Horizon Zero Dawn is a strange game. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly what I look for in a triple-A game nowadays. It’s got an original unique world with a plot that twists and turns in interesting ways, gorgeous graphics complimented by decent music, a strong female protagonist with a diverse cast of characters, and giant robot dinosaurs that you hunt down with primitive weapons. At the same time, it also includes many elements that I hate from modern-day games, but we’ll get to that.

In Horizon Zero Dawn you play as Alloy, a girl outcast from her tribe from birth due to unknown circumstances. Raised by her adoptive father Rost, Alloy grows up with her only goal being to become a member of the tribe by completing a set of trials and finally discover why she was exiled in the first place. But when shit goes down at the trials Alloy is tasked with finding those responsible for attacking her tribe and bringing them to justice.

The game takes place in the distant future. Humanity is relegated to prehistoric tribes and the wilderness is littered with hostile machines from years past. By utilizing prehistoric weapons upgraded by some modern meyals, the machines can be hunted and defeated for scrap. Although previously peaceful, over time the machines have grown increasingly hostile towards humans. Now Alloy must travel the world hunting the attackers, taking down giant machines, discovering the secrets of her birth, and uncovering the mysteries behind humanity’s fall.

The story is pretty well done, with Alloy making for a believable and likable main character, aided by some wonderful voice acting. The stories do have some pacing issues, making the main story feel overly long at times, but for the most part I was invested in finding out exactly what led to humanity’s demise and how Alloy ties into the overall plot. There weren’t many emotional or touching moments, but the story does bring up a lot of philosophical ideas and challenges the player to think about humanity and what our existence means to this planet.

The side characters are great too. Some have stilted dialogue, but for the most part they’re at least passable. You have some pretty cut and paste personalities every now and again, but then you get someone like Nil and you’re too entertained to care.

Graphically speaking, the game is gorgeous. Beautiful landscapes and very few loading screens lead to a seamless experience with the frame rate only hitting a stutter once or twice in the entire 20+ hour experience. The character models are incredibly lifelike and are animated mostly well… except the lip syncing. I’m not sure if it’s the uncanny valley-esque realism or just bad animation, but the mouth movements never seem to line up with what characters are saying. Still, this complaint fades into the background when you’re in the middle of an open field fighting a giant Thunderjaw robot, even when the physics make a silly mistake.

So the game looks great, sounds great, and has an intriguing story. So where are the faults I spoke of? Well, on the surface they’re actually pretty difficult to find. The combat is tight and fast-paced, the weapons are satisfying to use, and the variety of ways to approach any given situation ensures that nearly all enemy encounters are different in one way or another. Honestly, Horizon’s biggest gameplay issue is that it copies a lot of concepts from Ubisoft-style open world games. And while it executes the concepts well enough, it also falls into the same downsides and can feel unoriginal as a result.

Now I understand that’s a bold claim to make so let me explain. In a lot of ways, Horizon Zero Dawn feels like a third person Far Cry game. You kill animal to get loot which you can then use to upgrade your equipment. You kill machines to get items that can be traded for money to buy new weapons and ammo. You have a giant open world with collectables and side quests everywhere. You have bandit camps available to attack using a mixture of stealth, ranged, and melee combat. And you have an upgrade system that slowly introduces new abilities for Alloy to try out in the field.

With each of these comes its own set of problems. The map is unveiled by climbing on top of a giant robot and hacking its head, but this is usually an incredibly simple task of getting to a perch and jumping on and makes me wonder why they even bothered including it in the game. You can try to find animals that will drop good to craft with, but the loot drops are random and some animals such as raccoons are incredibly rare, making the process a chore. You can run around the map collecting a huge number of collectable key items, but they’re only good for trading to a merchant for a randomized loot box. You can control some smaller machines and ride them, but you can’t collect loot while riding so the game makes you choose between convenience and being prepared.

All of this results in a game with a great main quest and some fun side quests that feels like many of the other activities exist just to fill an oversized map. Had the map been smaller and more focused on the main game I think the experience would have felt more tight and benefited greatly, but as it stands the game is just a bit too cluttered and takes way too long to get the player where they’re going.

There are also elements of the game that are archaic in nature. Invisible walls sometimes pop up in inconvenient places. Having only four weapons equipped is just an inconvenience since you can always pause the game to take any weapon out immediately, making the pause menu a very popular destination for the entire adventure. And having white or yellow paint on a climbable ledge to make it stand out makes climbing a new structure much less fun and turns it into a game of finding the yellow peg in the wall.

The final boss is the same robot you fight halfway through the story, with only a few modifications. It’s all of these little things, such as Alloy being invisible in tall red grass, but not in any other kind of cover that make the gameplay fal behind the presentation in terms of quality.

By now you probably think I hate the game, but that’s far from the case. The combat is really fun and taking down a giant robot is as satisfying as it seems. Nothing in the gameplay is really poorly done, it’s just uninspired. However, the large variety of robots to fight and unique situations combined with interesting scenarios in which to enter combat keep things fresh throughout the entire game. It’s never dull, just never entirely new either.

It also doesn’t help that this game came out so soon after the revolutionary Breath of the Wild which switched up the old open world formula so much that it makes Horizon look dated by comparison, but we’ll save that talk for the Dissection. In the end, the gameplay is enjoyable enough to make for a really fun, satisfying game, but it does feel like it’s been done before.

As a final note, while the world and story of Horizon Zero Dawn are unique, original and wholly entertaining, the gameplay doesn’t maintain that level of excellence. It’s still incredibly fun, but has some major drawbacks that keep it from becoming a modern classic which is why Horizon Zero Dawn for the PS4 gets an 8.5 out of 10. It’s a solid first entry and I can’t wait to see what Guerilla Games does in the equal. That being said I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, be sure to like and subscribe to see more mighty reviews, dissections, and other gaming content. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!