Horizon Forbidden West - Video Game Review

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Horizon Forbidden West is an open world action role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic version of the United States that was developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment on 18 February 2022 for Playstation 4 and Playstation 5. It is the second game in the Horizon series and the sequel to 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn. It was written by Ben McCaw, directed by Mathijs de Jonge and stars American voice actress Ashly Burch as Aloy. This review will contain spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.

The Horizon series lets the player control Aloy, a fictional character who grew up in a post-apocalyptic tribal setting set in the distant future. In Horizon Zero Dawn, we learn that Aloy was born into the Nora tribe and entrusted to the care of Rost, an outcast of the tribe, who raised her as a daughter and trained her to hunt the robotic animals that roam the land. As an adult, Aloy sets out to discover the identity of her mother, and discovers that she is a clone of a woman called Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, a skilled scientist who lived a thousand years ago. Aloy learns that Dr. Sobeck was called in to help stop a swarm of self-replicating combat robots from consuming all life on the Earth. Sobeck began working on a terraforming system known as "Project Zero Down" which would use a powerful AI known as GAIA to repopulate the Earth and the human race in the event that all life was wiped out.

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After the human race lost the war against the machines, GAIA was able to restart the human race through cloning and repopulate the Earth. After GAIA gets attacked by a rogue AI known as HADES, it decided to clone Aloy from DNA samples it had of Elisabet Sobeck, because it predicted that they would need the genes of Elisabet Sobeck to save the world from HADES. After learning the truth of her birth, Aloy is able to defeat HADES at the end of Horizon Zero Dawn. Horizon Forbidden West picks up six months later. Aloy's journey to find a working backup of GAIA takes her into an area on the map known as the Forbidden West. Will she be able to find GAIA and save the world from a mysterious plague that is threatening the planet's rapidly degrading biosphere?

I've been a huge fan of the Horizon game series ever since the release of Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017. Aloy is one of my favourite female video game characters EVER. Guerrilla Games always envisioned having a female lead in the franchise. I consider Aloy to be a fantastic example of a strong female character done right. She is a confident and strong-willed woman who has a "hunters respect" for the machines she hunts and can provide the player with many different tactical options in battle. She is focused on her mission and can be blunt, even confrontational sometimes, when she speaks to others. The thing I like most about her is that Guerrilla Games didn't over sexualise her. Aloy is an attractive woman in the game but that isn't her most defining characteristic. She is valued and respected for her intelligence and strength and has gained a reputation for being a highly skilled hunter. She is as tough as Sarah Connor from The Terminator, as brave as Ellen Ripley from Alien, and can handle a bow as well as Ygritte from Game of Thrones. You can't get more badass than that.

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Guerrilla Games announced that they were working on Horizon Forbidden West during Sony's Playstation 5 reveal event in June 2020 with a scheduled release planned for 2021. After experiencing long delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the game finally launched on 18 February 2022 to generally favourable reviews. In the game the player will explore the post-apocalyptic ruins of the states of California, Nevada and Utah as Aloy. The map is larger than in the previous game and exploration gameplay has been expanded and improved. Aloy can fast travel between fireplaces, use her focus scanner to help her safely climb mountains, explore underwater ruins using a diving mask, use a pullcaster to pull down obstacles in her path, and she can operate a shieldwing to help her glide across the sky and safely descend to the ground from high above.



I can remember thinking when I played Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2017 how cinematic the game felt. The story, the graphics, and the performances were all like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. In Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla Games took everything that made Forbidden Dawn good, and made it bigger and better. Horizon Forbidden West is a visual masterpiece and a stunning achievement in game design. I was immediately pulled in by the story, the stunning graphics, the massive open-world map, and Ashly Burch's performance as Aloy.

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I really liked the amount of diversity in Horizon Forbidden West. There were LGBTQ characters, powerful women, disabled characters, people of colour in every tribe, and even neurodiverse characters and a side quest that touched on Alzheimer's. There were several performances in the game that stood out to me. I became very fond of Varl (played by John MacMillan), a Nora brave and a major character in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, who insists on following Aloy into the Forbidden West to help aide her on her quest. I grew really to like Zo (played by Erica Luttrell), a softly spoken Utaru gravesinger with a gentle heart and a strong fighting spirit, who joins Aloy and Varl in their quest. Another favourite character of mine was Kotallo (played by Noshir Dalal), a one-armed Tenakth Marshal and a skilled warrior, who hides a heart of gold beneath a stern exterior. I really liked the character journey that Aloy goes on in Horizon Forbidden West. After growing up as an outcast, Aloy has problems trusting others and prefers to do things on her own. When Varl first turns up in Horizon Forbidden West wanting to help, she is hesitant to accept his assistance because thinks that no one can help her because she is the only one with Elisabet Sobeck's DNA. Varl refuses to abandon her and manages to convince Aloy to keep him around. I liked seeing Aloy slowly open up to the idea of trusting others and surrounding herself with allies.

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I really enjoyed exploring the map in Horizon Forbidden West and completing quests and collecting armour, weapons, and shards. I loved all of the different environments you could explore. I would spend hours just walking around the map, exploring ruins and battling robots, or sometimes I would just stand still and admire Aloy's surroundings. I really liked the addition of Aloy being able to override and ride flying robots in this game. It was so amazing to be able to soar up among the clouds.

I wasn't a huge fan of some of the puzzles in the game. I skipped over most of the ruins in the game because I found them too frustrating and the rewards not worth my time to win. I also hated how a lot of the collectibles marked on the map were not that valuable. I still had fun exploring the map but it would've been nice if the rewards were a bit more worth my time and effort. I also didn't like the underwater sections of the game. The landscapes weren't as detailed and you couldn't fight robots underwater you could only hide from them. I also found it confusing how fishing worked in the game. Aloy fished with her bare hands which felt odd to me and sometimes the game would glitch and the fish would vanish into a puff of smoke.I found the combat in the game to be very difficult at times. Once I got enough weapons and armour, I got better at it. I even started finding it fun. I would run towards a Thunder Jaw rather than away from it.

Horizon Forbidden West was a fantastic game. Guerrilla Games has confirmed that there is going to be a third game in the series. I can't wait to see how Aloy's story ends.

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