izigame.me

TL;DR - For anyone wanting a somewhat meaty open-world with a great story, superb combat and enemy design, masterclass worldbuilding, and impeccable art design and visuals, you will not regret picking this up at full-price.

---{ Graphics }---
---You forget what reality is (as someone who has always loved to envision what parts of my country - the
USA - would look like in different biomes… I can’t say how incredible this game is. Seeing Colorado, Utah,
and Wyoming in such a different presentation is breathtaking. Utah with a lush jungle?? Sign me up.
Photo mode in this game is a blast.)
Beautiful
Good
Decent
Bad
Don‘t look too long at it
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

---{ Gameplay }---
---Very good (Incredibly smooth gameplay, the bow and arrow action against machines is pure bliss. A
roguelike mode like what TLoUP2 got would go hard on this. Combat against humans leaves a lot to be
desired though but machine combat is by far the most common encounter.)
Good
It's just gameplay
Mehh
Watch paint dry instead
Finding phallic designs in popcorn ceilings is better than this.

---{ Audio }---
Eargasm
---Very good (The music is awesome and sets the tone during quests, fights, and exploring. The audio design
for the machines and during combat gets you fully invested.)
Good
Not too bad
Bad
I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
Kids
---Teens
---Adults
Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
Check if you can run paint
Potato
Decent
---Fast (Playing ultrawide 1440p on a powerful rig, consistent 165fps with very rare dips)
Rich boi

---{ Game Size }---
Floppy Disk
Old Fashioned
Workable
---Big (72.21 GB)
Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
You will want an entire hard drive to hold it

---{ Difficulty }---
Just press 'W'
Easy
---Easy to learn / Hard to master (not all fights are hard but every fight can be hard. There is a fair learning
curve but it isn’t too bad)
Significant brain usage
Difficult
Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
Nothing to grind
Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
---Isn't necessary to progress (Incorporates multiple open-world aspects from other games - thinking Far Cry
camps, Skyrim material gathering, etc.)
Average grind level
Too much grind
I’d actually rather buy Ubisoft mtx

---{ Story }---
No Story
Some lore
Average
Good
Lovely
---It'll replace your life (Brings that sense of curiosity and genuine wonder that not many games can.)

---{ Game Time }---
Long enough for a cup of coffee
Short
Average
---Long (45 hours after base game completion. I have not started Frozen Wilds yet)
To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
It's free!
---Worth the price
If it's on sale - pretty much!
If u have some spare money left
Not recommended
You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
Never heard of
---Minor bugs (Got stuck under ladders and in rocks a couple of times prompting reload. Also had a couple of
crashes.)
Can get annoying
Did the devs even play their own game?
Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 level

---{ 9 / 10 }---
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
---9 (bugs and repetitive side questing dock a point, impeccable worldbuilding, setting, story, and lore carry this game)
10

Long-Form -
Guerilla Games stepped up to the plate with a very difficult task: create a brand new IP from the ground up. From scratch, they had to create a world chock full of new lore that was interesting enough to ensnare new players. And they hammered it out of the park with Horizon: Zero Dawn. There are so many secrets to discover and questions to answer from the jump. Zero Dawn introduces you to Aloy as a baby at the beginning and through a very quick first few hours, you watch Aloy grow into a young woman and experience tragedy. From there, Aloy is set upon the game world with vengeance on her breath and an identity to discover, traipsing a post-post-apocalyptic Colorado and Utah haunted by ruins of the Metal World. What you witness for the next 35+ hours will add this game to your “wow, I wish I could experience this for the first time again” list. Having gone in completely blind to this setting, I was gobsmacked by the conclusion and I cannot wait to play Forbidden West.

The art direction in Zero Dawn is a masterpiece and along with the lore/story and combat, really carries this game. Everything from the enemy design (specifically the machines), clothing, villages and cities, and ruins, to the reimagining of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming under much different conditions is perfection. The blend of machines with tribal retro-techno-futurism (it’s becoming a mouthful at this point) was something that I can say I have never seen before. I know we have Dune with the spaceships and ancient-style melee combat but Zero Dawn just brings something different. The clear resemblance machines have to our fauna/megafauna is both mysterious and intriguing. You’ll find yourself studying herds of Grazers after hunting boar, turkey, and rabbits for crafting supplies. You’ll find yourself in awe of the mobile viewpoint Tallnecks, towering over you and crushing the earth with every footfall. All the while you have dozens of questions about all of it; where did these machines come from, what happened to the Metal World, what caused everything to go belly up and why don’t we know anything about any of it?

The gameplay is responsive, punchy, and smooth. It just has that “feel” that is hard to put into words. If you’ve played the Last of Us and feel how heavy Joel is and how much force he exerts… Zero Dawn produces a feeling like that but in the other direction. Aloy is light and agile and a master shot with her bow. It’s that feeling that just fits Aloy and the world she finds herself in. The combat is intoxicatingly addictive. The enemy variety keeps things fresh throughout. Just when you think you’ve mastered the combat, Guerilla throws in a machine that does nothing you’ve ever seen before and you feel as though you forgot how to play. Aloy uses her environment and her assortment of traps, tools, and weapons to take on what’s thrown at her leaving you multiple ways to deal with open-world encounters.

The open-world design (at least in a 2024 lens) is nothing spectacular. The Hunter’s Lodge questline is interesting and has some pretty great side content throughout the game but the rest of the side content is just decent - not bad, and not great. While the map has a filter, you kind of need to have everything up on it and this can be a real eye-sore. In this sense, the open-world design is real “checklisty.” This and some minor bugs dock a point from a 10/10 title.