Or, why I’m lukewarm on Horizon: Forbidden West.

From where I’m sitting (on a well-loved couch way too close to the TV), Guerrilla Games’ releases have fallen into a bit of a pattern over the past 10+ years, alternating between titles that are technically impressive and fun (Killzone 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn) and those that are “just” technically impressive (Killzone: Shadow Fall, Horizon Forbidden West). There’s no denying that Guerrilla have mastered some manner of devil magic that lets them milk the absolute fuck out of the graphical capabilities of whatever the latest model of PlayStation is, but I also think the studio might be guilty of what I’m going to call “over-iteration.” More on that later, because I’m freestyling this bad boy and I need some time to get my thoughts together.

            Before I take a big, steaming dump on the thing, it’s only fair that I mention the positives of Forbidden West that aren’t the eye-fuckingly good graphics. The voice acting performances – and character animations – are splendid. I’d be annoyed by how much Aloy talks to herself during gameplay if Ashly Burch weren’t such a talent. As it is, I just kind of roll my eyes when the character I’m telling to climb a ladder is simultaneously telling me that maybe she should climb the ladder. Woof, that sentence was a mindfuck to write. Lance Reddick is always a delight (which is why I have a Lance Reddick body pillow), and his performance as Sylens in Forbidden West is so good it almost makes me forget how dumb his character’s name is. Almost.

            What I’ve played of the main story is fun to experience – it just takes a while to get going, like a steam-powered dildo, or the opioid epidemic. I don’t want to spoil anything, and I’m also too lazy to do a plot recap, but Forbidden West’s story begins shortly after the events of Zero Dawn and continues from there, pushing Aloy’s quest in a new direction (literally) that introduces new factions and fresh areas to explore in ways that make narrative sense. I’m still partial to the returning characters from Zero Dawn, but, then again, I’ve only uncovered about half the map, so there’s bound to be interesting new cast members to meet down the road. Perhaps too many of them. But we’ll get there. More positives first:

            The design of the machine enemies continues to astound – both their visual aspects and the clever, varied behaviors they demonstrate. I’ve had more than a few Jurassic Park – style  “Clever girl” moments where a shrieking mechanical hippopotamus or whatever absolutely wrecked my shit, and I enjoyed it every time. That said, the human enemies are somehow more irritating slash useless than the ones in Zero Dawn, and there are a lot of them. Where’s a machine gun when you need one? Oh, wait, the robot hippopotamus has one. I’ll just take that…

             The controls have stayed pretty much the same from title to title, as far as I can tell, but Guerrilla have made some adjustments to how the player interacts with the game world. The first thing I noticed is that Aloy can powerslide uphill for, like, 40 feet.[1] This is both immersion-breaking and absolutely phenomenal, and I will brook no further criticism of it. The climbing mechanics have gotten a nice upgrade (at least when it comes to climbing rock faces), in that a quick tap of the right stick will illuminate a series of handholds on the nearest interactable vertical surfaces (again, this is pretty much just rock faces, but there are a lot of them). The highlighting of climbable surfaces is, of course, yellow, but in a hue that I found unintrusive. And, hell, given how deep the accessibility options for the game are, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a way to change the color buried in the settings menu somewhere. The accessibility settings might be my favorite addition – they’re incredibly granular, and allow you to tailor your experience to be a relaxed, story-focused adventure or a hard-as-nails death march (and almost anything in between). Special shout-out to the “copilot” feature, which I wish was present in more games – it’s a great way to introduce people to gaming (or help out a younger sibling/kid who’s having a hard time with a tough fight).  It all feels very wholesome.

            Alright, now that’s out of the way…

            Here’s why I’m having a hard time really getting into Forbidden West (shit, I almost typed Zero Dawn there[2]), broken into a handy bullet-point list, in case you need to give a presentation about it or some shit. That said, if you’re relying on me to ghostwrite your presentations, you’re already kind of fucked. At least you’ll get fired on a high note.

            1) The “over-iteration” problem I mentioned earlier.

            A good pair of examples (man, I just know I’m going to get flamed for this in the comments), are Doom (2016) and its sequel Doom Eternal. Don’t get me wrong, I quite liked Eternal – but I still prefer its 2016 predecessor. This, I think, boils down to the fact that the developers added too many extra ingredients to an already-tasty soup. It’s like, this soup is fire, why would you put a bunch of horseradish in it? Horseradish is fine, but it can kind of overwhelm the flavor, you know? And then you’re going to go and add in a bunch of bone marrow? Where’d you even get that? Not that it doesn’t taste good, it’s just weird that you have so much bone marrow on hand.

            The “blood punch” in Doom Eternal is the horseradish in the soup, and the flamethrower is the bone marrow[3]. Damn, that was a good fucking metaphor. I killed that shit. Maybe now my parents will be proud of me?

            Forbidden West has the same issue, writ large(r)[4]. The addition of “Valor Surges”[5] and (unless I’m mistaken and they were in the first game) weapon abilities to the core combat gameplay serves to overcomplicate the combat that worked so well in the first game (I’m not a huge fan of meter-filling, obviously). Adding just one of these mechanics might still have diluted the primary gameplay loop a little, but it also could have also been a nice extra twist on top of what already worked in Zero Dawn. As it is, combat starts to just feel…crowded.

            And then you get to the inventory. Good fuck, the inventory. Aloy has picked up enough bows in my game to construct an actual treehouse, and I’m only level 19 (if memory serves, the last game maxed out at level 50, so I’m guessing Forbidden West does something similar). And every single one of these bows (and ropecasters, and tripcasters, and slings, etc.) can be upgraded…to an extent that the (sub)issue will get its own (sub)section below. Call me Subway Jared from the way I’m slingin’ subs. Or don’t. Please don’t.

            The 6 (six!!) skill trees are a bit on the voluminous side, too, but we’ve seen worse. Remember Assassin’s Creed Valhalla? That shit was like a connect-the-dots puzzle made by the Actual Devil. Here, it’s…passable.

            B) I couldn’t give any less of a fuck about these side quests if I tried. In fact, I’m trying right now, and it’s not working. There are so many side characters asking me to do so much dumb bullshit and there’s no option to just say “bro I’m literally trying to save human existence right now” when someone asks you to bring them fifteen antelope foreskins or whatever. Sure, the quest-givers are well-animated and voiced, but at the end of the day they still want me to bring them a fistful of antelope foreskins. Hard pass.

            III) The mind-numbing crafting/upgrade system. I touched on this above, but good lord are there a lot of upgrades in this game. Not really interesting ones – you’re just bringing in however many giraffe taints to make your quiver two slots bigger. Whoopee. I don’t necessarily hate this stuff when it’s not overly intrusive – but the number of weapons in the game, coupled with the 3-4 upgrade levels available per weapon, gets a bit…obscene. One of the most deflating events I’ve encountered in a video game this year occurred after overcoming a Cauldron (dungeon) boss in Forbidden West and acquiring the override blueprints for a bunch of machine enemies. In Zero Dawn, this meant that you could “override” the machine enemies whose blueprints (or whatever it’s called in the lore) you’d gotten, giving you the ability to turn them to your side – at least temporarily. In Forbidden West, you get “corrupted” override blueprints after beating Cauldrons, which means…you guessed it! More fucking crafting. Now I’m out here searching for a specific type of machine nipples in order to actually use the stuff I got from beating the Cauldron, when I should be living badass and turning creatures against their brethren like I’m the God of the Old Testament. I get the concept of delayed gratification, but this is a little much. To be fair, you get a handful of “non-corrupted” overrides that don’t require crafting per Cauldron, but…why not all of them? Why put frosting on a tasty cake if the frosting’s made of rat feces?

            Anyway, those are the main reasons why I’m not particularly enthused about playing more Horizon: Forbidden West. I probably will play more, but I also do things like shit with the door open, and that doesn’t mean you should do it too. Especially in public restrooms.

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[1] Sure, she could powerslide pretty well in Zero Dawn, but now it’s like you’ve you’re wearing lube-covered rocket boots.

[2] Horizon: Zero Dawn is a badass title that makes you think of, like, the cyber-apocalypse. Horizon: Forbidden West is blander than uncooked toast.

[3] I will never understand why in God’s green goodness someone thought it was a good idea to put the player’s melee attack on a cooldown timer in a fucking Doom game.

[4] The same issue with iteration, not its parents.

[5] Basically, special moves that give you a variety of buffs – think extra ranged damage – that you can use when you fill up a meter. Also, “Valor Surge” is how Vikings referred to erections. True fact.