One of the best game storylines in recent history. Utterly compelling. Yet - I did get a little lost with who was who and who did what etc. Maybe, that's just me. I think some sort of diary, or journal entries that get updated when plot details I'm supposed to have garnered are revealed would have helped.

What held me back from this game initially was the fixed camera angle aspect of the game. The game is a combination of fixed camera angles, and a third-person view with no freedom to move the camera yourself. While - I think I get why it was done - ultimately it's the games biggest downfall.

Limited perspective - inability to judge object positions at distance, mean you continually get stuck on environment detail. This when you're trying to run though a maze from a monster - frustrating. I'd cut the fixed camera honestly - and make the game classic third person. Having worked with the classic Third Person with free camera perspective myself - I think this game would have been better served by going this route. Fixing the camera, and then not allowing any camera control while in third person view - steps me *out* of the game world - making it more like a limited control cutscene. A story unfolding largely independently of whatever I do. I'm really just pushing 'play' by making Marianne move. As a PC player - this is too limiting. Too simple. If limited camera control *must* remain for future games, then tone it's use back to certain situations.

The presentation of the spirit world, and material worlds at the same time via splitscreen is just pure genius. I'm guessing doing that had its challenges, as two environments need to be rendered at the same time. But to see Marianne interacting with a spirtit personality in the spirit world - and then gesturing at nothing in the material world - just an awesome idea. The design of the spirit world is also spot on and very convincingly presented. A real highlight of this game.

I played on a modern PC 5900X CPU, RTX 3090, 64gb system memory. It's clear there are optimization issues. I have 100FPS, and I step a little further forward and chunk to 14FPS. Obviously the game is trying to do too much somewhere. Perhaps level-streaming too much into the game at once in these locations. Again - with the spirit world in play as well - even when you don't actually see it presented - I guess it needs to be running in the background in some capacity, so it can appear when needed without a sudden performance hit. Walking across the pool in the resort was one place performance was terrible. Exiting the resort and heading to the old ruins, near the telescope was another place.

However, the visuals are stunning - and I can see a lot of work went into them. At many times, I just took in the views - or stopped to appreciate the environment that had been created. Despite getting a little lost in some story plot points - I did enjoy the gradual realisations of some major plot pieces. Very solid writing. In fact, this story could easily be a film, or a book. I'd not be surprised at all to find out if either of those were true.

I'd certainly recommend this game if you want a great storyline with a compelling mystery to solve.

*Edited*

Exclusives
Bad Console Ports
Crashes

Anyone who's a gamer *HATES* those three words & what they mean for us all. The fact that HZD was *ONLY* available on consoles originally was *DEEPLY* disappointing. Sorry Sony, I will never buy a Playstation. Not going to happen. I'm a gamer on PC only. PC's are my weapon of choice and that's not going to change anytime soon. There's a substantial segment of the market just like me - so cut us out if you want, but accept what you lose by doing that.

Horizon: Zero Dawn *is* a great game. It really is. One of the classics I'm going to say. However, the game was NOT tested properly before release. Likely, a release deadline had to be hit - and that deadline arrived before the porting team were ready. Upon the PC release, the game crashed regularly for many people, and many also reported performance issues with stuttering and nasty slowdowns as the game loaded assets in intensive areas. Now however, most crashes seem fixed, although the odd one *does* still occur. Updating to Windows 10 Build 2004 and enabling the GPU optimisation setting did the trick for me. Until that gem surfaced - I crashed a *LOT*. I run a Gigabyte 1080TI.

The game itself has a decent storyline. This world where a modern time is years in the past - with decaying remnants of that time scattered all over the place is a compelling narrative. What happened? What are those animal machines? Just who IS Aloy?? It just cements the importance of good writing and plot lines into games. Not all agree if you read many forums - but that's ok. Game production is an art, and you don't always like every piece in the gallery. I found myself wanting to unlock Aloy's story and that of the world around her more and more as the game went on, which I admit is a relatively rare thing these days in PC gaming. High end visuals can only go so far if the story is dead boring.

Free exploration is always good. That feeling of true freedom is just great, and this game I feel hits that mark pretty well. The world is open and I can go where I want without feeling forced or funnelled into it. Invisible walls do exist, but are rare. Hidden pockets abound, which is great stuff.

The fighting mechanincs seem ok to me. Learn to dodge and *when* to dodge and you'll be ok. Keep on top of weapon upgrades and you just may live to see another day. Not too hard - not too easy. Fights are rewarding. That said - I often find normal mode a challenge in a lot of games. Gears 5 for example - I found run of the mill mode in that quite a challenge. I will also say that later in HZD, I've found the fights a little easier against the various common machines. In a way that's nice, but does start to feel old. Same old machines for same old reward.

Definitely worth a play.