Zombies might be trendy, but when it comes to all-ages geek reliability, you’d be hard pressed to beat out dinosaurs and robots — an unofficial poll of my toddler’s pre-school class confirms this.

So it goes, then, that a game featuring robotic dinosaurs would be off to a pretty good start. Indeed, Sony and developer Guerilla Games couldn’t have fared much better in the run-up to the release of the Sony (SNE) PS4 exclusive, “Horizon: Zero Dawn.” A darling at trade shows like E3 and Gamescom, ”Horizon’s” dirt-meets-metal, futuristic take on prehistory managed to capture the imagination of even stodgy gamers. And considering how many fantastical worlds we have conquered and beasts we have slain, that’s not easy.

But “Horizon” doesn’t just score points for its mechanized monsters. This is an open-world epic that borrows from the past in the best ways possible: a smidgen of “Shadow of Mordor,” a dash of “Far Cry,” a teaspoon of “Assassin’s Creed,” a shot of “Tomb Raider,” maybe a whiff of “The Witcher,” all jammed together and wrapped in a setting literally centuries ahead of the rote sci-fi hooey most games foist off as a plot. Derivative? A little, but within minutes “Horizon” makes you forget about its inspirations and dive headfirst into its fresh — and flat-out fun — future.

Extinction event

“Horizon” is pleasantly set many years past the boring blast zone of most post-apocalyptic games. In the far future, dinosaur-like machines roam the earth, living in relative harmony with tribes of hunting and gathering humans. You’re Aloy, a motherless outcast of the spiritual Nora tribe. Raised by her adoptive father, Aloy stumbles upon a wearable earpiece buried in an underground bunker from the age of the Old Ones (us, or thereabouts). Called a “Focus,” the device effectively slaps a layer of AR over the real-world.

The machines, as it turns out, are starting to get a little bitey (and shooty), a fact that dovetails into an attack by a rival tribe. Aloy thus leaves the nest to track down these enemies, explore the world and ultimately discover the secrets of both her enigmatic past and the strange world itself. And, naturally, kill things to save things.

View photos The dino-robots in ‘Horizon’ get a little feisty, and that’s no good for you. More

Though “Horizon’s” distant future tribalism gives off a “Cloud Atlas” vibe, it isn’t a vague sketch. The developers go to great lengths to root every inch of their world in lore; every rusted, half-buried chunk of metal and dilapidated structure is there for a reason. The story is a slow burn, revealing only hints of What The Hell Happened for the bulk of its 40-hour run, and it’s better for it. I was drawn back to the main plot not out of duty but genuine interest. For fear of spoiling anything I won’t get into the details; suffice to say, Aloy’s journey touches on all sorts of contemporary techno-political issues. This is a sci-fi tale any genre fan can get behind.

Her rise from outcast to hero, while unremarkable on paper, is surprisingly effective, too, thanks again to how deftly the developers weave plot points into her development. Ashly Burch’s excellent voicework gives Aloy, an interesting character from the outset, marvelous emotional depth. The rest of the cast can’t quite keep up — many of the voices and characters are forgettable — but Aloy is strong enough to carry the entire story.

Robots in disguise

Horizon’s great narrative is supported by what’s become a pretty standard open-world loop of floating back and forth between the game’s startling vistas and a huge overworld map littered with things to do, baubles to collect and fogged terrain to uncover. It’s here where the game’s Ubisoft (UEN.F) inspirations are most apparent: locating and scaling giraffe-like Tallnecks to uncover more of the map is straight out of “Assassin’s Creed,” while its resource gathering/item crafting system (need a bigger quiver? Go shoot some boars!) largely mimics “Far Cry,” even including little icons denoting machine spawn sites.

Story continues