Game details Developer: Guerrilla Games

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Platform: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro

Release Date: Feb. 28, 2017

ESRB Rating: T for Teen

Price: $60 / £44

Links: Official website Guerrilla Games: Sony Computer Entertainment: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 ProFeb. 28, 2017T for Teen: $60 / £44

Make no mistake: Horizon Zero Dawn is the rare triple-A single-player adventure that delivers on pretty much every front imaginable. The monumental story (technically, a few of them) is executed with mostly fantastic writing and acting, and it unfolds as players master the most exciting new battling system I've seen since Monster Hunter and Dark Souls. Horizon Zero Dawn also happens to be the most gorgeous game of the current console generation, combining light-soaked landscapes, shimmering robots, and rock-solid performance the whole way through.

There are some minor issues with pacing, traversal controls, and a few underwhelming quests. But these missteps and stutters should not deter PlayStation 4 owners from checking out one of the console's best exclusives so far.

Prepare for a feast

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment



Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Horizon Zero Dawn does not make all of its best features clear in the early going. Calling the game's opening sequence "plot-heavy" is an understatement.

The game begins with a long, cinematic sequence (before you even reach a "press start to play" screen). Your caretaker, a burly, bearded man named Rost, is shown carrying an infant across a snowy pass and telling her about the world she's been born into. This gives the player a quick primer on the terms of culture and the robotic creatures roaming Earth's valleys, forests, mountains, and streams. Humans and robots live in a relatively peaceful co-existence, you're told, and both man and machine try to steer clear of one another.

Your character is soon subjected to a naming ritual, amid turmoil over her "outcast" status among the Nora tribe. With a name chosen—Aloy, clearly a play on the mechanical word alloy—Horizon's plot wheels begin turning. (Conveniently, this is when the robots stop playing nice.)

Your initial journey revolves around finding answers to mysterious questions about yourself and the world around you. Meanwhile, for the game's first two hours, much of the control you're given is peppered with cut-scene interruptions and tutorial-styled missions. Many of these are simple, walk-and-absorb explorations of the plot, along with nearly immediate discoveries of ancient ruins. You're led to believe that whoever roamed this planet before you was clearly powerful and possibly magical. That old civilization left behind a special relic that Aloy uses for most of the game: a "focus" device. It lets her scan the world, see through walls, and track the movements and abilities of any human or robot within a certain radius.

I suggest you set up your PlayStation 4 near a kitchen and set your wireless controller near an elaborate meal that you can make and snack on during this dialogue-heavy introductory couple of hours. You'll get plenty of moments to pick up the controller and actively learn the ins and outs of Horizon's combat system. But the first two hours are by far the most inactive chunk of the game. Even as someone who loathes overlong tutorial sequences, though, this one wasn't excruciating.

Plus, once the game begins in earnest, some leftover food will prove handy. You may struggle to stop playing Horizon for dozens of hours.

Aloy ain't no Bellowback girl

The best parts of Horizon, by far, are when Aloy fights robots. While the tutorials for this combat drag a little too long, you'll need all the prep you can get to understand this game's unique twists on familiar adventure game combat.

In some ways, combat feels a little like Dark Souls, as players juggle quick melee strikes, slower melee slams, cautious dodge-rolls, and bow-and-arrow assaults. But like I said in my last preview take on the game, Horizon's trap-and-hunt battle system requires mastering a few more unique weapons, along with stealth, elemental powers, and the targeting of "components."

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Let's take an example of a battle in the field: I look at my map and spot a Freeze Bellowback breeding ground ahead—full of the giant, crocodile-lookin' robots that spew ice or fire from their mouths. I carefully walk toward the group and make sure to stay concealed as I move from one patch of tall red grass to the next. (The red grass, which matches Aloy's shock of red hair, also just looks really cool as it sways in a breeze and sparkles in the nighttime for easier visibility.)

As you stalk your targets, flip your "focus" on with a tap of the right joystick. This brings up an outline of all nearby creatures, along with the ability to scan each of them to single out their components. The Freeze Bellowback, for example, has a relatively simple design in spite of its large, dinosaur-like stature. Much of its body is covered in armor, and your scan says it's vulnerable to fire. Laying down some fire-powered traps would be a good start, and you can either place bombs or trip-wire traps. The latter can be shot from a slight distance—and conveniently enough, your Bellowback scan revealed its general marching path (which it'll follow so long as you haven't been discovered).

Before placing bombs in the right places, you also see some robotic antelope, known as Lancehorns, prancing nearby. If you've unlocked the ability to "override" this species, you can sneak up to one of them and make it temporarily function as your ally. Some creatures can be overridden and mounted like horses, but the antelope will simply attack on your behalf. For this example, we'll lay down some traps, then once the Bellowback gets near a bomb, we'll sneak up to one Lancehorn and convert it to our side of the fight.

Boom goes the dynamite, and the other nearby Lancehorns and Bellowback, now freaked out, start fighting with your allied creature. Now, still hiding in the grass, load up an ice arrow and aim at the Bellowback once more. It has a "freeze canister" in its stomach zone (which we know thanks to our scan, though that info is also tucked into an in-game notebook for future reference). The unlocked "slow time down while aiming" perk lets us zoom and aim until we can sneak an arrow into that tight aiming window. With a successful shot, a huge ice cloud erupts and hits all of the enemies nearby. They're momentarily slowed and weakened.

Now's the time to finally jump out of cover, switch to a faster bow, and start shooting every vulnerable component on every exposed robot before they find your position. Horizon's robots are powerful, and they juggle melee, laser, and area-of-effect attacks that can whittle your health down even if they're weaker than you are. Since we scouted this region and set a few smart attacks into motion, we're in far better shape to finish the fight—though it will still likely end with a pulse-pounding assault of enemies rushing you. Many of the robots have melee powers with tricky animations, like leaning one way before lurching in the other. Simply timing a dodge-roll won't always do the trick.

Robots > humans (at least for interesting fights)

I can't tell you how many times I finished a fight against a herd (usually made up of two to three of the game's 23 robot species) and had to pick my jaw up from the ground as I caught my breath. Getting to know a single species was always interesting, as was going back to a robot herd whose weak points and attack patterns were once challenging to master. Learning new maneuvers (either by picking up new weapons or upgrading Aloy's various perks) and tracking the progression of discovering new species and their corrupted variants kept me enthralled for hours.

Few of Horizon's enemies act, approach, and attack the same way, and they all suffer from different component-targeting weaknesses. This almost always makes Horizon's combat feel intense, dynamic, and varied. What's more, you simply cannot win with melee attacks alone. While they can do damage in a pinch, they're far more useful as an armor- and component-breaking tool. Rush in, break part of their body, dash out, aim with an elemental attack, and repeat.

Many of the game's epic robot encounters will stay with me for a long time: the first time I emerged victorious against a trio of hovering Glinthawks; the epic battle against a single, heavily armored Thunderjaw in an open, circular cavern; the no-cover stakeout I pulled off against a group of tiger-like Sawtooths and their protective, spider-robot Corruptor. I have to take a deep breath and calm myself just thinking about how intense and satisfying those were.

The same cannot be said for the game's battles against humans, of which there are too many. Human characters are dumber and easier to pick off, since most can be killed with a single arrow to the head or a single stealth-spear attack. Defeating an encampment of "bandits" is usually as simple as hiding in a patch of grass, tapping the "whistle" button (which is one of the first perks you unlock), and having a dumb bad guy walk right up to you. Tap a button to stealth-kill him, then wait for the next dumb guy to come see that his friend has died. Repeat. You'll end up with a pile of bodies and an easily, slowly completed mission.

Humans only become interesting as enemies once they join forces with robots, which occasionally happens (though I won't spoil exactly why). At that point, they become arrow- and gun-blasting pests in a battle's outskirts, which is mostly interesting in that they force you to move toward different zones of a battleground for cover. (This usually makes certain robot foes interesting in new ways, as well.)