Metal Rating- Horizon Zero Dawn- Review

I'll just say, this review is another reason why I write reviews. To some, this is a time consumer and meaningless. But to those who aren't so shackled to the Jokatech hate train to see anything in front of them, I'm sure you must know when a good project is released, and done well. This is my breakdown of Horizon: Zero Dawn for the PS4. It took me quite a while to finish this game, as I was taking my time, and had many obligations, contrary to what some think.

  This is one of the titan IP's for the console, released in 2017 (ancient by today's standards), by Sony. It was developed by Guerilla Games. It stars a young female protagonist, as many IP's today do. Her name is Aloy, and she is an outcast of the Nora people who is raised by an outcast named Rost. He found her as a child and took her in. Much of her past is either unknown or fabricated in the outset. The beauty of it all, is how intricate and meaningful it all gets as you learn more. You start playing with the character as a small child, who is exploring an abandoned cave, where you find a small but important piece of bluetooth-like technology, called a Focus. As time goes by, little does she know that the Focus was a means of tracking her. She undergoes a proving trail approved by the Nora to earn the right to be a hunter for them, which would alienate Rost if she wins. After successfully completing it along with other youths, the entire camp is immediately attacked, and Rost killed, while Aloy manages to barely escape with her life. The Oseram, Carja, and Shadow Carja, are clans that have been at war for ages, and Aloy learns that the shadow carja are seeking her out for some reason. When she finds out that it has to do with her resemblance to the scientist who protected mankind years ago, she begins to look for answers. The planet is filled with hostile machine monsters that have driven mankind into submission. The Shadow Carja are awakening a device that will unearth the worst of them and bring about a second destruction. Aloys is on a quest to stop this, as well as find the truth.

   To start, the game is a gorgeous looking game, where they utilize the night-day cycle very well, as I wish Mass Effect would have. It's one enormous world, with bodies of water and various climates, as it's a version of Earth. Aloy will even react to sudden or persistent climate effects such as the cold or rain. As a child, Rost taught her how to hunt machines and to forage for supplies and materials. I had wondered how the foraging system would work, as it was just randomly scattered singular samples of various materials like ridgewood, and medical plants. When you take down machines, you can salvage materials from them, including metal scraps, which are the currency of the game. There are still regular animals and wildlife in the game as well, including birds, foxes, boars etc. These animals are usually hiding on the fringes of main paths and avoiding both you and machine monsters. Aloy is equipped with a spear as her base weapon, which she can perform melee attacks with, and various bows and crossbows, which she can affix different kinds of ammunition to, depending on the weapons specs and the supplies she salvages. She can have bows that do tear damage, fire damage, ice damage, electrical damage, or corruption damage. Corruption is a state that is overcoming many of the machines in the world due to the influence of the ultimate machine adversary known as Hades. It is a rouge machine, that existed at the beginning of the conflict, and is seeking to repeat the destructive process that occurred centuries earlier.

   One thing that stood out to me immediately in the game, is the fact that there are no inns or areas to rest. While you can find sanctuary in towns and some few isolated areas, the world is pretty much covered completely with machine monsters, who all turn hostile when they hear, see or sense you. The game has many bonfires to save at. In fact, there are probably too many. Every few steps you take, you uncover another one. At first, in the game you acquire what are called Fast travel packs, which can be purchased from merchants in various cities. Once you collect the proper rare materials, you can construct a Golden Fast Travel Pack, which allows unlimited instant transmission to any previously visited bonfire. Because there are so many bonfires in the world, it makes travel a bit too quick in later portions of the game. And you are not always safe at these bonfires. Many of them are in the open, off of trails, where various kinds of dangerous machines roam freely. And, as I mentioned, you only heal with manual intake of medicines or herbs that you concoct on your own. This was not very good in my opinion, as it takes a lot of time, searching and salvaging to fill your pouch with medicinal plants. Each time you heal, Aloy consumes as many plants as it takes to top off her health. There is no in between. This usually depletes an enormous amount of the plants you harvested. The alternative are potions that you can store after mixing with specific ingredients. It is not easy to come by the ingredients, so it is extremely helplful when you win skirmishes with shadow carja camps or troops, as they tend to carry them, and have them stored in chests on their settlements.

  The backstory was phenomenal, and what really sold me on the adventure. You meet Silens, who is among those tracking you through the focus tool that you wear, that you found as a child. He has an unnatural thirst for knowledge that led him to assist the villain of the game, which he claims he isn't proud of. You work to mutually uncover answers, and you find out about Aloy's ancestor, who once stopped the threat. Hearing the dialogue in the recordings that you find strewn about the world, really gave meaning to the relationships that formed and fell before your civilization came to life. You even hear how the Carja became involved from different perspectives. There were many moral decisions and choices that the scientist in the past had to make as humanity faced extinction. By the end of the quest, Aloy goes from an uninformed warrior outcast, to sounding like a nuclear physicist graduate, with her understanding of the science behind the weaponry and technology used to reprogram and counter attack the machines in the past.

   The difficulty was awesome, but ridiculous at time, with enemies that were boss level being thrown at you in bulk on often occasion. There were times, I had to lower it from hard to normal, sad to say, such as when you had to head back to the Nora village later in the game after the unleash of an attack, and several Deathbringer machines are casually thrown at you. Or, there was a time I faced a rockbreacker machine that took forever to take down. Enemies like the Thunderjaw and the Stormbird, while having elemental weaknesses, were still insanely accurate, almost to a psychic level, and durable, exhausting all of your resources to get past. It felt, and was often unfair, but the challenge was exhilarating in its own way. There were just some boss fights that were off the chain, and bulks of enemies that were inopportune. For instance, there was a mission where I had just escaped from one of the science research facilities that was operated by Aloy's ancestor, who's name is Elizibet Sobeck. I believe it was a facility where they housed the clones, which is an intricate part of the story. Aloy emerges hanging on for dear life. Outside the facility, was a Stormbird sweeping the area. There was no way past him, and no way to outrun him without a fight. These enemies do insane damage, and will exhaust either all of your resources, which I didn't have and/or your life. He did so several time- thank goodness for autosave. Eventually, I had to find a way to sneak past him, as defeat didn't exist in his world.

  There was also a side mission where I took on a Rockbreaker for some miners, thinking it would be a breeze. He did life bars in damage with each hit, and had beyond deadly accuracy. I died on that fight a good amount of times. Even on another occasion, where I took over a facility that the Shadow Carja were trying to excavate, after the dungeon was complete, there was an army of them waiting for me outside. It was one of those moment where you watch your cinematic death with a smirk, while saying, "This is a part of the plot right? This has to be a joke, or tense scene or segue right?" And then after watching the loading screen, you realize you are actually supposed to win that fight. The game needs some kind of auto-heal mechanic to get a fresh start at points.

  The game was a good length. It lasted me about 50 hours minus any DLC content. Being in such an archaic setting, it didn't really provide much in the way of entertainment activites, like other RPG's. That's why I've always had a love for futuristic dystopian setting. I'm going to cut this review here and say that it was an enjoyable experience with very tough enemies, that I would play again. I had a very elaborate review written up, but my computer just scrapped the last hour of writing, and I'm not going to write that all again. I rate this highly as a  metal of a game. 9/10

The Knight is Young- Dark Souls Remastered- Review

  So this marks my completion of the famed difficult juggernaut of a game- Dark Souls Remastered. The game was originally released on the Playstation 3 in September of 2011. It was developed by FromSoftware. This is a company famous for making very gritty and tough games such as their famous Armore Core series. I heard about the game when it came out all those years ago, but although I was becoming a fan of the genre, I didn't like the cover art that much and was a bit put off by the dark nature. I really fell in love with dungeon brawlers when I played Genji on the same system. After looking it over and researching it for quite a while, and completing Nioh in the process, I began to consider Dark Souls, as it has its own separate lore, and does make some effort to distinguish itself from the usual tasteless blood, gore, and deemo games, which I despise. It really focuses on being as hard as possible, and I will discuss the different types of hard.

  What I've come to find in difficulty in video games, is that very few games have the ability to nail it just right. Monster Hunter might have come the closest of all games I know, besides a couple of obscure titles like The Red Star. I have always appreciated hard games, because to me, that's what video games were created for in truth. They were meant to push us physically and mentally to new levels. But you have some games, that are near insurmountable in challenge, where you wonder at times, if you will every overcome the difficulty, and then you have games that you know you can overcome, but wonder how you will weather the brutal challenge that requires patience. I liken to the power lifter versus the fitness expert. One man attempts to take on bench pressing 500 pounds for the first time, and sweats under the challenge, while another man takes on benching 200 pounds for 50 reps. These are different avenues, but both equally challenging. While Monster Hunter is the big weight game, where skill is all that can save you, Dark Souls is the rep challenge, where you are capable of becoming very powerful, but can always fall into cycles of dying for unknown reasons.

  Dark Souls was the game that brought about Nioh and other titles. It is the basic dungeon brawler, that relies on equipment sets and weapon upgrades, as well as learning the patterns of enemies and layout of dungeons. No one nails challenges that push your skill level like Capcom. What I've come to find of FromSoftware, is that their games are more arduous than insurmountable. Even Armored Core, was extremely hard, until you found the right mech design and specs. In Dark Souls, unlike Monster Hunter, you do not rely so much on attributes and breaking down large bosses with skill. While that element does exist, the game is more reliant on leveling up and becoming stronger in various ways.

   You are and undead warrior who starts out being released from a cell as you are tasked with travelling to the world of the great lords and saving the world. You gather intel and weapons along the way, such as spears, swords, great swords, axes, bows and short swords. In the character menu, there is a huge board of attributes to upgrade. Each time you level up, you can only upgrade one, making leveling up very daunting and critical. You can enhance strength, endurance, stamina, dexterity, faith, intelligence, and resistance. Each attribute effects different weapons and armors. The game has different types of magical attack attributes. There is fire, lightning, and poison. You can raise resistance to help slow and neutralize the effects of such attacks. Your dexterity will help your damage proficiency with some weapons like katanas, swords and spears. Your strength will help you wear heavy armor when the prerequisites are met, and will increase attack power with some large weapons like great swords. Endurance will increase you ability to carry a larger load in general and will make you able to even wield certain weapons or wear certain armors in the first place. Based on a percentage, your movement speed and stamina consumption are effected by the ration of capacity to carried weight. By increasing either your stamina or health, you can build the meter to sustain more damage and launch more attacks.

  In the game, there are a few randomly placed black smiths who you meet that can upgrade your equipment and sell you components to do so. This is crucial to making your armor and weapons good enough to fight the enemies. I found that the game does a horrible job of explaining things. There is very little in the way of cutscenes and direction. I found that I had to refer to walkthroughs and videos, made by people who put the time in, dissecting and looking through books etc. to learn the lore and how to find things. To me, that is ridiculous. There were a lot of things I would have had a hard time finding out I had to do. One example is that in the end of the game, some areas like Anor Londo, which are labeled as optional, had many items and areas that I could not have beaten the game without finding and exploring.  When I heard how big the world was, I was skeptical, but let me tell you, it is absolutely enormous. And it is connected as they say, but in a very convoluted way. I was so pleased when I achieved the teleporting ability near the end.

   The bosses in this game were pretty good. What will hang you up, is adjusting to the new enemies in the area. They will be so strong, that you will be surviving the area for quite a while as you level up. It really is a good feeling to get so strong over time, that you can comfortably travel an area that you used to sweat walking through. In fact, now playing new game plus, I kind of smile, as I am obliterating enemies that used to give me fits. The game is specifically designed to turn up the intensity, and in my opinion, begin to break game mechanics to take you out, when you have a lot on the line. In this game, you acquire your currency from souls you pick up from downed foes. Like other games in the genre, if you die, you can make it back to where you died and collect the loot you dropped. However, if you get killed before that happens, all souls are lost. After a while you learn to spend your souls on leveling up you character and equipment as often as you can. Because some areas are so huge like the Catacombs  and Anor Londo, you are constantly searching for bonfires to sleep at and save. These are the areas where you level up, change equipment and save. The game has a spell system, where you can build up slot capacity and equip spells from various schools such as Pyromancy. In your loadout, you can equip as many spells as you can contain. You can have 2 weapons for each hand that you  cycle through, and several items, such as estus flasks, throwing knives, dung piles etc. Estus is the healing item of the game, as you find bonfires, you  replenish them and increase capacity by kindling the bonfire further.

   I think the most memorable boss fight in the game was the fight against the two lovers Ornstein and Smough. Ornstein was a lighting sword wielding knight, who moved very fast, and Smough was a giant hammer wielding beast who covered insane range. You had to fight them at the same time, and after beating one, fight the other after they powered up with their lover's remains. It was one of those fights that taught me how to tackle bosses in general. Many of the boss fights can seem very unfair, until you find a trick of sorts that stifles their offense. The enemies in Dark Souls all have the ability to modify their attacks to throw off your defense. You can block most attacks, and parry some melee attacks, but the timing has to be perfect. I mastered it of course, but when fighting later enemies, almost all of them have unblockables. It's so weird to play games where every single enemy has a move list.

   I would be remissed to fail to mention the aesthetics. The graphics and lighting are superb. The scope of the draw distance, textures and level design really give it a grand scale look. This serves to show off the ability of the Switch console, as it seems unreal to play such a game on a handheld. You visit many different locations from old temples to forests, to mountains and catacombs. However, I feel there could have been a bit more sunlight in the game. And the camera angles were at times, atrocious. There are times when I walked to my death due to a sudden flip of the camera on a very narrow ledge. Once again, like Genji, this game likes to interweave intricate platforming into a game where the mechanics don't suit it at all. And when it comes to save points, many times you are stuck in a long chasm between them. I also feel the game could have done a much better job explaining what needs to be done. For a game that can and will kill you in an instant when entering a new area, it would be nice to know where I need to be generally before I run out of healing items.

   
  I spent so much time trying to find my way in the huge world, that I became insanely powerful. I got a great sword that I used that was insanely strong. I  used it, and pretty much began to become a boss myself. In the end, the last boss, Gwyn, who was the creator of all the turmoil that had happened, was an interesting, but not very crazy fight. He used a long flame sword, and the thing that threw me off, was that he was in such a small area. I was anticipating a long dungeon, with many hidden save points and mini bosses, but after fighting 7 knights in a wooded area, I found him in a tower. He rushed me, but was easy to time and hit. What made him dangerous, was the fact that he could vary his combos and rest very quickly, so if you got caught in his reset, you could end up trading with him and taking death damage. Unlike Monster Hunter, there is no chance to whittle away at the enemy. You usually die in 2 consecutive hits. Your healing items will quickly disappear. The key is to beat the boss as quickly as possible.

   I appreciate the design, and I think I will enjoy the new game plus even more. While difficult, it was more of a strenuous ordeal than one that required insane skill. I'll keep playing it for a bit, but I must say, I wish it had more cinematics and explained lore. Still, it was amazing, and addictive for the last couple of months. So I give it  a knightly 8.8/10