Horizon Forbidden West is the new Guerrilla Games game, part of the Playstation Studios family exclusive for PS4/PS5 consoles, a direct sequel to the amazing 2017 title Horizon Zero Down, with this franchise Guerrilla moves away from FPS, a genre in which they specialized for more than a decade, to consolidate themselves as one of the top studios developing action RPG games, open world in the third person, after a long wait since its announcement in the summer of 2020, the video game was one of the most anticipated by PlayStation users, it is finally available and promises to be one of the best games of the year 2022.
With Horizon guerrilla I seek to get away from everything they had done previously with the Killzone saga, bringing an IP that would bring a fresh air to the Playstation catalog and also to the studio, here they present us with a world that is experiencing a kind of apocalypse where humanity finds itself living a new prehistory and the planet is full of machines in the form of animals, which are dangerous and very advanced for humans of this time, who have their own beliefs and are living in tribes scattered everywhere, not all have the same ideals.
The story of this game takes place months after the events of Zero Down, where Aloy our protagonist has to put an end to a threat that affects the earth and stop some enemies that come from another place, at the same time that she must face all the machines that get in the way of their mission, during our adventure we will meet different tribes and gain their trust and meet new characters who will be our allies.
The game has 17 main missions, which explain the main story of the game, in turn they have cinematics in certain parts to complement what we are playing and make it easier for us to assimilate the story, but being a game of open world it is obvious that the secondary missions or other objectives could not be missing.
Forbidden West presents the best secondary missions that have been seen in a video game since The Witcher 3, these secondary missions are not the typical generic and repetitive errand that we are used to in other open world titles, here the secondary missions have nothing to envy to the main missions, reaching a point that you can entertain yourself for many hours just doing the secondary ones, apart from the fact that the rewards for these are good, each of these missions feels totally different from one another. The extensive map of the game presents many things to do, not only do main or secondary missions, there are also the rebel camps, the signal antennas, the hunting tests, ruins to discover, the machine assault mini-game or visit the combat arena, In short, Guerrilla made sure that their game has many activities to do and offer many hours of entertainment to the fans.
In the gameplay, the game now allows us to climb, seeing the points through the focus to be able to know in which part we can climb, apart from having a hook that will help us to quickly climb to certain points and pull things that help us open t he way. We also have a kind of parachute to be able to jump from different places and land safely, another novelty is that now you can dive.
Aloy’s arsenal in this installment is very varied, with a spear for close combat, which represents an improvement over the previous installment, the classic bows, our character’s characteristic weapon, slingshots, rope throwers, spear throwers, bolts, crusher gauntlet. Each weapon in the game has different varieties and they range from common, rare, very rare to legendary, these variations feature different shots that can deal different elemental damage like burn, freeze, acid, plasma, so it is advisable to scan the enemy to see what he is weak to and what team to use against him.
In the game we will be able to acquire different armors which serve to improve our character and offer us advantages, just like weapons, these can be common, rare, very rare and legendary. Like any role-playing game, it is important to level up, so here not only does the character level up, you can also level up weapons, armor, and equipment to be able to load more things.
To improve and unlock more skills for our character we have a skill tree and this is divided into different branches so that you can unlock things according to your own style of play, these branches are: hunter, trapper, warrior, survivor, infiltrator and machinist, The skill points to unlock them are obtained by performing the activities on the map.
Now the most important thing and what makes this game unique, the machines, if in the first installment there was a great variety of these, here we have many new and more lethal ones, as we travel through the west we will see mechanical beasts of all kinds, some of these new machines are:
- Bristleback
- Clamberjaw
- Burrower
- Clawstrider
- Widemaw
- Dreadwing
- Fanghorm
- Grimhorn
- Leaplasher
- Plowhorn
- Rollerback
- Scrounger
- Shellsnapper
- Cloud drift
- Slaughterspine
- Slitherfang
- Specter
- Specter Prime
- Spikesnout
- Sunwing
- Tideripper
- Tremortusk
The new machines present some incredibly unique designs inspired by different animals such as a bear, a mammoth, a bat, a sea creature and many more, so it is advisable to tread carefully because they represent a strong threat if you are not prepared to face them. . As in the first part, when you are advanced in the game, while you complete the cauldrons you can unlock the ability to manipulate these machines, some can also be used as a mount.
Also with the focus you can scan the machines to see if they have a piece that you need so that you can knock it down first before knocking it down and losing that piece, this represents a notable improvement in farming because before you had to fight until a machine appeared that left the part you wanted, now you can save time and go directly to what you are looking for.
The NPCs here are detailed and when you talk to them they don’t feel like robotic characters like they do in most open worlds, here when you talk to them they do a small action so that the conversation naturally feels like two real people are interacting.
Visually, this game is to date one of the best graphics it has, demonstrating what Guerilla Games’ Decima Engine is capable of, despite being crossgen, the details of this title on PS5 are excellent, the landscapes in each area From forests, ruins, deserts, snowy areas, the work done by the Dutch studio is crazy, creating a world that feels alive and encourages the player to fully explore it.
In conclusion
Horizon Forbidden West is Guerrilla’s most ambitious project to date, surpassing its previous installment in everything, implementing new things that make the player’s experience better, offering an extensive map with activities to do, entertaining missions, brutal combats with the different types of machines, an interesting story, collectibles to look for everywhere, a well-crafted soundtrack, definitely an essential title for anyone who is a user of Playstation consoles looking for hours of fun and also a small preview of what what we can expect from Playstation Studios in the coming years.
This Review was made by Jencee Pereyra on Playstation 5.
Each and every Review under the GameOverLA seal contains an independent opinion, we are not affiliated with any video game company, which allows us to provide less conventional and propaganda-free opinions and news coverage.
