Just when you thought it was protected to return to the post-apocalyptic wasteland, the giant robot dinosaurs return. They never really left! Aloy, the arrow-shooting warrior, managed to delay the end of the world in Horizon Zero Dawn, but the death train is still hurtling towards the life station on Earth due to a (currently resonant) ecological disaster. In Horizon Forbidden West, this is because the AI created to heal the planet after the previous extinction event caused by humans is malfunctioning. Gaia, the AI claims, has been shut down and split into different parts, so it’s up to you and Aloy in this sequel to, first, restart Gaia, and second, put all those menial functions back together. But nobody turned off the robot creation button, which means this action RPG in a huge open world is still about fighting T-rexes with rocket launchers. It’ll come as no surprise that this is a very good video game.
Not only that. The sequel needs modern robots. The regular Watcher machines, the basic alarm/guard robots from Zero Dawn, have been largely replaced by Burrowers, similar to giant weasels. Other additions include hippo-like Widemaws, something called the Tideripper, which is basically an electrified Loch Ness Monster, and my least favorite, Clamberjaw, a motorized baboon that throws flames instead of its own shit. The design of the machines remains delightful and essentially nonsensical, and as before, you’ll have a much better time if you stay back to watch from cover. Analysis will reveal which parts of the machine to target for which types of attacks – for example, the giant bear machine has sparks on its back, and if you can hit both with electrified ammo, your giant bear robot will take down in two hits. Fire a triceratops machine gun, and baby, you’ll have your own bulky weapon. It all teeters on the edge of difficulty and skill, meaning that fights are challenging but still enjoyable behind schedule in the game.
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It starts out very compact, though. Aloy, who begins Forbidden West having already spent months searching for Gaia, falls into an off-screen puddle that destroys all of her weapons and the memory of the more advanced combat skills she acquired on her first adventure. This provides the foundation for rebuilding her arsenal from scratch, and I personally welcome the opportunity to do things like throw explosive spears and upgrade my hunting bow to deal massive amounts of acid damage. You can build your weapon loadout to suit your style and needs, which means that while the Ropecaster exists, I don’t have to pay attention to it and can instead buy the Boltcaster: a machine gun that uses wooden spikes, which I find a lot of fun to operate.
You can similarly upgrade your armor and choose different ones for stealth vs. brute force – which also ties in with a modern, larger skill tree, split into different themes like stealth, melee, hunting, and traps. Putting points into them gives you passive buffs, as well as chilly attacks – like firing three arrows at once – and special Valor Surge abilities. You can activate these after filling your Valor gauge, like killing motorized baboons, and they’ll do things like massively enhance your ranged damage or give you a special cloaking device.
Most of the additions seem useful, but there’s a bit of change for the sake of change in the movement, which is mostly incredibly fun, climbing and jumping to yellow handholds. Add in the modern Pullcaster (a grapple that can knock down weakened walls and move crates), Firegleam (a kind of red crystal you can activate to blow up walls), and Metal Flowers (robot plants that grow vines that you can clear to reveal secrets), and we have three modern movement types that all do the same thing. The Pullcaster alone was certainly enough. I won’t hear a word against the modern glider, though, because you climb a lot of attractive mountains and there’s a lot to be said for jumping off cliffs and floating over forests as the sun sets.
I’m not in the best position to discuss the Native American appropriation issue that was raised in relation to the first game, but I do think the tribes in Forbidden West are designed more thoughtfully. They have completely different social and political customs. The Tenakth, for example, have built their society around the interpretation of glitch holograms of the airborne Special Forces team, and this affects everything from where they choose to live to how they dress.Image Source: Rock Paper/PlayStation Shotgun
Much like the first game, where you had to play through being bullied as a child, Forbidden West has a bit of a languid start. It takes a few hours to find Gaia, and while technically the entire (gigantic) map is west of the first game’s location, you don’t get to the heavily damaged ruins of San Francisco for about 20 hours of running around and making Florence Pugh-like faces as she watched the world fall apart. Still, the story moves at a decent pace, and successfully transitions from Aloy struggling with her identity as an orphan to Aloy having a sort of inferiority intricate as the chosen one, feeling like she can’t measure up to the woman she’s a clone of, but having trouble accepting lend a hand from others, even as you gather your found family around her. She remains a charismatic protagonist, and while she never doubts that she’s doing the right thing, she never comes across as smug.
While the main story includes such delights as highly advanced immortal non-alien aliens, a mutant fleshlump in a volcano hideout, and a hologram extravaganza in Vegas (a personal highlight), the side quests have a few gems. Sure, there’s a fair amount of “go to a place, collect 3 x robot cow horns” type stuff, but many of them reveal details about the customs and beliefs of various tribes or are fun diversions that make you feel like you’re actually helping out. Finding a secret hideout for rebels preparing to attack a city, or saving a group of refugees from being displaced. Well done hero.
But in a way, the previous 900 words will already be familiar to some of you, since this game came out on PlayStation ages ago. I played it back then too. How is it on PC? Almost exactly the same! It runs really well on my PC (whose specs you can see at the top), although it would sometimes pause for a second or so after cutscenes to compile shaders. I accidentally knocked Aloy into a rock about twice in 30 hours, but spamming dodge kicked me out. Hardware editor James did a full review of how good this port is. I will say that you should not play this with a mouse and keyboard under any circumstances, because playing a third-person action-adventure game designed for console with a mouse and keyboard is like eating Frube with chopsticks. It’s possible, but it’s not comfortable to do or watch. One thing that surprised me is that I really missed the adaptive triggers and miniature microphone on the PlayStation DualSense controller. I didn’t expect it to make much of a difference, but opening doors with a gigantic metal spear really does seem easier when the controller is pressed backwards.
So to be truthful, and despite my bias, I think Horizon Forbidden West is probably better on PlayStation, but only slightly. If you don’t have a console but want to play a gripping, morally uncomplicated post-apocalyptic hero’s journey where you have to clear a huge map and ride a giant fire-breathing boar – and why wouldn’t you, honestly? – then you should get this game.
This review is based on the version of the game provided by the publisher PlayStation.
