Topic: Horizon Forbidden West

@KilloWertz life wouldn't be worth living if I hadn't haha.

Yes I'm level 23 as of last night and going to go and do all quests within that level, before I move on any further with the main story. I'm not that far ahead of you maybe 2-3 main missions ahead and just sitting at about 40 hours!

@RogerRoger Been casually following this thread and the reactions and impressions. I find your report of your early time with the game quite informative.

One of my issues with sequels is the fact that they inevitably make the game more complex, and sometimes that drowns (no pun intended with your swimming struggles) out what made the original game so appealing. Sequels often get caught up in going bigger and adding more mechanics. I mean, this isn’t a complaint per se because what else is a sequel supposed to do — regress? Or recycle the same game again? Of course not. So I understand the want for the developers to add things like swimming and more complicated jump and combat mechanics. But there’s a fine line between a game evolving naturally into something better and more satisfying versus unnecessarily adding elaborate input schemes or outlandish abilities just for variety’s sake.

Not to mention the convoluted and advanced controls of sequels can often rely on a mastery of the first game’s base controls, which runs the risk of alienating a new player base or a returning crowd whose forgotten all the old game’s mechanics. I worry I’m in the latter group since I’ve not played HZD in a few years and I’m likely to be really rusty.

It’s part of what killed Arkham Knight for me — I felt the game assumed a certain familiarity with the earlier games and didn’t reteach the controls and mechanics at a slow enough pace and I quickly grew frustrated because I felt they dumped a lot of presumed competence of the controls on you. Then it added the Batmobile stuff which felt a slight poorly implemented (imho — and I know we’ve discussed this before and fortunately your experience was different). Anyways, that previous struggle coupled with your early impressions has me a bit worried about this game for me. Not to mention, as I’ve stated before on these forums, that I am not a fan of swimming and underwater play in my games. It rarely feels intuitive and is often very frustrating to control and navigate, along with the background “timer” of the oxygen level slowly decreasing. I don’t usually like timed or rushed events in games. I reckon Aloy’s not swimming the majority of the time, but if that’s one of the feature “updates” then it’s not a plus for me.

Add to all this the crashes I’m hearing and I’m leaning more toward holding off on HFW until I am in a very distinct mood. I’m certain I’ll play it eventually, if not out of sheer obligation for being a PlayStation fan. And I’m sure I’ll adore the game when I do, but there’s a hint of doubt now.

@velio84 that might be the one I made the mistake of going into while I was wondering around exploring called CAI or something near the cost, also had a Bear and the ape thing, I was way to low level with only green gear, lost count of how many times that thing at the end killed me. Kept missing as sways its head all over the place, in the end got lucky hits that destroyed some its abilities with the cannon from the dead ravager and then managed to hit and get rid of the tail weapon that was one shot killing me, then used the 3 weapons off that to kill it

@velio84 Fortunately tearblast arrows make collecting Widemaw tusks easy! Got it yesterday and found a Widemaw, got both tusks out of it. Just shoot two or three tearblast arrows in its mouth and they will come off guaranteed.

Erend listening to Concrete Beach Party is probably my favourite part of the game so far.

@velio84 Well done, you are the second today then it seems 👍. Impressive that you got it done in 64 hours as well. I'm probably going to be closer to 100 hours 😅

@render 100 hours. Those are rookie numbers. I finished the first one in 120 hours so Forbidden West will easily be higher than that. Plus I'm not using fast travel for this game, going for the authentic adventure experience!

@velio84 Congratulations! That's an efficient platinum trophy time.

I've currently played a total of 63 hours with 46% of the game complete. The longer I play it, the more I love it. The story has ramped up a notch too.

So, drill spikes are pretty awesome.

@MightyDemon82 I guess that's another testament to the quality of the side quests that you're around 40 hours and not that much further than me story wise. I started the Death's Door quest tonight since it was well under my level now and will likely do more side stuff after that.

I finished the first one twice in roughly 120 hours, but I skipped over a decent amount of side stuff the first time I played it. One reason I wanted to replay it a couple of months ago. That and to refresh my memory on the story since it had been a while since i beat it. I think I liked it even better the second time around since I played in on Easy just to enjoy the story and not get frustrated by any of the big machines.

“Aloy will not mention her stash quite as often as before” best fix ever

@Voltan Ha ha yeah I must hear that at least once a minute.

I think I've seen this one a few times:

Fixed several unintentional loading screens/black screens that would trigger in specific points.

I'll just be wondering around and all of a sudden the screen goes black for a second and then everything comes back again a moment later. It's not caused any problems as such but just happens at weird times but if it happened when I was in a fight then it might be a bit more annoying.

Just goes to show how going from a team of internal testers to millions of people playing the game throws up the really weird bugs that weren't noticed before e.g.

Fixed an issue where the player would lose control of Aloy if sprinting and sliding into the water at a specific spot in the ruins north of Landfall.

@render I've heard of the random loading screens people encountered during the review period but personally I've maybe seen it once.

@Voltan I've seen people complain about the black screen coming up while they were trying to do the melee pits, so maybe this fixed that too. I dunno, as I've yet to try to do any of the melee pit stuff since most of it requires you to have specific skills.

@Voltan I’ve had the black screens and Aloy going on about her bloody stash so that’s good to hear 😂

Just finished the main story and that final mission is so Marvel! A really epic finale… loved it 🥰. It’s a 9 outta 10 every day of the week for me and twice on Sundays.

@colonelkilgore Damn everyone is finishing the main story really quickly. Good to hear that everyone says it's great though. Aloy will be in her 30's by the time she makes it to the end, the way I'm playing 😂

Fun fact: after the patch (not sure if related), the game loaded at a different campfire than the one I saved at
Same general area but I saved inside a former rebel outpost and it loaded at another one, about 60 👣 away

@MightyDemon82 as long as you’re enjoying it mate… there’s no rush. That final mission is something to look forward to for sure though, so cool!

@colonelkilgore I'm having a blast, just did the bleeding mark sidequest and I'll start heading towards the direction of my next main mission, will no doubt be side tracked once again though.