Horizon Zero Dawn – a very pretty game gets even prettier (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Sony release yet another unasked for remaster on the PS5 but at least this one is cheap and you can genuinely see the difference.
At this stage, it seems almost pointless to complain about remakes and remasters. Whether they’re good, bad or indifferent they’re clearly not going to stop, since publishers see them as a relatively cheap and reliable schedule filler, to put out between bigger releases. The more important question is whether they’re needed, i.e. is the original old or obscure enough that it would benefit substantially from updated graphics and other features?
For many recent Sony titles, the answer to that question has been a resounding no, most obviously the completely unnecessary The Last Of Us Part 1 and Until Dawn. Things like Shadows Of The Colossus and Demon’s Souls have been great but Horizon Zero Dawn is only seven years old and still looks great on the PlayStation 4, so why it was selected for a remaster (not remake) is a mystery.
It’s not that Sony has a new sequel coming out, although one does seem inevitable, but perhaps the logic is that it’s because Lego Horizon Adventures is being released this Christmas and it retells the same story? It’s hard to imagine anyone coming from that and turning their nose up in disgust at Horizon on the PlayStation 4, because it’s so old and ugly, but for what it’s worth this remaster does look a lot better than the original game.
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With rumours of a multiplayer spin-off as well, Sony is going to an awful lot of effort to push Horizon as a franchise despite, or perhaps because, it’s a series that’s never quite reached its full potential. It’s unusual in that it has a fascinating backstory, with the reasons for the post-apocalyptic Earth being populated by giant mechanical animals being excellent, but the actual plot is very dry and uninteresting.
We’re fascinated to see how the Lego game is going to portray the characters, because they’re all as dull as dishwater in the original. Protagonist Aloy is a strangely low energy hero, and we never remember the names of any of the other characters even minutes after talking to them. It’s a shame, because the world of Horizon is very interesting and its feels like the tone should be a lot more rambunctious than it is.
You can read our review of the original PlayStation 4 version of the game here and since this is just a remaster everything within it still stands. The game is set in a large open world, where Aloy finds a pre-apocalypse piece of technology that allows her to understand that the robots are not natural and later interact with the small amount of remaining technology.
This leads to a lot of stock open world quests, although since the radio masts you climb up, to expand your map, are giant robot …read more
Source:: Metro
