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Horizon Zero Dawn
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Synonamess Botch
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August 31, 2016 - 11:39 am
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Anyone else intrigued by or looking forward to this game?  I really like the aesthetic, but I'm a sucker for lush, post-apocalyptic settings.  For that reason it reminds me of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Hopefully it will avoid the mistakes that game made (stupid orb klepto crap mumble mumble...)
It's got a dumb name though, which I can forgive if it turns out to have some special significance to the story, or if the game is so good not even a moronic title can ruin its awesomeness.
I know the developers did Killzone, and are based in the Netherlands, but that's about it.

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Steerpike
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September 2, 2016 - 12:29 am
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This is a game they showed... I want to say at E3 a couple years ago... and it really interested me then, reminded me of some of better ideas for open-world action/RPG types I've seen, but never seen executed precisely. After reading about it back then I promptly forgot its title (which pretty much proves what you said about it), and this is the first I've thought of it since.

I loved Enslaved, minus the sucky parts. Never played Killzone, which was before my PlayStation-owning days, but the developer's been around for a while and I definitely in favor of their doing something ambitious like this. 

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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Meho
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September 2, 2016 - 3:50 am
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Yeah, well, hopefully it is deeper than Enslaved as that game was likeable but the gameplay was rather generic. Also, this is actually supposed to be an RPG, so, not just the usual action game with upgrades as is the norm these days, but an actual RPG that does omit the character sheet but offers different builds etc.

 

I have played all Killzone games bar the first and while I love Killzone 2 and 3 and thought the Vita effort (Killzone Mercenary) was actually very decent, I'd say it's obvious they got extremely fed up with the world and the mechanics by the time they were required to do Killzone Shadow Fall for Playstation 4. Incidently, I though that game was shite. Not just a generic and unimaginative FPS but an actually bad game with shit level design, terrible missions and mind boggling colour scheme that actively worked against player's best interest. So I was actually happy when they announced Horizon: Zero Dawn on E3 2015. It looked stunning and the gameplay looked like it could be interesting - so it may be an inspiring change of direction for the developer that's been doing practically nothing but Killzone for a decade. This year's E3 gameplay video looked even better and while I don't expect this to be a game mentioned in the same breath as Mass Effect or TES in future academic lectures, it might be a better realisation of the ideas that games like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning had (at least it shares the ambition to have the most generic title in gaming, colon and all).

 

Here's that video:

 

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Steerpike
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September 7, 2016 - 11:59 am
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That video does a good job selling it. Shows a little of everything without being too focused on anything, and leaves them room to make changes should they need to before shipping. The bright, grassy, tree-y world seems fresh, somehow. It eschews the gloominess we tend to see, and the mocap stuff is really quite impressive. If it's representative of gameplay -- all the sliding and stuff -- the game should have a very fluid feel.

My issue with open worlds is the developer tends to focus on the open rather than the world; even fantastic games like Rise of the Tomb Raider are ultimately icon hunts. I don't mind icons, but there's something about them that takes away from the idea of an open world game (at least, the "idea" I have of them). Meho invoked Mass Effect; that's not precisely what people think of when they hear the term open world, but technically it qualifies and in many ways it's better done than the Watch Dogs of the world by dint of its structure. Rather than a potentially endless landscape of copy-paste tasks, it gives you the world then establishes logical boundaries.

I'd been hoping for that in Dragon's Dogma, which shared a bright color palette but was such a forgettable game. This game... what is it called? Zero Horizon? No, Horizon: Zero Dawn. That's it. NO DAWN FOR YOU. Everyone else gets dawns but Horizon gets NO dawn. Zero!

Anyway, I'd be perfectly satisfied with this game focusing on its RPG elements. It seems like a refreshing change of pace in that area.

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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Synonamess Botch
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September 8, 2016 - 11:23 pm
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Oh man it does have that stupid colon.  This is such a stupid thing why do people persist in doing it?  The only time it could conceivably be anything but moronic is when the part before the colon is something established and well known.  Calladooty: More Shooty Bits.  Something like that.  Not Horizon: Zero Dawn.  Sounds like something spit out by a random name generator.  Sandwich: Bone Mattress.  Jacket: Muscle Hammer.  They should hire me to name their games.  Noun: Noun Noun.  I got a million of them.

I'm glad to hear you say Dragon's Dogma kinda sucks.  Saves me from having to spend time figuring that out for myself.  It's one of the games I got on PSPlus (PS3) but only played for a bit.  The beginning was confusing and, well, dumb.

If the mechanics for manipulating and hunting those mechs works well, that might be enough to carry it for me.

The new God of War looks really interesting as well.  I skipped Ascension, but I played 1, 2, one of the PSP games as a PS3 port, I forget which, and 3 but haven't been able to beat the final boss.  You'd think I suffer from God of War fatigue, but this re-imagining could be enough to bring me back.

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geggis
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September 9, 2016 - 3:54 am
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A chap I met through Solium Infernum on RPS runs a really great blog and has an infrequent feature called 'The Name Game'. He basically renames terribly named games and the results are often brilliant:

https://waltorious.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/the-name-game-hard-west/

https://waltorious.wordpress.com/tag/the-name-game/

I know Armand adored Dragon's Dogma: Arisen on PC. He sunk... 260 hours into it, although he tells me some of that was idling AFK. The combat sounded really fun, as well as the companion system and AI. From what I hear the quests, although not especially interesting, usually have a time imperative and can be failed if you don't sort them out when you're asked to. I like this. You can even fail them if you fuck something up. Again, I like this.

I've not played it though so, what do I know, eh? I'm wary of most praise these days. And criticism, for that matter.

I probably ought to give the God of War games another go after bouncing off the first one years ago on the PS2. That said, I still need to play Bayonetta 2 so I probably won't be getting round to them any time soon. I remember God of War 3 looking god damned awe-inspiring from what I saw of the intro.

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Steerpike
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September 9, 2016 - 6:11 pm
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The title is sort of especially LOL-worthy given everyone has such high hopes for the game. If there's a sequel, will it be Horizon: Less Dawn?

Aaaaaand now I have the Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter in my head.

As to Dragon's Dogma, I wouldn't say it's bad, exactly. At least I wouldn't tease Armand or anyone else for enjoying it, and you can usually count on me to tease Armand for just about everything, and he returns the favor. Instead I'd say that it seemed... just without substance. "Ok." Forgettable. It had maybe a little bit of dawn, more than zero, but definitely less than... oh, two dawn. Maybe three.

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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xtal
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September 23, 2016 - 1:46 am
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I guess the sequel will be Horizon One Dawn..? Is it the year? I don't know.

New God of War looked like it learned a bit from Dark Souls. So that's appealing.

I'm hoping that Sandwich: Bone Mattress is a best-selling novel this winter..

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