PAX West 2016: Horizon – Zero Dawn

Other than hoping against all hope that Nintendo will have Breath of the Wild playable at PAX, Horizon: Zero Dawn was the only other game I wanted to play. I still have my windows phone so it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to play since it required queuing with an app that was only available to Android and iOS systems. I learned that there was an early morning free-que line that basically starts when the doors open and on the second day I luckily was able to make it there in time.

They started the show demoing the gameplay that had already been shown elsewhere on the internet (also above), but it was still awesome to see on the 100+ inch screen. You play as Aloy in an open-world land taken over by nature (was it 1000) years after the fall of man. To what and to what end? They didn’t say. These are the same guys/gals that created the Killzone franchise so maybe this is after all that? How cool would it be to have that kind of tie-in even if the guys over at Guerrilla Games wanted to leave Killzone behind. It would be a neat way of saying goodbye and paying homage to the series at the same time. It’d also be neat if you had to fight some sentient version of the vehicles you used to drive around in.

The demo for us afterward was… small, to say the least. They let us kill a few Watchers and these bull creatures, called Broadheads that you could also take over by hacking their mechanical brains. I was told you may be able to take over the Watchers, but only to make the docile, not have an army of attacking robo-rapters (sad day). I wonder if I’ll be able to take over one of those larger monsters you saw in the other videos and ride on them because how sick would it be to ride a giant robo-tyrannosaurus around and crush your enemies? Way too cool! Moving on, everything felt and looked great. I was impressed by the size of the world they presented (even if they didn’t let me touch it). The controls were easy even for me, a mouse and keyboard crusader to the end! February 28th cannot come quickly enough! My PS4 is ready.

More Horizon: Zero Dawn info: Official Page / Review

Jonathan Amarelo Sig

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