivalences here though.

When Aloy travels to the Daunt/the intro, it was pretty jank on resolution mode, but I’m not bothered by it. There was a scene where I thought she was in a desert but it turned out to be an untextured mountain scape until the last second. It was funny. I’m actually struggling to think about any other bugs I’ve noticed, but I’m also only like.. barely that deep into the game.

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I've gotten a couple bugs, mostly rendering delays (backgrounds and characters rendering in *after* the game loads Aloy in and lets you up and away (the hitboxes/boundries are there, just not the textures), and the one massive FPS drop I got.  But I'm also playing on a PS4 Slim, so I'm not using the great to best hardware.  I did get what I thought was a a gamebreaker last night but turned out to just not be a well defined boundary and after a few seconds I realized what I actually needed to do. 

 

It's not NEAR as bad as Cyberpunk was at launch, and it's absolutely not unplayable. 

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I feel like Guerilla put a lot more stuff into this game, but I'm not sure how much most of this stuff actually enhances the game. I enjoy it, but it feels like a sequel that isn't as fun as the OG (which I just finished again, along with the DLC, a few days ago) because I'm busy managing so much shit. Some games are great for having that stuff, but here, I'm already dreading having to shoot a hundred raccoons to get a drop to upgrade a weapon because it's pretty weak otherwise. 

I also wish that every sheer cliff could just be climbed, BotW-style, without having to focus out the handhelds. 

I do like that the Vistas are now perspective puzzles, though.

I'll get through this, mostly because Aloy is a great character whom I genuinely like, and I'm still in the Daunt. Maybe it'll get better/I'll get settled in more in the next few hours of gameplay. 

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FW uses the trope of "After this first area that'll take 10 hours to clear out, the game opens WAAAAY the fuck up", and it does.  Once you clear out the Daunt and get into the Forbidden West proper, things kick way open, areas, exploring, gear.  Combat is more intensive this time around, as even with the Melee combos, you're going to get crushed trying to melee machines, and you're going to have to exploit weak spots, elemental weaknesses, and "reactive" parts if you're going to beat them.  Gear is more a mix of buying the next rarity up and upgrading stuff to keep it relevant.  

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I can already tell that this is going to be an easy 80-100 hour game for me. I'm 14 hours in and I just now did the first Tallneck.

Is it just me, or does it feel like the machines are a little easier to fight this time? Or that could just be my experience from HZD carrying over, I'm not sure.

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If you're exploiting the weak points right, they go down quick.

If you try and chip away just throwing arrows at them willy nilly, they're harder.

If you try and melee them, you're powder.

 

Using Concentration and abusing the reactive elemental parts is the game.

 

Ripping down Burrorwers and Scavengers is pretty easy, as is most stuff that carried over from ZD.  Bristlebacks and Snapmaws are quick if you know where to hit them.

The ones with prehistoric bases or the snakes... fuck some of them are fucking hard.

Edited by Raziel
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7 minutes ago, Raziel said:

If you're exploiting the weak points right, they go down quick.

If you try and chip away just throwing arrows at them willy nilly, they're harder.

If you try and melee them, you're powder.

 

Using Concentration and abusing the reactive elemental parts is the game.

 

Ripping down Burrorwers and Scavengers is pretty easy, as is most stuff that carried over from ZD.  Bristlebacks and Snapmaws are quick if you know where to hit them.

The ones with prehistoric bases or the snakes... fuck some of them are fucking hard.

I think that is the deal so far. Everything I have run into is either a carryover, or a pretty close copy of a machine from HZD. I just feel like the weakpoints are a little easier to get to this time around. It also helps that you can tag specific parts now.

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