Horizon Zero Dawn at first seems like a cookie-cutter modern AAA game. You have your open world, skill tree, a map revealed by climbing towers, collectibles… all the stuff that’s become the bread and butter of games like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. Except in the case of Horizon, all these elements feel like they blend together into a cohesive whole in a way they don’t in the other games.

Let’s start with the combat. The game’s enemies are massive robotic dinosaurs and animals that you need to kill with primitive weapons like a bow, spear and sling. The enemies are quite varied, each one requiring a different tactic to deal with. You use the same general approach each time of scanning them, which will highlight their weak points. Those can then be targeted to slow down the enemies or weaken them for follow-up attacks. Outside of that you always have your spear equipped, which can deliver a slow “heavy” attack or a quick strike. For some enemies that’s all you need, as you’ll roll out of the way of their attacks and deliver lethal jabs with the spear. You can also hide in the tall grass and sneak-attack, which is often a way to one-shot the weaker enemies.

The basic ways your resolve combat are fascinating, but the weapon range really adds a lot more. Rather than get different types of gun, you’re working with oddly advanced primitive weapons here. You have a sling that can toss sticky grenades, a type of shotgun that can blast components off enemies (but only if you get really close), a weapon that lets you set up explosive triplines and a weapon that ties machines to the ground. Throughout the game I discovered a range of different effective combinations. In addition to all this the weapons have slots that can be used to upgrade the weapons depending on your use; you can for example choose to enhance basic damage or fire damage of your basic bow.

All this works together to make combat into an incredibly fun tactical experience. I never did figure out a good way to kill Glinthawks (this game’s Cliff Racers) or the Rockbreakers but many of the other creatures I had good go-to tactics for effective elimination. When I saw a herd of Grazers guarded by Watchers, I’d sneak through the grass and sneak-attack the Grazers then bullseye the Watchers right in their eye. When I came up against Ravagers or Thunderjaws, I’d use tear weapons to knock off their weapons and turn them against them. When I was fighting Corruptors, I’d pin them down with the ropecaster and cover them with sticky grenades. Working these tactics out was incredibly satisfying, so satisfying in fact that I’m disappointed there aren’t more enemy variants in the game.

Along with being a skilled warrior, Aloy is an excellent climber. The game uses a similar trick that we’ve seen in Far Cry, where things you can climb are painted so they stand out from the environment; in this case yellow. In the Far Cry games, or at least 3 and 4, climbing was something that felt somehow detached from the rest of the game. It was one of the things that I mentioned made Far Cry feel like less than the sum of its parts. This isn’t so in Far Cry. Alongside the climbing there are also balance wires, rappel points and zip lines. While climbing in combat is a bad idea, the other elements play a role in giving you an advantageous position or a quick escape. It feels part of the whole; cohesive in the best way. The only complaint I have is that towards the end of the game, in a level called GAIA Prime, there are some places where the game seemed to glitch a bit causing me to die a few times.

Horizon was lauded for its narrative, winning “Best Storytelling” at the Golden Joystick awards and similar nominations at the BAFTAs. The game starts off feeling like a fairly standard “Hero’s Journey” quest, but the game is spent with the character growing and learning, and the ‘return to the familiar’ is subverted in a bunch of interesting ways. There’s also some other standard tropes - Aloy is an “orphan hero” who turns out to be “the chosen one” - but those too are subverted in interesting ways. There’s really two intertwined stories in the game, one being that of Aloy and the other being a set of mysterious figures from the past.

The latter story is delivered through collectible “datapoints” that unlock some text or a recording. This is not a new concept, but Horizon does a particularly good job with it, avoiding some mistakes I’ve seen in other games. BioShock irked me with its recordings hidden in odd places (who put it in this sewer?) containing things that no sane person would record. Each recording in Bioshock felt like it was left deliberately to give you a specific narrative. In some cases the game seems aware of that, and it ties into the Andrew Ryan plotline, but little changed for the sequels. BioShock felt like a narrative chopped into equal-length bits and drip-fed to the player throughout the game at a steady rate.

Horizon avoids this by contextualising its messages. Datapoints are not found in any sort of chronological order, nor at a set rate. Rather than a single medium (self-made recordings) datapoints are a collection of e-mails, security recordings, computer logs, personal journals, advertisements and suicide notes¹ that all feel natural in the environments where you find them. Instead of being drip-fed a story, it feels more like finding some artefacts from another world that must be pieced together by the player. As you progress a larger inter-connected narrative is revealed, telling a genuine story of a battle between despair, hope and ego.

Horizon is at its best when you’re crawling through ruins looking for answers and when you’re going toe-to-toe with a giant, robotic T-Rex. There’s room for improvement in places.I thought the Cauldrons, factories where the machines are manufactured, were underwhelming. I was also disappointed in some of the side-quests, in particular the Hunter’s Lodge quest that builds up to a fight with a “super machine” tougher than others. I was hoping for more of those fights, but the quest ended after one, which left me wanting more. While I feel there are some missed opportunities, Horizon does so many things right that it’s an easy recommendation for anyone.