Horizon Zero Dawn was a game for the Playstation 4 released in March of 2017. It’s an absolutely beautiful game set in the far future after current society had already collapsed. Roaming the lands are robotic animals that human civilizations hunt and harvest for parts to build and protect their villages.
From the moment it was first shown at E3 in 2015, everyone wanted to know more about it. The concept looked interesting and unique. Unfortunately, it’s release in early 2017 was completely blown away by The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. On the surface, both games were an open world that lent itself towards exploration. But Zelda had many aspects that innovated and expanded the genre compared to Horizon’s iterative approach.
But, unlike Zelda’s pure sense of exploration, Horizon’s strong sense of story fueled my exploration of the game’s world. How did the world turn out like this? Why are their robotic animals running around? What is going on? Underneath the lush beauty of nature are several metallic facilities of a futuristic society long dead. Why? And by the end, there are satisfactory answers to these questions.
Combat feels great. Every beast you encounter has a weakness to exploit, or some specialized parts to harvest. After a while, you are given enough equipment to take on these enemies in a variety of ways. You can set traps, or blow off body parts. Fire down arrows from safety, stealthily melee enemies from bushes, or just run in and attack directly. It’s fun, and certainly challenging on higher difficulties.
Throughout my play through of the game, I stopped several times to use the photo mode and take a picture of the environment around me. So many shots and scenes in this game is incredibly gorgeous, and the photo mode made everything come out great. Every game should have a photo mode at this point. Below are all the shots that I kept. They include areas and scenes from the DLC, as well.