Topic: Horizon Forbidden West

@render nothing spoilery really mate, I think it’ll be fine for you to watch it… or at least listen to it.

I've entered another story area and the game keeps amazing me with its environments.

I spent pretty much all day just hunting animals for upgrades. I'm going to lose so many hours to this game lol.

@velio84 You're much quicker than I am. I have 53h and 49% currently.

@velio84 Good job. I’m way behind having been busy doing all the side quests etc. I might advance the main story a bit more though so that I can feel some progress.

I’ve not bought the bow from the arena but I did fully upgrade the one that I had already and with two additional tear coils on it I can now remove the thunderjaw cannons in just a few arrows 😀

@Splat You'd have even more time to hunt for animals if you weren't playing Dying Light 2 as well...

All I did this weekend were side missions and such. I don't think I've done anything with the main story in several days actually. That's not a knock on the story. It's praising the game for making the rest of it good enough to want to do all the side stuff.

How do you get Widemaw tusks? I get that they open their mouths once in a while, but hitting the tusks consistently without killing them is very difficult.

@Octane It definitely is. Mark the tusks when scanning the machine, use concentration (is that what it's called?) when aiming and say a little prayer or something

@velio84 One reason the side content is so good is because some of it seems like it's basically main story quests. Maybe it doesn't necessarily have much or anything to do with the actual story, but it's of the same quality, especially the side quests for each town. It reminds me of Assassin's Creed Valhalla in that sense, where each area's quest that you had to do to get aligned with them were fairly long and almost always pretty good.

@RogerRoger Maybe you just suck. I dunno...

Lol, I just received a pre-order content code from my retailer. Only 10 days late
Apparently it contains an outfit and a spear skin.

@RogerRoger Shame you aren't having a good time with it. Did you enjoy Zero Dawn or did you have similar feelings towards that?

Combat wise I've not felt anything is clunky as it all feels super responsive but there are a few annoyances with things like machines being able to ridiculous distances all of a sudden or have so many sneak attacks that they all of a sudden pulverise you. Climbing is the only other thing where there's any jank in that sense but it's a load better than ZD was as at least you can get to places without having to just hammer the jump button and hope that something sticks.

The pacing is a tricky one because like with all open world games it's very much down to the order you tackle things in and the flow can really suffer. I've adopted the approach of just trying to tidy everything in one area which I think goes against the pacing in general. The way that some of the quests are structured seems to be that they send you out somewhere quite far into the fogged areas where you will organically make more discoveries, perhaps do a few things but ultimately end up at your destination to further that quest line. I think a lot of things are meant to be stuff you'll come back to but for me I find it difficult if not impossible to move on until I've got rid of all the question marks.

@RogerRoger For whatever reason, the controls do feel really awkward. It’s a weird one because I didn’t really have that feeling in the first one but in Forbidden West it feels like I’m doing controller gymnastics at all times 😂

Did my first cauldron before going to bed last night at the 35 hour mark, I'm the total opposite of everyone else it seems, I don't find the traversal clunky/janky (whatever you want to call it) at all. Loving just organically moving around the world doing whatever I come across and love climbing to the highest peaks in the game sometimes finding goodies and then gliding all the way back down again enjoying the view as Aloy prepares to touch down.

@velio84 @Voltan lol that's what's I've been doing so far. No success.

You can't hit them from the sides when the mouth is closed? Or do you get a trap that does massive tear damage later on? That would be useful.

@nessisonett Yeah, can't remember if they're the same as the first game, but they seem different. I mapped my heavy attack to R, and the light attack to triangle. The "action" button now shares the X with jumping. It's better than activating my heavy attack when I'm just trying to use the bow lol.

My only gripe with the controls is that Aloy will vault over a desk if you just push forward but sometimes is unable to step over a small stone and you need to either jump or side step it. Nothing else really bothers me, tbh.

@RogerRoger The crates might be the jankiest mechanic I’ve seen since the PS2 days. They seem to accelerate at a million miles per hour plus Aloy instantly grabs onto the side if you jump anywhere near them… which usually results in her feet clipping through the ground!

@nessisonett @RogerRoger Yep the old crate, seems like game designers can't get enough of them. The ones in the Uncharted series were always the worst for me so I'll take these crates any day but it is amazing that there's always a crate when you need one. Just thank your lucky stars you never have to trudge halfway across the map to go and find something to stand on as that would be a quest in itself 😂

I think the long and short of it for me is that these small problems are there but they are only as bad as your feelings towards the game. If you are enjoying it immensely like I am then you are happy to gloss over them and perhaps just swear at the TV / controller a bit, but if you aren't enjoying it so much then they will just compound your negative feelings towards the game.

I promised myself that I'd move the story along tonight so that's what I'm going to do. That and try and finish off the hunting grounds so I can buy some nicer gear, and I might also finally get around to playing some Strike which I haven't really touched yet, and oh yeah I've got loads of things to go back to now that I've unlocked another bit of gear... where to start 🤔