Think I'm about 3/4ths or more through the game now. Had some major reveals about the world. Game is more of a mixed bag for me than a lot of people.
Positives:
- Visually best game period. When you combine the art, technical aspects and scale, there isn't anything that measures up. Especially impressive in an open world game.
- Control: For an open world RPG, controls are fluid. Controls would stack up well to a linear action game.
- Polish: I ran into only one glitch so far. Glitches are generally expected in open world games prior to a bunch of patches. This game has low load times and the polish of a high budget linear action game.
Story and world: So far I'm finding the high level outline of the story to be interesting. Well thought out.
Negatives:
- A.I.: This isn't relegated to only Horizon. It's a beef I have with the industry. That said, the PS2 quality A.I. really stands out when everything else is trying to suck you into the world. The human A.I. Is embarrassingly bad. There is one mission where you're supposed to sneak through a base. I thought I'd approach it different and would lure and wipe out all the bad guys. They sent an infinite number of respawnig baddies after me and I think I managed to farm about 200 head shot kills before I did what the game forced me to do.
Combat: For a game with strong controls and fluid gameplay, the combat is just tedious. Not enough interesting sandboxes. Similar complaints I had with Tomb Raider. Bad AI combined with missed opportunities with the sandboxes. I have all these cool skills and weapons and there isn't a lot of varying setups to the environments to play with them in. There should be more verticality in some areas to sneak around.
Voice acting: There are a few good voice actors however that fact makes the main character's lack of emotion or expression stand out more. There are a few other characters that just sound out of place. You got people dressed up like bad asses that sound like weak, emotionless nerds.
Overall I keep going back and forth on how I feel. At times the game feels tedious because the combat plateaued early for me. When I go off the beaten path and explore, I feel that's when Horizon is at it's best. If the game didn't have such great visuals, I'd probably consider it an average open world game. That said, the visuals, both technically and artistically, make exploring this world far more interesting than exploring any other open world game.
Positives:
- Visually best game period. When you combine the art, technical aspects and scale, there isn't anything that measures up. Especially impressive in an open world game.
- Control: For an open world RPG, controls are fluid. Controls would stack up well to a linear action game.
- Polish: I ran into only one glitch so far. Glitches are generally expected in open world games prior to a bunch of patches. This game has low load times and the polish of a high budget linear action game.
Story and world: So far I'm finding the high level outline of the story to be interesting. Well thought out.
Negatives:
- A.I.: This isn't relegated to only Horizon. It's a beef I have with the industry. That said, the PS2 quality A.I. really stands out when everything else is trying to suck you into the world. The human A.I. Is embarrassingly bad. There is one mission where you're supposed to sneak through a base. I thought I'd approach it different and would lure and wipe out all the bad guys. They sent an infinite number of respawnig baddies after me and I think I managed to farm about 200 head shot kills before I did what the game forced me to do.
Combat: For a game with strong controls and fluid gameplay, the combat is just tedious. Not enough interesting sandboxes. Similar complaints I had with Tomb Raider. Bad AI combined with missed opportunities with the sandboxes. I have all these cool skills and weapons and there isn't a lot of varying setups to the environments to play with them in. There should be more verticality in some areas to sneak around.
Voice acting: There are a few good voice actors however that fact makes the main character's lack of emotion or expression stand out more. There are a few other characters that just sound out of place. You got people dressed up like bad asses that sound like weak, emotionless nerds.
Overall I keep going back and forth on how I feel. At times the game feels tedious because the combat plateaued early for me. When I go off the beaten path and explore, I feel that's when Horizon is at it's best. If the game didn't have such great visuals, I'd probably consider it an average open world game. That said, the visuals, both technically and artistically, make exploring this world far more interesting than exploring any other open world game.
