Way back in 2022, Alex Tudor had the first reviewing go with Guerrilla Games and Sony’s Horizon Forbidden West when it arrived exclusively for the PlayStation 5. Alex walked away impressed with the visuals, curious about the rest of Aloy’s adventure in the upcoming third installment, and generally pleased with the result of the sequel. I think for the most part, he and I were on the same page.
When I was playing the game alongside him, I felt like the world had certainly expanded. It was helped tremendously by bringing in new cultures from an unknown west that made the general feel of Aloy’s earth so much bigger than what was presented in the first game. I loved the first game and felt like the story hit all the right notes, but the limited cultures and different types of tribes didn’t really go beyond the story. I wanted to know more about everyone who survived the catastrophe and wanted to know how they were shaped. The sequel provided it all.
When Guerrilla Games expanded those cultures and people, and gave them detailed context to live within the world that Aloy occupied in the sequel, then the entire scope of the game just became so much wider. In short, I’m glad the sequel spent less time on why the world exists, and more time with who exists within the world. For that, I will always enjoy and appreciate what Horizon Forbidden West brought to the overall scheme of the story, as it shaped Aloy’s world, and helped to lay down a path for the next game.
All this said, this review isn’t going to focus on what Alex already laid out in his original review. The game is still the same as it was when we played it the first time. It still brings a girthy story, sharpened mechanics, expanded weaponry, and a skills tree that will motivate you to keep playing long after you have completed the story.
This review will focus mainly on how this game worked and acted on the PC side of the tracks, and what that means for future games converted from the PlayStation side of the tracks onto Windows.
So, sit back, enjoy the pointedness of our review arrows, and get ready to explore one of the better games on PC from Sony.
Let’s get this going.
Story
Okay, I know I wanted to focus a bit on the PC side of the tracks, but I need to have a bit of a voice about the story of Horizon Forbidden West, and how it took a sharp right when it came to expanding the world. You may get some spoilers in this part of the review, but I promise to warn you. Like…NOW.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The story of Aloy in HFW is one of solitude and dealing with a timeline that is running out on the earth and its residents. The story begins with Aloy trying to find a way to stop a red death from spreading across wildlife and civilization on Earth. The red plant-type monstrosity grows in areas, kills everything in its path, and is doing its best to ensure that humans will be eradicated. Aloy’s only solution to stop it is the rebooting and reconstruction of GAIA, a program created by her mother clone that will help to restart the earth, kill off the red vines, and give people a chance to survive and revive.
Now, the red vine isn’t caused by some randomness, rather it’s intentionally placed on the earth by folks wanting to kill everything and start over – they’re called the Far Zenith. They’re a technologically powerful civilization born from billionaires that fled Earth when the machines started to take over, only to find themselves returning to it when they killed their planet, Sirius. Their goal is to destroy all residents on Earth, reform the planet, and then repopulate it. They are powerful, deadly, and unforgiving to anyone standing in their way. Aloy’s connection to them starts with Elisabet Sobeck, who is the only one who can access pieces of GAIA in hopes of putting together all the pieces and taking control of the biosphere-forming program. The Far Zenith have to use clones of Sobeck to gain access to the earth, so they make creepy-looking Aloys to help their cause. As Aloys go, though, they don’t usually cooperate with authority.
I’ll stop there with the summary.
Two years ago, when this was released, I felt like the story truly had taken a weird hard turn in a direction that wasn’t predictable. It seemed like Guerrilla Games lost focus on what made the first game great and just decided to add some unnecessary context to an already great path. Those were my initial feelings about the story in the sequel. But with this revisit, this story shift makes sense and makes the world of Horizon a bit more open to better storytelling.
The story can now fill in some major blanks between when the world died and when Aloy entered it. That is an entirely interesting story that hasn’t been felt yet and could make a wonderful prequel with a non-Aloy-led game. The devs can pretty much do what they want with that space, as they only gave a dribble of how the earth survived during that period of missing time. I would play the shit out of this point in the story.
The devs also made some elbow room for a heftier explanation of the Far Zenith and why it existed in the first place. While I’m not crazy about the group’s name, as it throws me back into the 80s and television sets, the definition of zenith makes sense when compared to its context. Compared to the civilizations on Aloy’s earth, they are far superior.
What makes them even more real is their intention in the story. They know they are better than everyone else, and they can do what they want. They are the ultimate antagonist, as they challenge Aloy to improve her talents, and those around her, more than she could have imagined. They’re perfect and their ambiguous backstory, which is just skated over during this game, is intriguing. I want to know more about their history and how they came to be who they ended up becoming. Their intentions are obvious, but their need to destroy everyone to make a paradise for themselves is baffling. Anyway, I want to know more about them. I certainly want to see where the third story takes all of this because I know there are plenty of blanks to fill in that the third story hopefully does.
And maybe that’s the biggest downer of the entire sequel. There are so many questions now that must be answered, and none of them are small. I’m concerned that GG opened itself up to simple explanations that won’t be earned, but I’m also hopeful because it seems like they have a plan to conclude Aloy’s journey properly. Only time will tell, but it’s obvious to see how one could leave this story feeling a bit unsatisfied with the conclusion. That’s the proper way a good second act is handled, though. You leave feeling like there could have been more, but you’re given hope that answers are coming.
Fine, I guess we’ll wait.
Overall, I think the story in Horizon Forbidden West is packed full of a big world that is beautifully shown off. The antagonists are a tad underwhelming and undefined by details, but I’m sure the substance to fill in those blanks will be ready to go for the third game. Regardless, this is a good story. The third game will determine whether it is great or not.
Gameplay expectations
This is the same game that was on the PlayStation 5. It’s huge, it’s fun, and the best parts of it are how far you can push the game in terms of exploration in the environment, and how far you can go to gather every aspect of the gameplay (unlock those trophies).
Simply put, it’s just fun to control Aloy in the environment. With the expanded animal capturing and her ability to fly in the sky, the number of areas you can now explore and find hidden treasures became so darn vast with the sequel. And that doesn’t even include the large bevy of side quests that come with that exploration and the main story that will take you 20-30 hours to complete. I forgot how much fun it was to explore the world, help people out in tribes, and use the main story to drive it all. There is just so much to do in this game, and it’s bigger than the first, which is impressive as hell.
It should be noted that the side quests in this game are meaningful. Since the game introduces so many new personalities and tribes in the story, you’re given a reason to help residents out. It could be something like exploring an area where hunters went missing, or even going to rescue someone that an evil group manipulated – everything you do helps society in some way get better, which means the side quests don’t seem like throwaways to extend the life of the game, rather they add more context to the world. I can’t tell you how huge that is for a game like this, as it adds more context to Aloy’s character and more motivation to keep exploring the world in hopes of helping people out. That’s good stuff.
Beyond exploration, quests, and the main story, the other gem of this game is to complete the skills tree of Aloy. Unlike the first game, which was cut and dry with its skills tree, this time around the game features a flowchart of sorts that is broken into subjects like hunting, warrior, and a few other categories. Within each skills tree, you have options to unlock attributes that improve Aloy’s actions and self. The world in the game is so vast that you’ll constantly be on the hunt for ways to earn XP to unlock these trees. They’re not as easy as the first game, and none of them are throwaways, as the skills do improve how Aloy survives in the world. They are thought-through skills that add more motivation to keep pressing the main character to go up against bigger obstacles. Anytime you can add something in the gameplay of a title to create motivation and keep the player locked into the experience, well, that’s a good time. This game creates a good time with the skills tree.
Overall, the gameplay in Horizon Forbidden West is good from beginning to end. More importantly, the content points back to the story, which also builds up the ethos of how important Aloy is in rebuilding society. The main character gains more and more purpose through the game’s gameplay experience, even beyond the main story, and makes you want to keep playing as you build her up to savior status. There’s such a good dance going on with the construction of the gameplay and the story, that it’s easy to see how hard you can fall in love with the experience.
Performance on PC
The game making its way to PC was surprisingly seamless. My biggest concern was with stability, capabilities, and loading. I know that sounds like a ridiculous combination but after The Last of Us on PC had a rough outing from the get-go, I couldn’t help but feel just a bit concerned about the initial launch of HFW.
Now, with that said, the stability of the game was fantastic. Even before a big path, Horizon Forbidden West didn’t run into any issues at launch. The shaders didn’t take a year to load, and the graphics were maintained well, even for a three-year-old machine like mine (i7/16GB RAM/3060). I ran the entire review period on the ‘high’ GPU level, though upped the value on my desktop with a 4070 card and walked away with maybe a handful of moments during cutscenes with frame rate stuttering.
The cutscenes, which are frequent in this game, did struggle at times to maintain a pure 60fps flow with my 3060. That said, the gameplay didn’t feel it at all, which was brilliant considering how intensive the graphics were in the sequel in comparison to the first. The landscapes in HFW were far more intensive on the GPU with loads of details and plenty of animation always going on (clouds moving, animals randomly moving on the ground and sky, and plenty of plant and desert animation). It was impressive how well it looked and worked on PC.
As for the actual gameplay, you won’t miss a beat with what you have on the PC, especially with the loading portion of the game. We all know that the PlayStation 5 architecture is a work of genius when it comes to storing and delivering information quickly. The custom-made hardware mixed with a lightning-fast hard drive means that when you die, you’re back in the game quickly. When you travel, you’re running on the same timeframe. It’s quick, contained within a consistently constructed piece of hardware, and it is consistent every time you use it. PCs don’t live the same life.
My PC is different from your PC, which is different from your friend’s PC…and so forth and so on. Windows is built to handle such disparity in hardware and try to work it out in a good way. That’s why Windows can be so darn vulnerable at times because it must account for a gazillion configurations. Thankfully, regardless of hardware, Horizon Forbidden West seemed to run the same way as its PlayStation counterpart. I think it took about 3-5 seconds to load the game every single time I played it, or I died within it. That’s impressive considering the age of my hardware and how it’s not even close to the configuration of a PS5, especially with the hard drive. I was concerned that there would be a considerable drop-off in this area, and I was surprised to know there wasn’t. It was fast, it felt like a PS5 experience, and it worked as such. Sony’s folks are getting better with their PC conversions, and this is proof of it.
Anyway, you won’t be disappointed with the PC conversion of Horizon Forbidden West as it maintains the stability, capability, and loading that the original game contained on the PS5. I’m thoroughly impressed with these aspects of the release.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Horizon Forbidden West on the PC is another example of a game done right in its conversion from console. It brings the same great gameplay, performance, and gaming experience that was established on the PlayStation 5 two years ago.
