Horizon Zero Dawn is by far one of the best PS4 games that I have ever played. Over the summer I found it at Best Buy when they were having a sale and I thought it looked pretty cool so I gave it a try. I ended up putting in so many hours towards the game and thinking that it was nearly perfect in every way.  The story is captivating, the music and visuals are amazing, the combat is phenomenal, and there's still so much more to talk about. Before I go on about the grades, I want to talk about some of the "extracurricular" things that I liked and didn't like about the game.

Pros:
Fluid Combat
Large Spawn Zones
Technology

Cons:
Loading

Fluid Combat: If you wanted to compare the movement and combat of this game to a game like GTA V, don't. Horizon is clearly the winner. The movement and presicion is perfect.  When you're fighting a machine, you get non stop fluid controls that make it seem like you're watching a sick action movie instead. You can do a whole fight that lasts a couple minutes and never make a single mistake. This is literally the kind of game that 360 no scopes were made for.

Large Spawn Zones: The spawn radius for machines is huge. You could look at the map and see the spawn point for a certain machine but encounter it like 2 minutes out of the point. This is great for a number of reasons. This is great for creating strategies as you're free to move great distances while fighting without fear of something despawning or resetting. Theoretically it also allows for machines to roam and appear anywhere, instead of having to travel to a specific point for a fight and always leaves room for an ambush. It also allows for more machines and more species of machines to appear one one area where there's overlap. This allows for more active and longer combat, and more loot.

Technology: Horizon Zero Dawn is world building at its finest. Usually when you have a post apocalyptic video game all you do is explore the world and you only heat tidbits of what the world was like before. That's not what this game is like. Yes you get to explore post apocalyptic Colorado and fight rabbid robot horses but you also get to see what the world was like before through recordings and other technology. This is a world where humans don't have access to technology yet we're able to see 21st century buildings and hear stories of what present day people did. We learn how the world became became what it did and how the machines came into existence. We get to see planes and other present day stuff and Its so cool seeing the two worlds interact.

Loading: A game with this much stuff and this much beauty needs a lot of time to load. Most of the main loading screens have been taking 30 seconds to a minute or even longer, which I hate.

Now on to the regular aspects.

GRAPHICS - 10/10

The graphics of Horizon Zero Dawn are amazing and I would give it an 11 if I could. Everything looks beautiful. The scenery is amazing, lots of trees and mountains and all sorts of other visual masterpiece littering the landscape. All the different machines look amazing as well. Each one has a great level of detail and they all look super menacing. The animations are beautiful too. I already talked a bit about how fluid everything is but it's just so good. The movement of the machines lools great, the movement of all combat is great. Even the lighting from the sun and moon make the game look great. Overall the game is a visual masterpiece.

SOUND - 9/10

The sound of Horizon Zero Dawn is also really good. When it comes to regular sounds, the game does a great job with its amount of detail. Each machine has a unique set of sounds that make the game fee way more immersive and even scary and dramatic at times. In addition to the random sounds, you also have the voices of the game, which was really well done. The maim character Aloy is voiced by Ashly Burch who was nominated for a Game Award for her performance. She put a lot of emotion into her dialogue and made the game feel realistic. All the other voice actors did a really good job with tje game as well. Lastly you have the score. The main theme and some of the battle music is really good and fits in nicely with the theme of a robotic apocalypse.

ADDICTIVENESS - 10/10

This is another aspect where I would give an 11 instead of a 10 because it's so much fun and there's a lot to do. There were a lot of times where I would just forget about the story and I would spend countless hours fighting, exploring, and leveling up. This is the kind of game where long after you beat it, you want to go back just for the thrill of an intense five to 10 minute fight against one of the bigger machines. It's a lot like the new Spider-Man game, once you're done with everything that you were supposed to do, you just explore looking for fights so you can keep enjoying the thrill of such a good combat system. Even if you look beyond the fighting, just adventuring through the massive world and delving through the rich story and backstory are so much fun. This is probably a 30 hour game that can easily become more than a 100 hours if you like it.

STORY: 9/10

I don't want to give away too much of the story but I do want to get you to fall in love with it. The main story is very in depth and emotional and focuses on a young woman who wants to learn who she is and who her mother is and her journey out of her village to look for answers and basically to stop a war. The story also does a lot of world building. It reaches us everything about the current state of rhe building as well as the events that led up to its current state. We learn how humanity destroyed itself, how machines took over, how buildings disappeared, and more. There's also a bunch of side stories that show us what the people are like. How evil did some peoppe become, what are the worlds beliefs and customs, and more. There's so much to unlock through the story, in fact after I played the game for just two hours I remember telling myself that I would love to see a movie based on this game.

I also really like how a lot of stuff is open to interpretation regarding what's going on elsewhere. The game takes place in Colorado but for all we know, across the country and world there could be all sorts of other types of machines and stories unfolding.

DEPTH - 10/10

The world of Horizon Zero Dawn has just so much to offer. First of all, the map is just huge. If you were given the freedom to just explore the world without having to worry about fights and quests, you would be playing for so many hours before you saw everything. Then you have the huge amount of machines to discover and fight, the number of quests to take, and so many resources to find, craft, buy, and sell. There's also a lot of things scattered throughout the world that you're supposed to find such as Vantage Points which tell you about what the world was like before it was destroyed, metal flowers, ancient relics, and more. Even the skill tree is massive and allows you to unlock all sorts of new abilities as you play through the game. The complete edition also comes with a new DLC which comes with a new massive area to explore along with a lot of new characters, quests, machines, and resources. This game has hours upon hours worth of depth and things to do.

DIFFICULTY - 3

The game isn't difficult at all. Most of the machines that you will encounter are pretty easy to kill. If you find one that's too OP for you all you have to do is go back and find weaker ones so you can grind and stock up on EXP, resources, and skills. Then not only would you be stronger but you'd also have better weapons and armor. Because ot the combat system, grinding is a lot of fun, so you should probably be able to have already defeated a lot of machines before you even get to the big bad ones. The only thing is that there might be times where the story might be a bit too complex to follow but other than that there's barely any difficulty, the game is fairly easy.

OVERALL

As I've said before, the game is a lot of fun and there's so much to do. Personally I feel like this game is a revolutionary take on a genre that's already had a lot of success and has brought even more light to it. This is definitely a game that deserves a sequel and a movie and maybe even more than that but for now, just playing the game for 100 hours is more than enough for me. The game isn't even expensive either, it's not one of those $60 games. When I bought a new copy of the complete edition, it only cost me $20. That's a huge steal for the amount of content and quality that you get, it's definitely on par with most current $60 games. If you are a fan of this genre or you just want to try something new and cool, I really suggest that you give this game a shot because you won't be disappointed. My overall grade for Horizon Zero Dawn is going to be an amazing 9.7 out of 10.

Great review! Very in-depth, and it gave me a solid understanding of the game. I've never played Horizon Zero Dawn before, but if it's as good as you say it is I might have to give it a try.

I'll be honest, I actually slept on this game for the longest time, but if what you say about it is true, I might need to reconsider. It certainly sounds like a good game.

About your review, I'd say in particular I like how in addition to the standard categories, you also went over the particular draws to the game and gave each of them their own spotlight. That's a practice I'd like to see more of in the future.