Horizon Zero Dawn

[Yevrah]

Because (in between Dark Souls grinding) why not.

https://www.twitch.tv/chemicallocust

[Yevrah]

Jesus, the into of this is absolutely dreadful.

[Boydy]

Stick with it. Possibly my favourite game ever.

[Yevrah]

Good to know, cheers Boyd.

I hate the Dad, I'll enjoy it when a machine inevitably eats him.

[Mazuuurk]

You mean Rost?

You heartless monster.

[Trancemeister]

Bought this cheap on PS+ to warm up for Forbidden West. Only played til the first boss or whatever you wanna call it, The Sawtooth machine. I too found the intro boring as fuck so really hope it gets better.

[Mazuuurk]

It does get better.

[Trancemeister]

Finished it and Frozen Wild dlc just in time for Forbidden West.
Yep very good game.

[Ian]

It is ludicrously pretty.

Forbidden West reviews I've seen seem a bit "If you like HZD you'll like this but don't expect anything game-changing."

So once it's on PC AND on offer for me then.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I still haven't finished it.

I was going to dip back in last week but I think I gave my copy away to a friend as I can't find it.

Might sign up for a free trial to PS Now to finish it.

[Lofty]

It's payday, and I had clubcard vouchers so splurged on HFW while in Tesco, got the PS4 version so I could upgrade to PS5 for free immediately, £42.50 was not bad for a new release.

[Lofty]

So far it is pretty good, though haven't got too far into the starting area which I hear is huge. Looks beautiful but a few minor bugs (a wall clipped out on a tight turn revealing loot on the path ahead during a winding bit).

[Trancemeister]

Also bought it yesterday. Done the first couple of sidequests in the first town you get to.

[Lofty]

Did anyone keep playing? I am at the Tenakth Sky Clan gaff now, enjoying it a lot. The sand looked amazing in the desert, the world map is massive!

[Trancemeister]

Finally got my new tv so can now enjoy this with HDR and 4k. Am at level 37.

[Lofty]

Nice, it's beautiful! I am level 24 having just acquired my second Gaia kernel. Having fun though so busy at the moment feel like I playing 15 minutes at a time. Think I will look to mop up side quests before going for third kernel.

[Trancemeister]

I think I'm at the final mission now.

[Trancemeister]

Finished it.

[Adramelch]

Finally got around to playing this one. Great game and one of the (few) new IPs that has something to offer. I really enjoyed both the story and the combat.

It does however suffer from the one thing that every open world game does, and that's how difficulty goes down rapidly, with the enemies not being able to keep up with the significant character power upgrades. I started at Very hard and the start was quite challenging, but about 10-15 hours in it already had become fairly easy to deal with. I changed it to Ultra hard by accident mid-way through and didn't even notice until I decided to google why I wasn't seeing enemy health bars anymore. They did, however, handle it a lot better than other games of the genre. I rarely died towards the end (maybe a couple times during Frozen Wilds), but I still had to be focused, which I can't say for any of CDPR's games, Starfield and the likes.

And with that said, 21st of March has been announced as the release of Forbidden West on the PC, so I'll be taking a look at that as well. It's only one day before Dragon's Dogma 2 comes out though, so it might be later down the line.

[Ian]

Almost all open world games have power curves that are aimed at players just mainlining the main story. If you actually engage in the thing you almost always get too strong very quickly.

Good game though, and absolutely gorgeous.

[Adramelch]

Yeah I can't say I know how to solve this issue. They actually did as good a job as any in that regard, and I would probably attribute that to how many difficulty levels they had, but also to the combat/mechanics which keeps you engaged even if you don't feel like you're necessarily struggling to stay alive.

[Gray Fox]

I hate a mate who works at Sony and he chucked me a digital deluxe code for Forbidden West, though I never played this one first.

Is it worth me doing one then the other, or should I just jump into the second one?

[Adramelch]

I hate a mate who works at Sony and he chucked me a digital deluxe code for Forbidden West, though I never played this one first.

Is it worth me doing one then the other, or should I just jump into the second one?

Without having played the second, I would imagine having played the first one will significantly enhance your experience as it does a lot of world building, explains the role of the main character and so on. It also ended on a cliffhanger which I assume is where the second picks up, so you will probably lose that connection.