The aesthetic richness of the world is undermined by a lack of interactive diversity. I was always thrilled to find new settlements, especially given the painstaking detail of each individual building block, but I wanted to do more in them. Towns and cities felt more like static dollhouses where I only stopped to save and stock up on supplies. I couldn’t really interact with anybody outside of a few key characters in a meaningful way, nor did Horizon provide locale-defining activities to enjoy. Individual cities feel distinct from each other only in an abstract way, when characters describe the politics going on in the background. You might learn, for example, that one city is currently at war or on the verge of collapse, but you don’t really see or feel any of that while walking through its roads or talking to its citizens. Everything is just a springboard for you to get back into the world to kill dinosaurs, and thankfully, that’s where the game shines brightest.

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Instead, where Horizon blew me away was in the majestic and untamed beauty of its canyons, mountains, and open fields. I often found myself booting up Horizon’s robust photo mode just to take stock of it all. This generation has seen its fair share of gorgeous games, sure, but the artistry at work here is staggering. The mere act of walking through this lavish world is enough to make me fall in love with individual rocks and clouds. Horizon provides a compelling case for how, in the right hands, computing power can be leveraged to bring a setting to life. Each area feels distinct and lively through a combination of art direction, and the unique dinosaurs roaming the biomes.

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Unscripted moments where different entities would clash with one another in unexpected ways added to the sense of wilderness. Sometimes, I’d stumble upon humans fighting against errant dinosaurs, or watch as robots turned on each other. I observed robotic vultures pick apart the body of another robot. During another segment, I racked my brain trying to figure out how to sneak by some human enemies, only to have a titan unexpectedly swoop from the sky and wreck everyone’s shit. Problem solved! Horizon is at its best when it upends my expectations like that.


At the start of Horizon, most people underestimate Aloy, considering her to be a despicable outcast or nothing more than a pretty face. Aloy’s consequent adventure, then, is a fight against the societal rules and expectations that kept her cloistered for so long. At its heart, Horizon Zero Dawn is more than just a game about killing giant robot dinosaurs: it the story of a determined woman who works twice as hard as anybody else just to be accepted. Horizon is the story of a lot of women, really, and the ways in which they reclaim, rebuild and become worthy of an unruly world.

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Horizon is not what you may have expected from Guerilla Games. For years, the studio has been Sony’s Killzone factory, churning out first-person shooters set in a grim world. With Horizon, the studio is finally let loose to show us how much more they’re capable of, and what they’re capable of is jaw-dropping.