Horizon Forbidden West, adventure that falls in love

Recently the Playstation 5 catalog welcomed Horizon Forbidden Westthe sequel to the title that came out on Playstation 4, the console on which this sequel is also available. A title that well deserves to be among the greats of the year since it incorporates great novelties, both in the graphic section and in the gameplay. A leap in quality that makes Horizon Forbidden West essential, but let’s see why in detail.

For those who at this point still do not know, Horizon Forbidden West is an adventure game created by the Guerrilla company which puts us in the shoes of Aloy, a citizen of a world to come in which machines have developed an intelligence own artificial, thus creating an ecosystem that has become really aggressive against humanity. And after a first installment (which we reviewed in its PC version) in which it seemed that we had managed to save the Earth, a new plague leads us to search for the files capable of recovering the planet’s biosphere to put an end to said plague. But it will not be easy at all, we will have to travel to the Forbidden West. Quite an adventure.

A trip to the west full of conflicts

After destroying Hades in the first installment, not everything goes as well as expected. A plague spreads across the land and threatens to become the new reason for the extinction of humanity. Aloy, our protagonist, is well aware that she is the only one capable of freeing the world from this new plague. To do this, she will have to undertake a search for a backup copy of the GAIA artificial intelligence with which to restore the planet’s biosphere. But of course, it will not be an easy search, it will be up to us to find a way to follow the tracks of said copy, overcoming all the setbacks that will appear.

Also, to undertake our quest, we will have to travel to the Forbidden West, a land full of hostile tribes, new machines and enemies. And they will not be few, because Guerrilla has created a really rich world. Not only because of the large number of creatures that inhabit it, but also because the various tribes, which have their own political and social relations between them, which evolve during the game and, how could it be otherwise, depend on our actions, to get ahead.

And for those of you who haven’t played the first part, this second installment further exploits the main hallmark of the game: the machines. And it is that the Earth, about a thousand years after our current time, and after suffering a serious apocalypse, has to coexist with mechanical beings similar to animals and that over time have become increasingly hostile and violent. In this way, every time we come across one of them, we will have to fight them looking for their weak points.

A very caring world

In this way, together with Aloy, we will experience a huge variety of situations that give meaning to the ecosystem that has been created around this world full of machines. Both the plot and the game mechanics revolve around them. That is why Guerrilla has decided to further exploit this facet of combat. Now, in addition to finding a greater variety of machines, we also see how the way to combat them has opened up new possibilities.

To begin with, say that the machines have various weak points and also have weaknesses or strengths against attacks from specific elements. In this second installment we can see how all this has become much more detailed. Thus, fighting against them is very entertaining, since, once we scan them, we will be able to see what the best ways to attack them are. We will test their different weak points and fine-tune them with our entire team to be as effective as possible.

Thanks to the diversity of elements, the combats are very dynamic and they give us the possibility of achieving our goal in different ways. Something that, without a doubt, is essential to control since we will not always be able to calmly analyze the combat, there will be times when the enemy will be very powerful or, simply, we will find ourselves surrounded by several machines wanting to finish us off.

In those moments it will be when we will have to take advantage of everything that the game puts at our disposal. On the one hand, we will be getting a good variety of weapons of different types and that work with different elements. And on the other, during the adventure, we will improve our skills in different fields. This also happened in the first game, only this time there are more fields and they are more detailed.

Thus, we can improve our skills in stealth, hand-to-hand combat, as trappers, etc. And as a final point, also, during the adventure, we will have to manufacture and improve Aloy’s equipment, making use of the great diversity of materials, both mechanical and organic, that we will collect.

And although at first all this may seem somewhat overwhelming, it must be said that Guerrilla has been able to find a very good balance. As we progress through the adventure, they teach us how to use and take advantage of all these features of the game. It must be said that also, as a novelty, now the environments offer us advantageous positions, such as high points to which we can climb and from which we can take great advantage.

A really beautiful graphic finish

But Guerrilla has not only thoroughly worked on the gameplay, the graphic section is simply overwhelming. And it is that, in every sense, we are facing a game with a spectacular design and full of details. Both the scenarios and the creatures and the rest of the beings that inhabit the game are a real delight. At least, we, not in a few occasions, have simply stopped to enjoy the environments in which we found ourselves.

Of course, this is how Horizon Forbiden West becomes the most spectacular title in terms of graphics to date. Although yes, we could say that looking at the details and the short distance some volumes and materials are somewhat vast, but really that does not mean any setback.

Traveling through an open world

Something that was left somewhat halfway in the first installment was the idea of ​​the open world. This time, Aloy can really move around the world with hardly any impediments, and is that one of the novelties is that we can climb cliffs and ruins. Thus, we can travel in a very fluid way from one place to another.

Although yes, we will have to be careful not to go through an area full of hostile machines, since that would mean getting into trouble. To continue, we will have to take advantage of our trips to obtain resources to improve our equipment or manufacture consumables. And if we want to travel fast, we will only have to take control of a machine that we can ride or make a fast trip, using the bonfires that we have discovered.

As for manufacturing, we can prepare the resources at any time, but to carry out improvements in the equipment, we will have to do it at the work tables that we will find throughout the world.

Secondary missions that seem more like main ones

Something that has pleasantly surprised us is that everything that additional to the main story he is very careful. There are a lot of characters that we can talk to to discover more about the background of the world. Something that, thanks to the great dubbing into Spanish, is not done at all heavy.

For their part, the secondary missions also give us access to parts of the plot that is closely linked to the main one. In addition, these more complete missions are divided into different sub-missions that we will have to solve to discover the secondary plots but, as we say, they are closely related to the main one. In addition, they are very careful, with their own characters, cinematics, etc.

Of course, not all of them are like that, there are also simpler ones, such as collecting resources to get some new equipment, or the like. But it must be said that, for us, in general, they have been quite attractive.

Improvements in Playstation 5

Although the game is available on both Playstation 4 and Playstation 5, it is on Sony’s latest console where we can enjoy the best way of the game. On the one hand, because of the loading times, which practically do not exist. It is a joy to use the bonfires and see how almost instantly you are already in another remote part of the world.

On the other hand, use is also made of the possibilities of the dualsense, both from the vibration and from the use of the triggers. And of course, a better graphic section that we have configured to have the best visual experience without noticing any loss of fluidity. Although we have also tested it in performance mode, which feels more fluid.

Conclusions

We are facing a game that has really given a generation gap, both for its graphic section and for its playability. And since the base from which we started was good, this second installment achieves a truly spectacular result. A combat system full of possibilities, a story with a complex plot full of surprises, as well as a heart-stopping graphic section.

In section Bad points we also met some. And it is that, to begin with, the difficulty of the game, at its standard level, has seemed excessively simple. Difficulty is something that can be set quickly, but we’re surprised that the default level is so easy. For example, there are areas where we have found several enemies separated from each other and all placed on their backs, so we only had to move stealthily to finish them off from behind quickly without any impediment.

On the other hand, there some details that have not been fully controlled. For example, there are cinematic scenes where Aloy walks through elements of the set. There are also areas that are simply blocked by an invisible barrier so that we do not pass. They are details that leave you a bit surprised seeing how the rest of the elements are so well cared for. A patch has already been released to solve some of these situations, but there are still others that it would be good if they left fixed so that the game was really round.