Horizon Zero Dawn

[Mai Valentine]

I'm actually surprised there wasn't a topic about this game already.

Has anyone else played it? I picked it up on Black Friday last year after hearing that it was good and I was definitely not disappointed. It's easily in my top 10 favorite games.

[targetrasp]

After every "Best game list of 2017" had this game on or near the top I went and bought it a few months ago. It was pretty awesome, in a Zelda Breath of the Wild kind of way but just a bit too stealthy / sneaky for my tastes. I really liked it until after I reprogrammed that big giraffe looking thing. I kind of lost steam after that. It's fun (and really satisfying) to sneak around and stealthily kill stuff but every once in a while I wanna go Rambo on everything, and that typically gets you torn to shreds in this game.

[Mai Valentine]

For me, I had just finished playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, and HZD plays pretty similarly in a lot of ways. Combat and stealth and the environment puzzles are heavily influenced. So I didn't have a whole lot of trouble with that. But admittedly, I played through the entire game on Normal until I got to the final boss, where I attempted it but got frustrated enough that I had to set it down to "story" to finish it. I later found out it was because I didn't have the best armor.

You can kind of charge in and go Rambo if you're on an easier mode and have a lot of good weapon/armor upgrades. Tearblast arrows to their weak spots make it kind of trivial at lower difficulties.

[Kinikko]

I really have a craving to play these sort of games every once in a while, but I lose interest in games so easily anymore.  I pretty much got through the first part of the game where you can leave the first area aaaaaand that's pretty much as far as I've ever got. 

[CreepinDeth]

I'm patiently waiting for it to drop in price and include all of the DLC. It looks stunning though and I might even decide to buy a 4K HDR TV before I play this.

[Mai Valentine]

There was only one DLC and they aren't making more, so you can already get a version that has all the DLC included, although it's still between $40 and $50 depending on where you buy it.

Besides the combat, the story is really amazing, so I definitely suggest trying it on story mode if you just really want to see that without having to worry about being able to get through some of the harder fights.

[targetrasp]

@Mai Valentine - is the difficulty really that different between tiers?

So on easy you can just walk up to something and smack it in the face and live?

[Mai Valentine]

There's five levels of difficulty if I recall correctly:

Story
Easy
Normal
Hard
Ultra Hard

Story mode is specifically meant for playing through if what you really want is the story and you're not keen on combat. It makes everything easy, although on the flip side you also don't get access to some gear and weapons that are only available in Normal or harder difficulties. You're still going to have a hard time if you just wade into a giant group of machines, but most of the scripted, unavoidable fights become a lot more manageable. You could probably walk to up to anything except a Thunderjaw and live past one hit.

As I mentioned, I played through about 98% of it on Normal and only hit a wall twice where I couldn't defeat the boss. The first time I backed out of the area and leveled up a bit and grabbed more kinds of weapons, and was able to beat it. If I'd had more patience at the final boss, I could have done the same thing, but at that point I just really wanted to see the ending because the story is so good. After I beat it on Story and was satisfied, I changed the difficulty back to Normal, grabbed gear I was missing, and went back and beat it again.

[targetrasp]

Cool, I may revisit

[BLUEVOODU]

@Mai Valentine  - This game was mentioned on deal in the Gamestop Black Friday Thread...  I've been wanting to try this game since reading your thread in April.  Like Creepindeth... I was waiting for a price drop.  Hopefully I can pick this game up tomorrow from our local Gamestop.  They don't seem to have stock though... and due to Axiom Verge Multiverse Edition Playstation Vita  shipping issues with Gamestop... I don't want to order online from Gamestop anymore.

@CreepinDeth Are you picking this up now? LOL... seems the price has dropped sufficiently 

[CreepinDeth]

I bought this a while ago off of Amazon. Haven't had a chance to get to it though. Might try to finish Spider-Man first.

[BLUEVOODU]

I bought this a while ago off of Amazon. Haven't had a chance to get to it though. Might try to finish Spider-Man first.

I missed it for $10.  The lady said they should have it on sale again close to Christmas... and to download their app LOL    So I'll potentially do that.. and watch out for the sale again.  I've missed like 4 things now.  But I guess I didn't really need them... 

[Mai Valentine]

It's dropped down to like $20 normally now, though, and that's the version with the DLC included. I mean if you don't want to wait for another sale, anyway.