Horizon Forbidden West -- Post-game Thoughts (Spoilers)

After the phenomenal job Guerilla Games did with the world and character building of Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD), I went into Horizon Forbidden West (HFW) expecting a bit of sequel-itis. The story for HFW was all over the place so I'm glad I had set my expectations lower. The writers give us three different antagonists -- Regalla, the Zeniths, and the AI HEPHAESTUS -- and none of them feel as particularly interesting as Helis and HADES did in Zero Dawn. I saw a review somewhere that said "Feels like they're desperately trying to be Mass Effect 2", and I agree. All the characters essentially had their own form of loyalty quests, just without the ME2 style payoff where loyalty mattered for the final push.

My problems with the game's story centered around how HFW erases everything that made Aloy unique in the world they had built for HZD. Spoilers will follow so if you don't want to have story elements spoiled, back out now or fast forward to the paragraph about game mechanics. 

In HZD, only Aloy and Sylens had functioning Focus units, and Aloy's "gift of second sight" was one of her major defining characteristics. So much so, that second sight is referenced repeatedly by non-player characters in HFW. HFW picks up six months following the conclusion of HZD where Aloy has inexplicably found an entire bag of functioning Focus units which she promptly hands out to any of her closest allies like Halloween candy.  Meanwhile, Sylens apparently has found a treasure trove of Focus devices as well because he surreptitiously gets them in the hands of the Sons of Prometheus, a villainous faction who teach Regalla's rebels how to 'tame' machines. And then we meet Alva and the Quen, a far east tribe whose entire culture is built around having Focus units, albeit outdated ones. "Second sight" no longer feels special or unique now that everyone that matters has access to it.

The character of Beta being introduced as another Elizabet Sobeck clone. This was the other major defining characteristic of Aloy: The fact that she alone was the genetic identical to Sobeck, thus granting her access to things in the world no one else could ever see. With the introduction of Beta, that uniqueness is gone as well. But they went a step further and basically rendered both Aloy and Beta redundant by...

Having HEPHAESTUS destroy the usability of Sobeck's Alpha Clearance level, thus requiring the acquisition of Ted Faro's Omega Clearance. The ease with which Aloy retrieves Faro's clearance level means anyone with a Focus device and some basic hacking skills -- like, say, Sylens or Alva with her updated Focus -- could have done the same. And at the end of the game, with all but HEPHAESTUS and the destroyed HADES reunified with GAIA, Sobeck's unique genome is all but meaningless.

Also, with regards to how things wrap up, I was not a fan of the APOLLO historical database being recovered. This gives Guerilla Games an excuse to 'modernize' the game later and introduce things like guns. If Sylens was able to create the Zenith anti-shield device based solely on what he learned from HADES and his own wits, imagine what he could do with the totality of the APOLLO database at his fingertips. The story at the end spins it as a necessary thing for the forthcoming Nemesis fight, but meh... I would rather the group fight Nemesis in the next game with their own wits than use the APOLLO database to inevitably introduce some 'old world' MacGuffin. Between HFW's Ted Faro/Quen tribe story line and the recovery of the APOLLO database, HFW feels like it diminishes many of the really important revelations in HZD. I genuinely wish APOLLO had been permanently lost.

Kotallo was probably my favorite of the new companions introduced. I did like the concept of the Utaru tribe and Zo's "Healing the Land Gods" was probably my favorite of all the loyalty quests.  I hated how Regalla's story arc felt hurried and I hated how little effort they put toward her character toward the end of the game. Angela Bassett did a great job voicing her but she could have been so much better. Carrie Anne-Moss as Tilda van der Meer was okay but I couldn't help but feel like she was just reprising her role as Aria T'loak from Mass Effect 2 and 3. Seems Carrie Anne-Moss is drawn to playing cold, calculated, narcissistic femmes who live for a thousand years -- at least in video games that is (her only video game work outside of Matrix Trinity reprisals are Aria and Tilda).

This may sound silly but I'm happy that both HZD and HFW don't have romantic subplots with Aloy. Even though it's clear characters like Erend, Avad, and Petra have feelings for Aloy, I find it nice that Aloy's general attitude is "I've got too much important shit to do" so we don't get sidetracked with hackneyed romance story arcs.

Mechanically, I think everything except climbing mechanics were a step up from HZD. Combat felt better, weapons felt more satisfying, melee skill trees made the spear more than just an afterthought or a stealth weapon as it was in HZD. However, there were a lot of the Valor Surge special skill abilities that didn't feel particularly useful so I mostly stuck to a revolving set of the same three or four throughout my playthrough. Climbing felt like utter dogshit and I don't know why they felt the need to change it. Most of my deaths came while climbing or the game thinking I wanted to climb as soon as I'd get near something with a ledge.

Other than climbing, my gameplay complaints are the Arena and the Melee Pits, specifically the final one in the town of Thornmarsh. The Arena, I feel, unlocks far too early for the player and/or is significantly overtuned. I played through the game on Hard but had to turn down the difficulty just to get through the Arena challenges. I tried sticking with Hard, got absolutely wrecked, and figured my gear just wasn't good enough. I came back to the Arena many levels later with better, fully modified gear, and still got my ass handed to me. After a while, I just came to the conclusion that it was poorly designed; The machines are far too aggressive, their knockdown/knockback too strong, there are too few opportunities for stealth or combat planning, and the traps too weak for the amount of damage you need to do to hit the timers. As for the Thornmarsh Melee Pit, nothing shows how wonky the melee combo delays are like that particular area. At no other point in the game did I get frustrated with the melee combat as I did there. Not even when fighting "The Enduring" with all her cheesy moves.

While I enjoyed the game enough to platinum it, I doubt I'll pick up the game and replay it again until DLC comes out. That stands in stark contrast to HZD, which I 100%'d twice on PS4 and then again on the PC release. HFW was a good game, better than a lot of single player story games that come out, but it was missing the spark that kept me interested in HZD.

All screenshots are my own - PS4 Pro, Photo Mode.

"Tina Tina's Wonderlands" Review (Xbox Series X)

 Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a game born from the zany Borderlands franchise and asks the question: What would happen if we mash up the Borderlands gunplay and looting with the pretend fantasy table top RPG Tina loves to play, Bunkers and Badasses? The end result is a game with magic, mystery, guns, and lots of explosions. Unfortunately, much like many first time TTRPG player's character sheets, what sounds good on paper isn't necessarily good in practice. 

Spells and melee weapons are a welcome change to the Borderlands formula and I have to say that I vastly prefer spells over the grenade system. Will Arnett, Wanda Sykes, Andy Samberg, and Ashly Burch bring their best voice acting performances to something any of them could have easily phoned in. However, the game is short, overly repetitive, and way too easy even on the hardest difficulty level. While the campaign is a fun romp, it's largely forgettable and outside of the Dragon Lord, none of the bosses, or any of the NPCs you meet along the way, are very memorable.

The new overworld system was interesting initially but by the halfway point of the campaign it simply felt like a chore designed to pad playtime. Fast travel is a downgrade from the old Borderlands system. If you fast travel back to Brighthoof and want to go anywhere other than where you came from (because the game is nice enough to put a portal to your last location), you have to hoof it (pun intended). Even with the walking speed shrine increase unlocked it's annoying to traverse long stretches of the map. Early in the game Tina mentions a lack of vehicles in the world, hence the overworld, but I'm left wondering what Gearbox could have done had they put forth a bit more effort. They have a world of fantastical creatures and, instead of giving us mounts, thought this bobblehead world map was the best solution? The box art, after all, shows Tina riding a wyvern so it didn't seem too farfetched to wonder if we, the heroes of this adventure, would get a wyvern (or at least a sea worg) to help get around the overworld map faster (and in style). Alas, all we can earn is a permanent sprint speed increase.

Compared to the Borderlands franchise, the campaign is probably the shortest since the original Borderlands. That, of course, was the first game in an all new property with no expectations; Wonderlands is a spinoff of a wildly successful franchise that's now over ten years old and was marketed as a full featured "next-gen" title. I completed the campaign, all the side quests, and all the collectibles (except the dice, still missing 60) in 22 hours of game time. A good 6-8 hours of that was likely spent meandering around the maps looking for the aforementioned collectibles. The main campaign and all side quests alone is probably a 15-16 hour affair. I guess it's a bit longer than Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel but that feels like a backhanded complement since we knew TPS was a bulked up Borderlands 2 DLC that was being sold at a budget price.

The shortness of the campaign and the obscene amount of collectibles (especially the dice) prevent me from really wanting to roll another character. I don't really want to go through the progress of collecting everything all over again but if I don't then my loot luck and overall build will be handicapped by not having the passive bonuses the collectibles unlock.

End game, the Chaos Chamber, is, in my opinion, tedious and wears out its welcome after a few runs. It's a glorified version of the Circles of Slaughter from prior Borderlands games, only with random locales, mobs, and bosses chosen from the various campaign areas. It's a standard horde mode with no major innovations to keep anyone invested for prolonged play. It gives players an illusion of choice regarding buffs and debuffs between some of the rounds but that's the only thing that stands out. It's a series of 60 to 90 second long randomized arenas, some of which suffer from significant issues with mob density. Some of them are Obliesk levels where you're being zerg rushed, others are spread out areas where you have to hunt down one or two mobs at a time. The latter is particularly frustrating when you get an optional side-objective like "kill all enemies in X time limit" or "kill enemies in the sanctified areas".

At end game there's no reason to go back to the overworld map for anything other than picking up any collectibles you might have missed along the way. I suppose you could farm the random campgrounds/outposts that respawn but since the Chaos Chamber is built on the same encounter design as those camps, it doesn't seem worthwhile to bother. You can go back to any of the zones but there's really no reason to because the named bosses of those zones are gone; You can't farm bosses like older Borderlands titles, those bosses can only be fought again through random chance encounters in Chaos Chambers. No end game bounties. No end game randomness. Just the chambers.

At higher Chaos levels, the balance seems utterly out of whack. If you're not using some kind of dark magic spells to regenerate your health, I feel like you're going to have a bad time no matter how many points you put into Constitution and health/ward talents. Frost slowing and fire damage over time falls off fast once you start progressing -- lightning was rarely good to begin with, and poison is only slightly better. Dark magic is the least resisted magic type and the most potent for survivability regardless of class. This was also the only time where I really felt like the game was difficult. Throughout campaign and the first 9-10 Chaos Levels, everything was easily steamrolled.

As I was grinding the Chaos Chamber to increase my Chaos level -- a system similar to Borderlands 3's Mayhem level -- a question kept nagging me: Is there anything in Wonderlands' end game that would make me want to play IT over any other existing looter? Unfortunately, the answer is no. It doesn't have anything that stands out and makes it unique or worth coming back to long-term. Wonderlands' end game is a one-trick pony (pun intended again) and feels dated out of the box. I suspect many will reach end game, grind enough to unlock one (or both) of the associated achievements, then never return.

Moon Orbs are added as an end game currency but are only used to enchant and/or re-roll gear. Why not have a Moon Orb vendor who sells rare, wonderous loot similar to the Seraph crystals in Borderlands 2 or Eridium in Borderlands 2/3? I have most of my gear enchanted for class and skill synergy so I'm almost perpetually at max Moon Orbs until/unless I get a new item that replaces an old one. Maybe they'll add something in DLC later but right now Moon Orbs are too limited to be useful.

There are also a handful of technical problems that plague the game. The UI feels trapped in the past; There's no auto-loot, auto-junk, or any other quality of life things Borderlands players have requested for years. The end result is slogging through sluggish menus to mark all your junk gear for sale. Performance problems abound thanks to poorly optimized particle effects and Gearbox's shoddy SHiFT server implementation. In certain levels (most notably Mount Craw), the amount of elemental effects can cause severe frame rate issues while the current problem of the SHiFT servers constantly disconnecting causes frame stutters and coop disconnections. The performance problem are really inexcusable for a game that, by all accounts, isn't that much different than Borderlands 3, the engine it was built upon. It shouldn't be so demanding as to cause issues in both Performance and Resolution modes. Hopefully these issues can be patched later but for now know that on both Xbox Series and PS5 optimization is lacking.

Although I enjoyed the campaign for at least one playthrough, it's not a game I'd recommend at full price. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands feels like a budget Borderlands title and should have been priced as such. If someone's on the fence, I'd say wait for a sale, especially if you're looking to get it on console. Chances are physical console copies will be on sale soon, as it seems a lot of releases these days have sales within a month or two.

Rating: 6.5/10. 7 feels too high, 6 feels too low. Worth playing through for 25-ish hours of entertainment but not at the current asking price of $60-$70.