Horizon Forbidden West - PS5/PS4

[hudson]

Played the intro of this so far and I just wanted to say that it's a beautiful game so far. Love that moss on PS5. Combat seems improved, which pleases me.

[fishbowlhead]

Well it certainly looks the part, the water effects are unbelievable, especially when actually underwater.

[hudson]

Enjoyed the verticality of the opening mission.

[fishbowlhead]

Year its an impressive way of showing off the new engine and effects.

[BIG EDD]

There’s an IGN YouTube video called Five things to do first(and then some). Found it helpful unless you want to discover them on your own.

[fishbowlhead]

Few things i did,

Climbing points permanently on.
Weapon wheels to slowest.
Motion blur completely off.

Im sure there’s a few other toggles i did which i felt improved the experience.

[hudson]

man, the character models in the conversations are so good. They represent the performances perfectly.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Having played this some more I was prepared to write a big review, but to be honest I'll just end up echoing what others have said.

Are the graphics good?
Yep

Is the gameplay good?
Sure is

Couple of things of note though. I think this is the first major title I think that shows signs of it being held back by the previous generation. Had it been in ps5 only I think Aloys animation would have been even better, probably having double the animations. I also think the little graphical problems it has wouldn't be there as it would have been optimised for one console only.

One thing I would have liked is for them to have taken a tiny leaf from Death Stranding and given Aloy a bit more inertia. Going from a full sprint to a stop, she just kind of ends running. I would have liked her to carry a bit more weight through her movements.

[fishbowlhead]

Year the animations are definitely, last gen, not terrible obviously but you can tell they could of done more if it wasn’t on PS4 as well.

Glad they didn’t try and shoehorn in RT on the graphics side as well for ps5, it already looks mental when your on a cliff looking at everything, or standing in a stream watching the water deform around your legs, bugs in the air ziping around, dust, leaves, light filtering through, its so dense it really feels alive at times.

Mocap, lip sync & performances are absolutely top notch as well.

[nonny]

What's going on with the aliasing in this one? I had an hour with the game over a mates house this weekend and he's got the same TV asme (albeit smaller 55"). In performance mode there is a weird aliased look to it and a slight shimmering... I know Cassius mentioned this earlier but it seems his was patched. Quality 30fps mode is ok and graphically has less problems but just feels less fluid (obviously).

Also in an hours play we encountered 4-5 bugs, mainly animations not playing right, clipping issues, mainly when riding machines where they get stuck in scenery and one where we fell right through the map.

The game is wonderful and I'm glad someone else mentioned the NPC and mocap cinematics as I think the bar has been raised here... but whilst the game was delayed to avoid crunch I think it's coming in rather buggy across the board and might have been worth pushing another month or so?

I guess I'm finding it pretty jarring to see a Sony 1st party title have so many noticeable bugs right out of the gate but then I'm also playing HZD right now on PS5 and so swapping between both you can see where the upgrades are but also the flaws.

[hudson]

Damn, not seen any of that. Or I've just not had my magnifying glass out.

[nonny]

Yeah it's weird, once you see it once then it's very distracting. I mentioned there'd been a patch but he was sure he'd updated it... I dunno.

[Atticus]

Really enjoying this. The world is beautiful and the combat is amazing. So far I've ploughed most skill points into stealth and I love methodically hunting the mechanical beasts, and finishing the bigger ones off with a fatal arrow shot feels so good. This is totally where the game shines. The first town could be from any game, the platforming sometimes lacks feel/precision, but these things don't matter as what it does it does very well. It's a lot of fun just being out in the world, hunting and exploring.

[fishbowlhead]

Not seen a single bug gameplay wise.

Maybe try clearing his chache after the update, some people have reported needing to delete and reinstall to clear the shimmering issue.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Yeah I've not had many bugs. There are still Jaggies on performance mode, that different to the shimmering issue it had.
I am finding the combat annoying on this one. My attacks do so little damage that if I'm spotted I just reload the save now. I'm not spending 20 minutes hammering dodge and taking 1hp of damage off the mech per attack. I'd rather spend my time elsewhere.