HORIZON ZERO DAWN & FROZEN WILDS [2017] PS5 REVIEW

🏆  MASTERPIECE  🏆

The positive:

💗 Horizon features the most impressive graphics & technical prowess

💗 Guerrilla Games created the most gorgeous game on consoles

💗 The creative vision is realized by a stellar presentation

💗 The game features a very well-written empowered young female protagonist

💗 Aloy's rustic beauty is portrayed with details like her imperfect teeth

💗 Addictive combat loop, amazing characters & fascinating Lore

💗 The Frozen Wilds DLC is great but does not expand the world lore or the main story

The negative:

👎 A girl fighting robotic dinosaurs armed with a single bow still feels wrong

👎 I wish Aloy could repurpose firearms like her enemies do in the game

👎 Had to wait until the Ps5 upgrade to experience the game at 60FPS

Horizon Zero Dawn is a PlayStation Exclusive released in 2017 developed by Guerrilla games. It combines an engaging narrative with an intense blend of both fast-paced combat and tense stealth sections. It builds on elements of open-world and loot-and-craft gameplay with staggering results. All of this with an overall lore and complex character arc that keeps you exploring in search of more. The game is huge and looks fantastic. A must-buy for PS4 & PS5 owners.

SOMETHING NEW IS ON THE HORIZON

Horizon Zero Dawn is the result of a creative team empowered to explore something new. Guerrilla Games has long been developing Playstation Exclusive games for quite some time, with the popular FPS Killzone Franchise as a background, the studio was ready to go wild with their creative ideas. Everything about the creative vision for this game is realized by a stellar presentation. The game features the most impressive graphics and technical prowess ever seen yet, with a unique and enjoyable soundtrack, alongside fantastic acting, make an unforgettable experience. 

Even though the game received great critical acclaim, the whole concept of a futuristic setting with a girl fighting robotic dinosaurs armed with a single bow felt so dumb to me at the time. Just watching those trailers made me laugh at the concept. I figured these guys went crazy. Several years later, there was all this hype about the Horizon Forbidden West launch, I figured I could give Horizon ZD a shot.... and it was a good surprise and an awesome adventure!

PS5 NEXT-GEN PATCH 4K/60FPS

I'm so glad I didn't play the game when it came out for PS4. I can't play at 30FPS since all my life played computer games, 60FPS feels like the natural way to go, so every time I play a console game at 30FPS feels dated and awkward. Now that Guerrilla released a next-gen patch for PS5, we can experience this masterpiece at 4K 60FPS, it's the will of the gods. Looks so fluid. I had such a blast completing Aloy's Journey on the PS5! 

CONCLUSION

Addictive combat loop, amazing characters & fascinating Lore! Horizon Zero Dawn is a beautiful game with a compelling narrative and great character development. It's a story about humanity's downfall, and about hope. Aloy is one of the most memorable female protagonists. Guerrilla created one of the most unique and fresh takes on its genre in recent years and I had such a blast completing Aloy's Journey in Horizon! 

THE FROZEN WILDS DLC

The Frozen Wilds DLC is great! unfortunately, it does little to expand the world lore or the main story. What makes this expansion great is the refreshing new feature of Quest Companions.  

The expansion introduces something new, I felt Zero Dawn lacked: some characters will accompany you during specific Quests. Totally new and refreshing since you get used to going on Quests by yourself and only seeing other characters before or after completing them. In Frozen Wilds, you get to interact with other characters during missions, which enables interesting exploration & combat dialogue. They chat with Aloy over things going on like narrative-driven games do, like TLOU, Uncharted, etc. I love it!

On the downside, we all expected the lore to be expanded in this DLC, but we had to settle with Sylens and his past/motivations. It is not like the Frozen Wilds storyline does not add anything to the main story, It's nice to know more about the Banuk and Sylens, but I guess I was hoping for more.

CONCLUSION

I really liked the snowy setting! The graphics are breathtaking. Sometimes, I will just pan the camera and appreciate the sheer amount of detail and love they put into this expansion. The new enemy types add some challenge to the game, they are really tough to take down.