Video Game Review: Horizon Forbidden West

Friday night my wife went to dinner with her siblings. I opted to stay home and finish up Horizon Forbidden West. What a great game! Now I am probably partial as I used to work for PlayStation and this is an exclusive title that I got for free when one of my former colleagues gave me a download code as a parting gift from the company. I also played the precursor Horizon Zero Dawn all the way through and enjoyed it so much I earned every trophy in the game (also known as Platinuming).

At the end of Horizon Zero Dawn you discover there is more to the story and another cataclysmic event about to happen to earth. Horizon Forbidden West is that continuation. You continue to play as Aloy and move from the Intermountain West to the West Coast of the United States. There are new lands to explore and more people to discover that are even more bloodthirsty than the previous game. Naturally you show your excellent fighting skills and are immediately accepted by everyone except the bad guys who try to kill you. While you pretty much have combat mastered with the robot dinosaurs from the previous game, you get to meet more advanced versions as well as superior robots with an extraterrestrial origin. The only downside is you don't get to keep your invincible armor from the first game. Its batteries are dead and that became a foreshadowing of what would happen to me in a lot of battles . . . I died.

If you enjoyed the first game, you probably will the second as well. There are various quests to complete and friends to meet along the way. Not all weapons are created equal and so be sure to use your interactions to learn about what works best for you. My son ran through the game and focused on the main story at the expense of side quests. I found those extra missions added to the story and I enjoyed searching out different areas in the hopes of gaining experience. When it came time for the final battle, I did very well and sort of breezed through it. I think I enjoyed the game much more than my son.

Today I got an e-mail from PlayStation congratulating me on my accomplishment of finishing the main story of the game. They also reported that I spent 116 hours playing the game and earned 47 trophies. I still have 14 more to go to Platinum the game and will probably do that over the next week or so. My son's total hours played came in at much less than that. I guess I took my time.

Horizon Forbidden West has an ESRB rating of T for Teen because of language, mild sexual themes, and violence. To be honest I didn't notice any strong language but I am sure it was there. As for violence, there is a lot of that and the blood to go with it. The story also includes hints at same-gender relationships, hence the mild sexual theme warning.

I highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a 100 hours of pure entertainment. If I had not gotten a free copy of the game, I would have had no problem paying the $65 when it first came out so I could play it on my PS5. It is also available on the PS4.

No Internet for an Evening

I got home from work yesterday and while eating dinner with my wife I received a text message from my Internet provider. They apologized that my service was down but were doing everything they could to restore it. They had an estimated time of the problem being resolved in an hour. I finished eating, did the dishes, and then wondered how best to use my time.

Lately I have been playing Horizon: Forbidden West on my PlayStation 5. I have the game downloaded to my console and so I thought I would try to see if I could play it. Nope because before the game will start, the PS5 checks the entitlement database to make sure I have permission. Without the Internet connection, that information couldn't be verified. If I had a physical disk for the game, I could have played it but I was given the electronic version for free. I will be sure to purchase physical copies of games in the future for this reason.

I thought about watching a movie as I have a huge DVD and Blu-ray library and it is impossible to stream a movie without an Internet connection. Ultimately that would have just been filling time and so I looked at other activities. I thought about practicing guitar, which is something I do every evening. Sometimes I use Rocksmith on my PS4 and I have a physical disk for that game. Instead I decided to go for a walk with my wife. That is something else I do every evening and last night I did it a bit earlier than usual. The only downside being the warmer temperature as I like to wait for the sun to go down a bit more during the summer months.

My wife and I returned from our walk and our Internet was working again. By then, I had no interest in the activities that required me being online. I practiced guitar and then watched broadcast news before turning in for the night.

This morning I woke up and didn't really think much of the lack of Internet last night. At the time though I felt myself scrambling for worthwhile activities. Truth be told, the walk I took was probably more worthwhile than anything else I could have done online.