Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Horizon Forbidden West Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Go to http://greenchef.com/kindafunny130 and use code KINDAFUNNY130 to get $130 off plus free shipping! Go to http://upstart.com/KINDAFUNNY to find out how much Upstart can lower your monthly payments! *Game provided by PlayStation for review* Does Aloy's latest adventure on the PS5 and PS4 live up to the hype? Let's find out. Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Parris Lilly: https://twitter.com/vicious696 Janet Garcia: https://twitter.com/Gameonysus Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast review of Horizon Forbidden West. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, aka the future class of gaming, aka the OK Beast Blessing, Adioia, Jr. Rise above our ruin. Oh, see, that's the tagline for the game. The tagline, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

I like that one. You know him from a million other things in Twitch. com TV slash Andy Cortez. Of course, he's the Hispanic heartthrope, Texas treat Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping him to shreds. Globetrotten, headshot, Nitro Rifle from Twitch.TV. Andy Cortez. When everyone plays, we all win.

It's not that's not. It's just another tagline. That's Xbox, isn't it? Yeah. I think so, yeah. Okay. Speaking of Xbox, he's one of the hosts of the kind of funny X-Cast, and of course the best voice in video games, Paris Lily.

I'm very excited to be here, and I have nothing catchy to say. I was hoping you'd say, it's in the game. In rounding out our review crew, she's the game. playing roller skating marathon training Janet Garcia. What's good? Excite to be here. Excite to talk games and I just ran 19 miles so let's go. But did you

I went up in like four and a half hours ago? Are you running away from somebody? I had to go get the stroller out of the car for Jen. I was winded. I'll do it. If you didn't know ladies and gentlemen, you have clicked on our Horizon Forbidden West review. Of course we will be giving it to

you spoiler free so don't worry about us. story. And of course, our game was provided by PlayStation for review purposes. If you didn't know, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week, four, sometimes five, best friends gather on this table coming to nerd out about all the things they love and hate and video games. If you like that, you can go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. On Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games, you can write it to be part of the show. You can get the show ad free. You can get it with the exclusive post show when we play. The hit quiz game, Bless Who, and I never lose that. Isn't that right, blessing?

I think you lost once or twice. But I'm really good at it, aren't I, Andy? I mean, you... I came in and kind of stole your stuff, you know? I feel like you're only good at one game because Bless Who, of course, is an obligation of a bunch of different games. Oh, Bless Who has, like, messy matchup,

has Wombo combo as a new game that I'm introducing today after the show and the show. Yeah, a little teat. Usually on Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. You can watch us record the show live, however, with Embargoes like Horizon means you can't, but it's no big deal.

Of course, if you don't want to support us on Patreon, You have no bucks to toss our way. It's no big deal. You can get each and every episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, rooster teeth and podcast services around the globe. If you wanted an extra way to support us with your video game habit, why not use the Epic Creator Code? Kind of funny on the Epic Game Store. Of course, you plug that in.

You buy your games and we get a few bucks for it because you say, hey, that's kind of funny best friend. And they said to use the code and they did. You might say, hey, I don't play no PC games. And I say, that's no problem. Of course, on games like Fortnite, Rocket League, and et cetera, you can use. is the epic game code there when you go and you switch your PlayStation whatever kind of funny that's the code enjoy it housekeeping for you of course it's a huge day for horizon content here on kind of funny we're doing the review right now but if you're watching this on the day of the embargo

february 14th the day that nothing else is happening it's just horizon uh we will be doing p s i love you exo xo live on patreon dot com slash kind of funny games at three pm pacific and it will be our horizon forbidden west f aq so read all the reviews watch them all go see what everybody at igian game spot and etc are saying and then send us your questions and we'll answer them. Of course, not spoilers like what's happened to story, but mechanics, things you didn't get covered, things you want more information on from this very review,

patreon.com slash kind of funny games for the PSI Love You Mailbag. If that was enough horizon for you, Thursday, there's a Horizon Forbidden West Let's Play going up. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. You can see all the stuff going on there. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Gordon McGuire, James Davis, aka at James Davis makes, Pranksky, Tyler Ross, Delaney Twinning,

first responder, ND, Julian the gluten-free gamer, James Hastings, and Casey Andrew. Today we're brought to you by Upstart and Green Chef, but I'll tell you about that later. Ladies and gentlemen, it is finally time to review Horizon Forbidden West. Of course, coming out February 18th, 2022 from Gorilla Games. You know them, of course, from Horizon Zero Dawn, a game that came out February 2017, five years ago. And as a Metacritic of 89, of course, Horizon Frozen Wilds came out, the DLC, November 7th, 2017,

a meta critic of 83. Now it's time to talk about the future, not the past. Blessing at Eoye Jr. Greg Miller. For this very review of Horizon Forbidden West, we are officially unveiling the kind of funny review scale. Number five, I don't think we have the graphic. Number five, of course, amazing.

Number four, great, three, okay, two, bad, one, terrible. You are the lead reviewer for us on Horizon Forbidden West, meaning you did the TikTok, you're here saying this is the score and whatever. We're all going to go through and give scores eventually or whatever. But I want to start with you, Blessing, at Aalje Jr. What is your review for Horizon Forbidden West? So I give Horizon Forbidden West a five out of five being amazing. And that's not to say that it is flawless nor a masterpiece.

That is to say that it is legitimately amazing, right? I think anybody going into Horizon Forbidden West, whether or not they played Horizon Zero Dawn or if they did play Horizon Zero Dawn and expecting the next level of Horizon Zero Dawn, I think people are going to be very satisfied with Horizon West. Right now, right now it's a, it's review season, which is that time of the year, right? Where we're all, you're in our Duffy right now. We're playing the Pokemon's, we're playing the dying lights. We're playing the seafoods, all that stuff.

And Horizon Reden West is one for me that I was nervous to get into because I knew it was going to be a bigger game. And Horizon Zero Dawn, for me, was a game that I really liked, but I never truly fell in love with the way that I feel like so many other people fell in love with Horizon Zero Dawn. And so going into Forbidden West, I was like, all right, I got probably. probably like 30, the 35 hours with this game that I'm probably going to enjoy, but I'm also coming off of these other games that I really enjoyed being dying light to and seafood.

And I was pleasantly surprised by how into Horizon Redden West I got to the point where I was playing for what felt like day straight, right, putting in like eight hour days, like nine hour days into playing Horizon Forbidden West and being hooked on it because I feel like on pretty much any level, and the way that we've seen a lot with a lot of video game sequels, right, going from the first entry to the second entry, in pretty much any single way that they can improve on the mechanics, stories, characters, world design, graphics, all that of Horizon Zero Dawn,

I feel like they've succeeded here. Where, you know, in the places that I didn't necessarily love the combat in Horizon Zero Don, I love the combat in Horizon Forbidden West. And I think that is due to even better designed enemies than the first one, right? You're getting that same thing where it is, you're chipping off certain parts of enemies

to take off the different parts they have. Yeah, the components. Thank you. You're using different elements. You're scanning them, tagging them, doing all that stuff. It's that same gameplay loop, but it seems like it's just executed better. Like I just had a more fun time in this game, actually going through the combat, actually exploring the open world, like the big additions to exploration in this game, are the climbing and are

the gliding, which I know sounds familiar for a lot of people because those mechanics are very breath of the wild like. But even with those mechanics, kind of being from that game, Horizon Red West, I'd say takes those mechanics and makes them its very own. where the climbing isn't Breath of Wild climbing, right? It's not, you can climb anywhere. It is, you can scan, and the places where you can climb appear in the world, right? It's not stamina-based, you can climb, however.

And I think it's really good. It makes you really interesting and really engaging traversal puzzles. The gliding is really good as well. And again, the gliding is inspired by Breath of Wild, I'd say, but not taken from Breath of Wild, where it is, you're not gliding across the map, but you are getting a pretty good distance so that when you are on a mountain or you're on a structure and you want to get down easily and you don't want to struggle to get back down, you just glide down and it's super easy from there. And there's also the polecaster, which is a really

great addition as well. But all these things... Which is like a grappling, a hook shot. Yeah. A hook shot, like a grappling hook, right? And you use it to like pull things open. All this stuff just makes existing in Horizonabidden West's world way easier. And I'd say funner and more interesting just in the way that you can kind of think about the different ways you can interact with the world in a broader scope as opposed to just getting from point A to point B and maybe being frustrated by getting stopped by an enemy on the way or getting stopped by a robot on the way that's here to destroy you. And so I really, really like those additions.

I really, really like the open world this time around. Of course, you're going through the Forbidden West, which is different from the open world of Horizon Zero Dawn, but not too different. I'd say, like, it's more vibrant, more varied, feels more dense in terms of the amount of settlements. And I think it's more interesting. Like, I really enjoyed it. And I think part of that is that you're in Horizon Redden West.

You're in an instance of the game's story where you're past all of the, you're past all the, you're past the veil of the game's world being mysterious, where in Horizon Zero Dawn, you're coming into it being like, all right, what is this? Is this post-apocalyptic? Is this America? And the game kind of reveals itself as it's going. Horizon Britain West taking place after all that gives it the opportunity to just tackle the cool things about the world being where it is, right? Which is, spoiler for the first game, if you not play the first game when you're jumping into this one, right? And this is, this is a big spoilers because you should know this if you've seen any trailer. You're in America, right?

Like you see the Golden Gate Bridge in the... Oh my God. I am coming into this game so blind. I don't even know what a video game is. I clicked on this video. I was trying to find out how to make bread. Yeah, like you see the Golden Gate Bridge in the marketing. And it's things like that where it is.

Okay, now that we know where we're at and now that we know what this world is, Horizon's Brisbane West provides so many interesting ways to have that stuff actually matter and it gives you interesting places to explore because of that. And yeah, like I have so many glowing things to say. We'll get to all of them, yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll get to all of them. But to wrap up real quick, right? Like I mentioned before, right?

I don't think that means it's flawless. There are, like, story bits that I didn't love. I think the story is better in this one than the previous one. But there are story beats that I did not like. There are characters in the game that, a lot of characters I do like that are newly introduced that I love. And then some characters that I feel like are either out of place or I wish were fleshed out more.

Carrie Ann Moss was in one of the trailers. And I think her character in the game is awesome. But I wish that they used her more. I felt like she was in it for kind of brief for how great her character is. is. And even... The same thing with Angela Bassett, right? Like, they announced that voice cast was like,

holy shit, and like, she's Regali. And it was like, yeah, great. And then I was like, oh, man, like, I'm not... I understand. You get a big name. You probably can only, you know, get a day with him, make all this stuff. But I was like, damn, I like the character,

and I could have used way more of her. Yeah, and I don't even say the same for Lance Reddick. Like, I know Lance was in the first game, and he was the main character. And he's present in this game, but not as present as I thought he would be, and I wish he was more present. Like, all of these big celebrity guests,

or celebrity stars they have in the game, I wish they made more use of them because I think that is where character-wise, the game has highlights, right? I think they make up the best characters in the game. And I want to jump into all of this, but I want to also go around and do it. I'll just pivot to myself

so I can say one thing based on the back of that, right? Like, I agree with your score. For me, this is a five out of five. This is an amazing game. Like I think from, and we'll go through it, I'm sure, but story for sure, gameplay for sure, visuals for sure, audio, like the sound and the score they have for this game,

I think is incredible. But for me, it wasn't an immediate great. Like there was, I came into this having loved Zero Dawn and having really flashbacks of the lead into Fallout 4, where I remember on a games cast, Tim asked me in the lead up to Fall 4 is like, how could Fallout 4 fail for you? And I was like, if it's just more Fallout 3, if it's just HD Fallout 3, if it isn't really like something different. And I feel like for me personally, because I hated the, you know, a settlement building,

that's what Fallout 4 was. It was like, oh, I knew what this game was before I even picked it up. And that's fine, and I enjoyed it, but, like, it's not one of my most memorable things. And so mileage will vary based on how you play an open world RPG. For me, that first 10 hours of Verizon was me going, oh, okay, it's more zero down. All right, that's cool. That's fine. I'm enjoying myself, but I'm not, like, locked in.

I'm going after silence again. Okay, cool. Like, yeah, that's what this is. All right, fine, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then the story takes a left turn. And that's when I was like, oh, and then I was in. And I think it really establishes itself as, no, no, this is for, West, including it almost, not to the dramatic effect, but I almost feel like it is a breath of the wild, getting off the plateau moment of like, cool. Now let's go into the forbidden West. Let's go see what's out there. And like you're talking about you. We know San Francisco. We know we're going across the West. What other things are you going to find? Other things you're going to go into. I echo your score. And yeah, we're going to talk more about it. But Paris Lily, what you think? You're a, you know, you're from the Xcast. You've never held a PlayStation control. You don't know what's like.

hilarious no i'm i'm i'm 100% with blessing on on everything that he said this is a five out of five it's it's an amazing game and i was a huge fan of the first one so coming into forbidden west um my expectations were high and they were met but it was interesting what you said greg i i agree it didn't click for me as being this five out of five and again i'll be careful with spoilers but the second cauldron that i did that's when it clicked for me like the result of doing that cauldron, I was like, holy shit, this is great. I can't wait to deep dive into this more and continue to explore this world. I rolled credits at about 42 hours on the game and I easily could have done 20 more. Oh my God. And it was funny what you said on the Slack during the week

blessing. That's what prompted me to just, all right, I need to finish the story because I was just trying to do everything. I mean, every side quest, Aaron, job that I create, you know, relic to explore caldron, obviously tall necks, all these things I was just trying to do everything I possibly could along the way because I was enjoying it, right? I was truly enjoying exploring this world and trying to uncover everything and every puzzle that was in there. But then when you said what you said, I was like, oh, crap, I need to hurry up and finish the story. So then I just beeline and finished the story. But I'm absolutely going to go back and continue doing that, exploring the forbidden West, this open world that they've given us. I kind of just said, teased a little bit,

on social media. For me, anyways, this is like the perfect blend of the Witcher 3 Uncharted and Far Cry. That's what I get from forbidden West.

And yeah, there's just, and I know we're going to get into it, but there's just so many different things that will grab your attention as you're going through this game that will just absolutely sidetrack you from the main point of the story.

But, you know, it's a good thing in that way. And yeah, I'm excited to go back in and play more. Janet, where are you at? I agree with Blessing Score. I give it a five out of five. You know, I think it's an incredible game. Definitely better than the first one, which is a big compliment because I think the first one is probably still also a five out of five. Like they improved on something that was already fantastic. You know, echoing a lot of what's been said, I think for me, my favorite aspect of the game is that the way that it subverts and shakes up familiar base mechanics, I think they very easily could have rinsed and repeated a lot of the structural things, even something like the tall necks and you'll hear us repeat things that.

you know, if you played Horizon One, like, you'll be at home here. You'll know, okay, well, I'm going to want to take, you know, hack these tall necks so I can get more of the map. I'm going to want to, you know, when I do caledrons, I can do this. But everything's like a little bit changed. I do think sometimes those changes are to favor intrigue over cheese, which is a little sad because I cheese the hell out of Horizon One. Like the fact that you can't lay down a million traps kind of bumps me out in the way. And on the whole, I will say, like, this game does almost everything better than the first one did. There are a few points where I feel like I'm not in love with the changes. But holistically, I think, you know, to a lot of what Blessings said, it's nice

because we're already, we did allow that base lore work. And there's still like a million questions that come from this game. But the questions are more interesting because we're more informed as players. And I think to extend that, the mechanics are more interesting because we're also more informed as players. Again, I think if this is your first time with the Horizon game is totally fine to jump in. They explain everything. You'll be able to figure it out. But if you already know it, like, It's just so wonderfully familiar. And then the new stuff is just super exciting. So you're just constantly like, oh, so they're doing this differently.

Okay, okay. And then you're kind of playing with all the different things that are going on. I think, too, and the diversity of machines really constantly blew me away as well. And the story is, I think, wonderful. It does get kind of crazy, which I'm very curious to know, like, you know, and I'm sure at one point would do like spoiler content for it, like outside of the review season. But I'm really excited to see people react to the story because, For me, I think it was really intriguing and surprising and weird. Like, they really went for it.

I think, you know, we can debate how successful they were in that attempt. But I found it really moving and really intriguing. I cried while playing this game. This game is awesome. This thing slaps. I had to mainline it at a certain point. So I did come in and around maybe like 35 hours. But it's funny.

If you look at my map, you can tell like when I started the game and when I was like, I need to finish this for the review. It's all Blume got and expanded and then there's no line. I was like in it. And I think, too, real. for people that loved Horizon 1, which like, I was in that camp, I played that this year, I platinumed it, I adored it. It's so awesome to come back and not just in like the main kind of crew.

Like there's a lot of familiar main faces, but even some of the side characters you end up seeing again. And for someone that's like was really hardcore into the first game and played it really recently, I was like, oh my God, this person's here. Like I'm so excited to like do their quest and see what's going on with them. So it hits that level of like fan service for the people that were like die hard or played really recently, like just thinking about, okay, I know this tribe and then this one's new. Like, I think it was a wonderful blend of the familiar and, you know, the things that are in the

forbidden West to really make up the gameplay. Yeah, I loved it. It was awesome. And that was one of my regrets. You know, we did the PSI Love You XOXO, XO, XO, 2020 review of Horizon Zero Dawn, where you had just played a Janette, Blessing and played a little bit more of it, I think, or I know he's played it recently. And then I jumped in and fooled around with it. And starting this game in that first 10 hours being so much like, oh, it's just more Zero Dawn. I was like, damn, I wish I had just played it because they are doing these callbacks and these threads. And it's like, what, I think it's six months after the end of Horizon Zero Dawn.

And I'm like, whof, I vaguely remember what you're talking about. I don't remember who this person is. And that was one of the things I think that was making it so hard to connect is that it was doing the, hey, let's dovetail with where we were and send you off on your way for this new thing. But we'll get to that. Andy Cortez, right now you're still in the appetizer intro of this. I need to know. Where are you?

Do you agree with Bless's review? What's yours? Where are we at? I clocked in 38 hours. I finished the game at around 5.30 this morning. Oh, wow. I think this is a great game that gets a four out of five from me. I think you all nail it in terms of what it does gameplay and how it involves the formula,

how it makes it more fun. However, this game is really heavy on the narrative. like the prior iteration was. And I just don't care about a whole lot of these characters. I love the story. I really enjoy the concepts being introduced. They, just like Jan said, they do get wacky with it. And I love the story for Part 1 as well.

But a lot of my experience here is similar to my experience with Part 1 where in a game that is focusing so hard on trying to have these really meaningful character beats, I think maybe I did myself a disservice playing Mass Effect 1 last year, where I think my character interaction is there and experiencing story moments there. Let's say I enjoyed 70% and dislike 30%. It might be close to the reverse here, like maybe 40, 60 here, where I just, I kind of want this game to have more bite. I want to enjoy Aloy more as a character. I want moments where I am getting

really just deceived and fucked over by a side character and like I just I think this game does a lot in terms of like compassion, right? And I kind of want more more fuck you in this game. I want like I want

a bit more attitude and I've never really connected with Aloy as a character. I've always just kind of felt like I I enjoy the voice acting. I've always liked Ashley Burch as a voice actor. I just, she's just kind of boring for me.

She's, she's lawful good or like neutral good in a way that I don't think really gives her, her character opportunity to kind of dig deeper into these side quests and these characters that she meet where she meets where, you know, I was having a conversation with Janet like last week about how I compare this game side quest to something like The Witcher 3 or even something like Fallout. And I wouldn't put these side quests up with those ones.

I think part of that is, the amount of choice you're given in terms of, oh, man, I'm between two different scenarios here and I have to pick, you know, how things are going to play out, whether I'm going to kill this character or let this character live, making those types of decisions, right? And where you see Witcher and Fallout and other RPGs, I think, really make those choices interesting and choices engaging. I don't think Horizon Midwest really gives itself the opportunity to do that in a way that I totally feel where you're getting there, and I 100% agree. Yeah, if I can add on to that, because there's like one side quest you can do where there, it's,

questioned if this person is betraying the tribe. And it would have been fascinating to go through that to where Aloi would have to make a choice about that. If she thinks this person did, you know, actually betrayed a tribe or did not. And that affects, you know, moving forward the gameplay. You don't get that choice. So if I think there was any type of negative towards my experiences, like kind of like you're saying, I wish it was more Witcher 3 in that way where your choices actually did matter and would affect. how people perceived you moving forward as you go through the game and you don't really get that

in this. Sure. I do, again, though, like gameplay-wise, this game is so solid. This game, I think melee combat is just something I just never really enjoyed in part one. I still don't really enjoy it much here. It just doesn't really feel fun or fluid or effective, really. Can I interject there? Sure.

Because this is one of the things I wanted to talk about, you know, blessing at the top of the show when he's running through his thing, said, you know, it's, he, there's more fun with the combat as the note I wrote down. I forget the actual direct quote, but talking about the combat being more fun. And so I'm with you, Andy,

that I never got into melee in this game, but I also wonder how much of it is that I built my ALO in my way. Because the thing they introduced that I love in this game are these skill trees where like when you get it now, you know, you're earning skill points, you get to invest them into, I had it open to show it,

one of six categories here, right? Warrior, trapper, hunter, survivor, infiltrator, machine master, and these detailed skill trees, Brad's showing. Great job, Barrett. As you go down and unlock the new abilities, and it conforms to your play style.

And so, you know, I rolled credits on this at a speedy, 30-some hours, because it was, I had the fear of God in me that I wasn't going to beat this in time. So I was like, I'm going to ignore every Greg Miller impulse I have

and just go through and do the story. And so when I was annoyed with a fight at one point where I was like, God, I'm 20-some hours into this game, and I just do not, I thought they were going to improve melee. I did that thing of like, oh, wait,

and I popped out and I filled in, like right now as I look at it, right, my infiltrator, which is your stealth tree, completely filled in, and then my hunter, which is your arrows, like 90% filled in.

And it was I think if I looked over at Warrior and that's where it was the combos and the block breakers and all these different things. And I was like, oh, like I never got drawn to that because I remember how much

I didn't like melee and original horizon. So I never even bothered investing here. I am at point blank range shooting you with an arrow just dominating you. And I enjoyed that part how to play that way,

but I wonder how that nuts out. for everybody else then. So I'm somebody who I went down the melee pits, which is a new activity they introduced in Forbidden West, which is basically these, in certain settlements, you'll find melee pits. And it is these challenges that you'll go through that teaches you how to use the different melee moves. And then you are kind of like going around and obtaining these badges so that you can do the final melee pit challenge. And at first, I was not digging it. I did not like the melee combat in the first game. And in this one, when I first started out, I was feeling very similar, because I think the melee

the melee hits feel the exact same as in the first game and that's to say that they didn't feel great. But when you start giving yourself combos and unlocking the melee skill tree like I did, the moves sets start to open up and I do think it gets a bit more fun and interesting as you go, but it never becomes so good

that I would implement it in just regular combat where I'm fighting machines and or humans or if I'm going through a camp, a rebel camp to take it out, right? It seems like they encourage melee more so on the human enemies and in regular situations, I just wouldn't want to use melee on human enemies because they still have arrows. They still have other weapons.

I'm still getting surrounded. And I don't feel like I have the time and space to use melee. But in the melee pits, by the time I got to the last one, I was actually pretty surprised by how strategic I felt like I had to be in order to complete them. Like, it was just yesterday actually that I messaged the slack. And I was like, hey, has anybody completed all the melee pits? Because I need some help. And then like, never mind I got it. I figured it out.

And like, I think it's better. I also don't think it's excellent. Like, I don't think it's great. And I think that kind of speaks to Andy's point here, which is, like, I totally understand why anybody would try out the melee stuff and go, eh, not for me. And, like, even after completing all the melee pits for me, I enjoy that melee pit experience, I am not going to use melee again. And so, yeah, I'm like, I'm kind of right there with Andy, though I do think it is a step

up from the first game. Yeah, I think it has to be good at the start in order to get me interested into wanting to use it. And I, I don't know. I think the arrow. play, the arrow, gunplay, arrow play. Arrow play. That works. I think it's, uh, I think it's, uh, I think it's, uh, I think it's, oh, God, no.

I think it's fun enough and satisfying enough to just go straight with that here. I think they do a great job of it. Um, yeah, so the gameplay there is, is very fun. But, um, yeah, I just, this game didn't have a whole lot of moments with me saying, like, wow, that is really damn cool. And although I enjoyed a lot of the story concepts that they did, I was never, overly wowed by a lot of what was happening. I think I was more wowed by the visuals and understanding that this is a gigantic open world game with levels of fidelity that we are accustomed to with games like The Last of

us in more kind of linear single player experiences where we're seeing really great facial capture. We're seeing awesome animations and beautiful environments. I think this game is almost too good environmentally where it can get really kind of noisy on the eye. When I'm kind of running through and it's like there's so much detail out in the world that like it's kind of really messy and noisy on the screen because there's so many, like there's so much foliage foliage and moss everywhere that sometimes I think maybe that's a product maybe playing on performance mode where you're getting the 60 frames but they're doing something resolution-wise that maybe

I feel like they're trying to make it too sharp with some sort of down filtering and it may be making everything a little too noisy so I had some issues with that but I got over that pretty quickly because the game is just really really gorgeous in a similar thing of like yeah I agree there's a lot going on at times

and it was that thing for me though that the game looks so beautiful that I didn't care usually like we have a TV upstairs now and a TV downstairs and the downstairs TV is way better and so it was that thing of like Usually when I'm playing a game for review or whatever, and I'm working up,

I'll do it upstairs now so I can go, you know, take care of Benjamin, help Jen out with whatever's going on, and then just be around to listen in if the baby needs anything, right? And so then with this one, it was the rare thing of, okay, this game's so gorgeous that I'm going to go downstairs, even if I only have 15 minutes,

even if I only have 10 minutes. I'm going to go down to play on that. You left your kid for this game. That's pretty impressive. Why? I can still hear him. You know what I mean? He's up there crying.

He's okay. He didn't want spoilers. This time I was like, fuck it. I'm going downstairs and we're just going to the melee pit. Yeah. But yeah, I think the game's so good and looking though I needed to see it on the biggest screen possible with all the detail I could, Andy. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous.

It's like one of those technical Marvel sort of games. But yeah, again, this is a, I know I said a lot of stuff I didn't like about it. This is still a great game for me. I can easily recommend this to anybody who is going to have either a PS4. We'll see how it runs on the PS4 Pro. I know that they seem to be pretty proud about performance and visuals of how it runs on PS4 Pro. But if you have a PS5, this is like easily a must play. It's a lot of fun.

And even if you're someone like me who don't love the character you're playing and don't really have those moments, you're like, oh, I got to go see what Garris Vicarion is up to right now in Mass Effect. Like, I never had that here. I never wanted to go check out that one really cool character. And I think this game largely has a villain problem as well. like Blessie was mentioning. You, I think the most compelling, interesting characters, this game felt like I was watching a movie filmed during COVID,

where a lot of stuff was removed where, like, the actors are just missing. And you're like, okay, you've mentioned that person, but like, what the fuck are they up to? Like, I understand you're using this as a method of this is mystery, and that's a mysterious character. and they're doing some secretive shit you don't even know but it's like i kind of want to know what the hell they're actually doing because you we saw them in the first hour and a half and it's been 25

hours and like where what are we doing here so i think this game does have a problem um with the villains in that a lot of it is tell don't show um and you know this is still aloy story but it's still kind of annoying we're like you can only say they're bad so much i need to kind of see more of that. So I did have an issue story-wise with this game, obviously, but I think it's really, really fun gameplay-wise, and I really recommend it. To that point, too, I also feel like this game feels like a middle part of a trilogy where it's like, we're going to save these characters for part three, because we know you really like these characters. And like, we're going to set a lot of stuff up and not give you the full payoff here. Instead,

we're going to, we're going to introduce these characters over here that you're going to complete your arc with, but we're going to save the characters you really want to see that are complete with for the next game, which I think kind of is a hindrance to that, to that point, too. And yeah, I think the film during COVID analogy is a really apt one because I was asked, for me, I had a lot of questions midgame where I was like, where is this person. Like, I'm enjoying what I'm doing right now. And I think to the story, I think the story in this game, I think Janet was mentioned this too, gets buck wild at times where in a good way where I'm like, oh, I did not see that coming.

There are at least maybe six or seven moments in that game in this game where I'm like, I did not see that coming. and that's really cool. There are a few in the game where I'm like, I didn't see that coming and I don't know how I feel about that. But I think Horizon Redmond West keeps the world and lore of Horizon

interesting in ways that I just did not, I did not expect and I wouldn't have guessed. Yeah, I think it's, that was the concern coming into it is like, all right, cool, zero done was so good, but it felt like it told a complete tale. Like, where do you take that from here? And I think, again, after that 10-hour moment,

the introduction to some of the crazy things that will start happening in the game or whatever, it was like I didn't see this coming and I'm really into it and I think honestly my biggest knock against it is the fact you're talking about being a middle movie right in a trilogy totally that like I felt like we were building to it I was like I'm having a great time I'm enjoying all the fights I'm with you that like I could have seen more of who the villains are what's going on with them kind of thing throughout but even at the end I'm like all right cool we're working towards it we're going to do the thing we're going to blah blah blah and then you

get there and you do it and then they're like but and it's like oh well this is a weird thing to drop on me at the end and then roll credits. Like I was like, oh, like this feels like this. I feel like what you're doing here should have been the after credits thing in the same way in zero dawn, the after credit. It was like, we did it, we completed everything great credits, and then it silenced with Hades. And it was like, oh, okay, there's more to come.

That's interesting. Whereas this one was like, we'll put it before the credits. And I'm like, oh, well, then like, I don't even, whatever. I also think that the, like I was mentioning earlier, I briefly mentioned Garris Vicarian, but like, I never got to meet a Thane Creos. Like, Paris knows what's up. Like, there's just a lot of really awesome side characters. I mean, Greg, you're past your time.

Let's be honest with you. No, I'm with you on this point, though. Like, you know what I mean? I'm with you. Of course, Alo has a diverse cast of friends and colleagues and things throughout this game, right? Alo's Army. Yeah, I never, yeah, I never got to like meet that NPC on the level of some of my favorite RPGs where it's like they all have such really interesting backstories that I care

about them. I want to know more. And I just never really felt that here. But I also wanted to point out that the- Before you go from there, I want to double down to that with you. It's like, there'd be points where I'd walk in on the NPCs having conversations together. And I was like, oh, that's really cool. And then it would be, oh, I'm going to go engage with him. And you even get the whole thing, you know, in a traditional video game of like, all right, we're heading off the final mission. Make your preparations. You can go talk to people if you want to. And I was like, all right, I'm going to do like Mass Effect and talk to everybody. And I went and talked to a couple and I'm like, you guys aren't saying anything interesting.

I'm just going on the mission. Like, it's like, whatever. Yeah. Shout out. I was going to say, but shout out to the game. Giving you the opportunity to remind yourself what some of what is happening with a lot of these characters. They give you a really good opportunity if you're pretty forgetful like me to read over a lot of stuff and say, hey, so what's blah, blah, blah. And they give you, it's mainly like, here's exposition.

to remind you of what's happening with this character or with this thread, but it's all done really well. And I wanted to say the, because I know Blessing wants to jump off of that really quick, but there's a lot of, there are a lot of moments with characters and side quests and MPCs, because I did a decent amount of side quests. And I enjoyed kind of, I enjoyed maybe two or three of them, nowhere on the level that I would have wanted, but it was those missions that I was like, God, I want more of that. I want this game to deliver more of that.

It wasn't Mass Effect 2. It wasn't Mass Effect 2 of the missions with your companions. I'm just largely, like, really uninterested with a lot of this. And I wish it was more compelling. And I think those are the most disappointing moments. When you do get like a little taste of, ah, this is really great for me. And I really enjoy this part.

I just wish there was more of it. To your point about, like, them cluing you into the world, I still do wish that there was a codex. That was one of my requests for the game. we were talking about it on PSLW a few weeks ago. And they do have a journal and you do like save all your data points and all stuff in there. And they do keep track with the major characters in the game.

And if you go to them, you can kind of read up on who these characters are. I wish there was a track of this is what each of the tribes are. Because I still found myself getting into the weeds of like, all right, I know these guys were from the last game. Okay, who are these folks? All right, the Tanakh are, I guess new to this game. Who are the Tanakhs? Okay, what's this other tribe?

I still have, I still had so many of these questions. Especially because the way you kind of tell the different tribes apart is by their clothing and like their, uh, their behavior and all this stuff, right? But like, with as many tribes as they introduce, you know, I, it's kind of hard to keep track like, okay, yeah, they have tattoos. These guys wear this kind of clothes. All right. These guys worship. Two tribes are fighting. Okay, I guess I'll just try to target whichever one because I don't know who. There's not many multiple times. We're like, I'll just be walking. People are fighting. And I'm like, I don't know who I side with here. Like, which one of you guys are the bad ones? Because like, we got to figure this out. Um,

but yeah, like, aside from that, right? Going into the, uh, the side quest. The thing I did like about the side quest a lot, even though I'm right there with you in terms of the actual, like, you know, stakes and choices and all that stuff, the side quest not feeling as deep as something like Mass Effect or maybe Witcher or another big RPG, the side quest in terms of quality and production felt like main quest to me, where when I would start a side quest, the level of like fidelity in the cutscene and like the cinematography and all that stuff blew me away in terms of just like how much effort it felt like they put into it. I think it's rare where you'll see a side quest or you'll get into a side quest and forget it's a side quest because it feels like you're doing a main quest. Like I had to happen to you multiple times. And I also do want to shout out like the rest of the activities in the game because, you know, like you have your main quest. You have your side quests. You have your errands, which are like, you know, kind of like side quests, but they're a little bit more random in terms of just the shit.

Side side quests. They're side quests. Yeah. But then you have like I mentioned the melee pits. You have like the hunting stuff. You have like. You have a lot of stuff in this. world. And I'm usually somebody who does not like the Ubisoft style open world checklist. Like my map is cluttered with icons. I'm going to go through and do all these icons. I usually hate that type of open world design. Horizon West, I think, has so much packed in in terms of a variety of different activities, but then also amount of effort and like quality put into each of these activities where it doesn't feel repetitive. We're all due, they're in the game they have what they call, I think they're called Old World Ruins, which are basically like buildings or or random landmarks like you'll uncover that have like a special item that you can find if

you basically solve the puzzle of how to get to that item within this broken down building. It'll be like a, you know, you arrive at a cool like broken down hotel and you walk around and you're like, okay, how do I get to this room of the hotel so I can get the item? And it is you go to this room, you find a log that has half a password and you find another room that has the other half of the password. And those are usually solved by some kind of like cool environmental puzzle. And those always felt cool to me. They didn't really feel too repetitive.

Like if this is a game that has a world that feels like it's so, it's not even just well designed. It feels just very designed in terms of like every moment kind of has some thought put into it. It's not copy and paste. And I found that to be very impressive and led to me not getting tired of this open world whatsoever. It reminds me ghost to Sushima. Everyone jumps.

We're also passionate about that point. Go ahead, Andy. I was just going to say, it reminds me of Gosa Sushima, where, like, I enjoyed the combat so much that I just wanted to keep on go do stuff with my bow and arrow. Like, it didn't really matter what it was, but I just wanted to keep on using it because I was having so much fun with it. Well, see, that was the thing that I was saying at the top where I was just trying to do everything, because I almost feel like they have taken those lessons learned with these. other open world games with the far cries and the witcher threes where you had all these different things but it felt overwhelming where in this one i always felt like i kind of like you said blessing i wasn't coming into just a copy and paste of something that i've already done it it felt unique

enough that i was compelled to want to do it so to me the real star of forbidden west is the sandbox of this open world because i had i was i was genuinely having so much fun tackling the different activities that you had to do the combat, kind of taking this all the way back to what Andy was kind of saying at the start of what he started saying, that you didn't like the melee so much, but I almost feel like the way they set up the skill trees, it's what you invested in that you perfect. So if you truly invested into melee, I think you could have had a lot of fun with it. I personally didn't. I was more investing into trapping and into hunting and being stealth, because that's how I like to play the game, right? And I think as people,

pick up the sticks and then they start jumping into this world, they're going to find what their niche is, and there's going to be something for you to do, and it's going to be something that's fun to do. And that's why I was even saying before, I had to really check myself to go, wait, I need to finish this game in time, because if I don't, I'll spend forever just trying to do every activity in the game because it was that much fun. And that's what was like a killer for me, because I am the guy who wants to do everything before the next main quest and clear out the map and do that stuff. And so, Horizon on the moments where I'd let myself, or now in post game where I'm continuing to play it.

It's so much for me, the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, not the game, the movie. If you remember the movie, you're right, Peter Quill sits down and he's like, what do you guys want to get into? Something good, something bad, a little bit of both. Like that, for me, an open world game is a special open world game when it is. I boot it up and I'm like, what do I want to do today? Like what you know what I mean? Do I actually, because we were talking about the menu and how they break out the quest, right?

Blessing ran through a bunch, but then they also, you know, have stuff out there of like salvage contracts and then they have jobs there which are you can be the jobs you create for the weapons you want to upgrade so like last night it was i'm just going to go i'd stacked all these things for you know a new quiver or a stronger bow i just ran around and did that and that's all in the map and i'm you know fast traveling between fire fire uh fire pits campfires why did i stall on that fast traveling between campfires which of course is free you still have to use the travel packs if you want to go from anywhere uh between those runoff get the thing and just do that and then you know there'd be the days where I'd be like, you know what, I'm just going to head that direction. I'm going to go to that thing. I'm

going to do that. There's a bunch of question marks over there. Maybe I run into them. Maybe I don't. Like, it is a game that special that is like, I want to go and just live in the world. And that's awesome for me as an open world player, terrible for me as a platinum person where I'm like, I'm not even looking at the trophy list right now. I just want to play the game and do this thing. Yeah, I'll go ahead and say like that like, y'all know that I'm not really a completionist person. Right. Like I'm somebody who usually, once I'm done with the main quest, I bounce out. I'm done. Like I'm not want to continue to play a game after I'm finished with it. And Horizon, I was surprised that after I finished it,

even though I was doing some side quests along the way and a lot of the activities along the way, once I finished it, the next day I picked it right back up and started doing more stuff. And I think part of the brilliance behind the design of the activities too, is that there's never too many of any specific activity. Like when I finished the melee pit stuff,

I was like, man, I wish there was some more. Like I mentioned, right, the melee stuff isn't perfect, but it's fun. It was fun for me, right? as somebody who I like melee combatant games. I like fighting games and the melee stuff toward the end of it reminding me of playing like a fighting game. Not to that level of quality, but to the level of

I'm going to dodge this move. Okay, I'm going to do this combo again. All right, they're going to come back with this. And me having to read their animations I think it was such a cool, satisfying thing. And there was like maybe four of those. And when I finished it, I was like, man, what a really satisfying thing. I wish there was more, right?

But then I move on to the next activity. And it is the thing of like they feel like they're very cleverly threaded into the world where it doesn't, again, it just doesn't feel copy and paste. It feels like every activity kind of has his own story to it. Like they, there was the PlayStation blog post they put up weeks ago about the game. I think it's called Machine Strike. That is basically this game's version of Gwent, but it's more like a chess-style board game

where placing pieces in a sort of way. And I, first time I came across it, I was like maybe halfway through the map and I saw somebody in a settlement playing it. And I was like, oh, shit, let me talk to this person. And they were like, oh, yeah, I mean, I'm not somebody who's going to teach you out of play strike. You should probably go over here. So, okay, I'm going to go over here to, like, the settlement all the way to the east where I started at and, like, asked them to teach me how to play strike. And, you know, it felt like it had the makings of, okay, no, we want to make this game, this mini game within this game.

But we also want to give it story. Like, everything feels like it has some kind of story to it. I will say, though, strike wasn't my favorite thing to do in this game. I would not put it up on the level of Gwen. You know, it felt like it felt a bit too complicated. for what it wanted to be. And like, even in the menu, they have like, okay, here's the, like, the first set of rules, second set of tutorials.

Like, it seems like a lot of learning to get. I did it once. And I was like, all. I learned and I am not coming back to this. Unless there's a trophy later on, like hours from now. I'm not coming there's probably going to be a trophy attached to it. And I'm like, I'm really not looking forward to having to learn how to play this game. But, you know, just to speak to what blessing brought up, like, one thing I really liked about

the game. And this is not, like, totally different than the first one is I feel like, I feel like, everything is, you know, naturally rolled out. Like, I remember early on in my play-through when I was still doing everything, I would climb like these kind of like, abandoned watch tower-esque things. They had these big, like, pseudo satellites

that had like a little lens on them that you could take. And as I was collecting them, like, both myself and Aloi was like, I don't know what this could be for, but like, I'm just gonna take this because it's here. And then eventually there's a side quest where someone's like, oh, by the way, like I need that lens up there.

And if you have any other ones and I'm like, oh, I got like 80 of these because I'm just picking them up. Or, you know, there's not 80, but like, or whatever number there were. And I thought that was really cool and really natural. I think another thing that I really like about how they structure side quests and

like the side side quests is, they all are in service of what that core gameplay is. And at the end of the day, it is about hunting with your bow and arrow, whether you're hunting and fighting machines, whether you're hunting animals, whether you're hunting people. I think it's also why the melee ends up not working. Like I think it'd be nice if it was better, but I guess maybe it's really hard to do like two things at that level. Like I think to the point of, well, maybe it's about about where you invest, I think that is not true. I mean, I think if you invest in melee,

like, you know, blessings like, oh, I have a better time with melee because I put time into it. Like, as soon as I started this game, the hunting's good. As soon as I started the game, drinking potions felt affected. Like, I look at that skill tree.

I don't have any beasts with those guys. I have some beasts with the machine stuff, but we can talk about that and the overall- Yeah, but like none of, on the whole, like, you know, if there's six things laid out there, the melee ones, the weakest one, the one that I was least satisfied with and that I then didn't invest in.

Like, in the other, I also feel like the use case for it is not very high, which is good because it's not very good. But then it becomes this thing where I feel like you're not invested in it. So I'm not invested as a player. Like I feel like it is like a half measure. Like it's good to improve it because it is better than the first game. But ultimately, I felt like the melee was a disappointment. And I'm curious to know what you think of like.

I disagree on the tree. Hold on. Before blessing disagrees on something. I want to agree on something. Damn. I want to introduce something we can all agree on. Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. or of course you can go to write in to be part of the show.

To write in right now if you want to be on PSI Love You's FAQ answering your questions about Horizon. I'm sorry, Forbidden West, I'm sure you have some questions. And of course to get the show with the post show we do each and every week. But for right now, you're not on Patreon. So here's a word from our sponsors. Green Chef is the greenest way to get your greens. It's the most sustainable meal kit out there offsetting 100% of their plastic packaging

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Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash Kind of Funny. My blessing. What do you disagree about? What do you want to you, you're good? I wish I had my PlayStation on this whole time because I'll just pull up my Dude, that's old had it for me at this point.

I just leave it out all the time when we're doing talking about. I got the skill trees pulled up. I'm all set. Because I do think to some level it is what is the, what is the kind of way you play the game that'll influence like what you get out of it? Because I would argue that the melee skill tree is better than the machine skill tree and better than maybe two of the other skill tree. Like I never trap in the game because I think trapping the game.

Because I think trap is boring. The tree might be better, but I don't think the mechanic is better. I think that's got a great point because yeah, she's right in the money, right? where from the beginning, I loved shooting the bone arrow even when they were weak and I didn't have the valor skill or valor surge, which we haven't been talked about is a meter that fills in as you go and then a special move you can do with your shoulder buttons

that then gives you whatever the valor surge you've unlocked. You see one dead center right there being shown right now that you could then go through and screw around with. See, but my thing is like I hated the trapping in the game and I know people who love the trapping. I love it. I have some trapping beefs too. Just in this game specifically because they lock

the amount of traps you can put down. And at that point, like trapping was such a huge. part of how I played Horizon 1. And I was like, it didn't become like a sticking point for me and my enjoyment of the game. Like I was just like, okay, this is a tool that I won't get to use the way I was used to using it. But frankly, I was a little bit disappointed with how intense the difference is because you can only lay down, I think base, they start with either one or two and you can eventually unlock to up to three. And I was just-

You can go to four. Oh, maybe four. Okay, but the very top, the very top slash bottom of the skill tree is a fourth one. is a fourth one. Yeah, and I thought, I think that kind of was a step back, in my opinion, just with like freedom of play style. It doesn't make it to the- It was pretty restraints on.

It was pretty restraints that didn't exist before. Exactly. And I think something else that I had a real heavy beef with is the fact that you can walk through your own trap and set it off, which was true for like the small traps, like the things that look like little balloons. But the wire traps, you could run back and forth through those in Horizon One and have no problem.

Overall, I do think like the quality of life in this game is really good. And I'd love to talk to you all about, like where you think it works and where it doesn't. But that was something that stood out to me as like when I said this game does almost everything better to me like that is a point where I do not think that is improvement. I do get that as an intentional design decision to force you to play more thoughtfully and maybe like, you know, lean a little bit off of the traps.

And again, it did not impede my enjoyment of the game. But I was a little bit sad because that was a big way I did play the first one and to not be able to really carry that over. I did miss it a little bit. And it made me less interested in using the traps at all. For sure. I'm with you because both traps and potions have a limit on how many you can carry and you can increase them if you go through the skill trees. But again,

that's what I wasn't what I was drawn to and what I wanted to do. So my play style just evolved around not using them and not using potions at rare. I remember the first one using stamina and maybe they didn't have stamina. Maybe the cool down potion. I forget using the health potion or the other potion. I used a lot in the original horizon. Whereas this one, I was rare to use either. And I was usually using the up button for the medicine you're finding in the world.

all the varies or whatever and concluding that way. But the quality of life thing is an interesting one, Janet. Yeah, because I think, again, it's leaps and bounds from where Horizon Zero Dawn started, right? We talked about this in the PSI Love You re-review of like me jumping in and be like, oh, wow, the things I bitched about the initial review that actually patched in after the fact. And like, that game's not entirely different by any stress imagination, but definitely smoothed out for quality of life. For me, what, I love the skill trees and I love building my own way and I love having

we don't usually talk that much about games before we review. So I had a very top level conversation at one point with Bless where I was like, is there a way to hot swap the valor surges? Because again, when Barrett was looking through the skill tree, there are so many on the trees. And Bless was like, no, not to my knowledge, but he's like, I've only used one the entire time. And I was like, holy shit, I switched them so much.

And for me, that is something I don't understand how they, especially coming off with the original Horizon, how they didn't think about having loadouts in here. because, you know, Horizon is, here are all these great outfits that you can now die, you can personalize, you know, you can look the way you want to to some extent. There's, you know, based on what you've collected,

you know, yeah, yeah, they can't do any color, but there's cool things to do for them. Here are these things that have different stat bonuses. Here are different weapons you need in different situations. Here are all these awesome different valor surges you can have. But to change that all out is going into the menu and reset assembling and doing like, you know, running into a thing and be like, oh,

I'm still in my stealth out, but I know that I'm going to have to engage these guys in a non-stall situation. So hold on, pause, go in there, put on the different warrior outfit, go in there, change the valor surge from, I had one that, you know, turns me invisible like I'm wearing an optic camouflage from Metal Gear or whatever. Instead, I'll switch it over to the one from the Hunter one that makes my arrows more day. It's cool to, like, psych yourself up for the battle. But when I'm psyching myself up for the 25th time I've done this, it was like,

why not just have it hot swap either of the valor surges because I can swap other things quicker, but why not make me a load out that I can just go, okay, put on my warrior load out, put out my stealth load out, put on my whatever, the gathering loadout. And I never felt incentivized to try out another one, I think for that exact reason, where to switch out your valor search, you would have to go into the menu and then go into the skill tree and then figure out which value search you want to use. For it to feel like such a locked on sort of thing, I never changed it. And that was even the case where I was in moments where I didn't necessarily need to

use my dollar search, because the one I was using is one that basically gives you a boost of health for an amount of time. And if I'm dominating in a combat situation, right, obviously I'm not going to use that valor surge. But the game doesn't really like, I had that valor surge on deck for when I'm in trouble, right? And that's kind of where I'm thinking about when I'm in combat, right? Like, if I'm in trouble, then I'm going to use this thing. But for the other valour surges, I just didn't really think about the use case scenario because, you know, I feel so locked on to this thing. And I will say also, like, this is like a quick tangent. But to this specific valor surge, I don't know if you guys had a similar experience of yours. I,

like the effects of this Valorge, the actual, like, visual effect was bad, where if you use it, it's called toughened, where if you use it against me, you get the boost of health, it turns the outline of your screen, like a green hue. Yeah. And it's very aggressive and kind of noisy the whole time. And it lasts for a while. Even after you finish a combat scenario, it'll still last, like, an extra 20 or 30 seconds, depending on how long it takes you to finish the combat scenario when you used the thing. I found that to be odd. I have some type of like kind of gradient. an edge that they add. And on one hand, obviously, I get that they're trying to quickly communicate important

information to a player that's probably in like a high and sense combat situation if you're using a valor surge. But I did find it, you know, for lack of a nicer term, like a little, you know, off-putting, I guess is how I would describe it. I also did run into like occasional bugs when using my valor surge, which I know we'll like kind of talk a little bit about like just generally. But I had like this weird one that kept happening, which is super unfortunate because the valor surge is usually like, okay, and now I'm going to go into the way.

when I used a lot, I mainly used the, there was one that added damage to like long distance, like ranged attacks. And I'm like, all my attacks are range attacks anyway. So this works for me. Sometimes I use the potion one that you described blessing when I was like getting my ass kicked. I'm like, it's time for like the magic juice surge. You know, hopefully it shows up before I'm dead. But yeah, like I did have like some weird glitches where it'd go almost in first person mode.

And I'd just be like struggling in no end. And it really did take me out of like the combat in those moments. But on the whole, like, I like the abilities. And I think they were a really cool addition. I am sad you can't hot swap. But I like the inclusion there. And I was really surprised and like pleasantly surprised to see them there. I thought it was just a really cool extra tool.

You know, I talk about the traps being a little bit nerfed. But I'm like, well, they still, they are giving me tools to be powerful and to like rock this gameplay. Andy Cortez. I use Valis, like, twice maybe. I largely forgot it was a mechanic. And I think one of the. times I used it was in experimentation at one of the bases. And that's when I noticed like the purple hue around the screen. I do want to say that I played about 60% of this game on

easy difficulty. I knew that I was running out of time. And I think I'd gotten to one of these, one of these fights on normal. Blessing made a, when Blessing told us that he'd beaten the game and kind of like, I'd beat in this many hours, you might. want to worry about level gating because there were a couple moments where I'm like, damn, I haven't really done a whole lot of side quests. And I think I'm a bit underleveled. And there's always just random machine just jumping at me from a random angle and I'm getting hit and I'm dying. And that happened like three times in a row in one battle. I was like, I'm going to drop to easy. I'm never going to be to this rate if it takes me like five tries to

take down these things. So I played about 60% of it on easy. And it was pretty satisfied. because of that because I would kind of, I think I was underleveled for most of the game, and I would essentially just weaken enemies with the status effects, and I found great satisfaction in doing that, and then using the really strong arrow to knock off the component that I wanted, and that's basically how I played it, but I think I used Valor Surge a couple of times, and it was largely a mechanic that I didn't really think about, but I do want to talk about Janet mentioning quality of life. I think a game, a good mark of a game having good quality of life is not really having

a whole lot to complain about. And I rarely had anything to be annoyed or complain about in this game. Greg, it's like having a, it's like having a long snapper in the NFL. You never want to know the long snapper's name. You want to be. I forget what long snapper said that, that quote, right? If anybody knows my name, it means I did something wrong. Yeah, exactly.

And that's a good thing about this where like I, I think largely the, game does a great job of not getting in your way. I love the idea of just having this stash where everything just goes to it if I'm overpicking. I don't have to move a bunch of shit. I don't have to worry about my item inventory a whole lot. I love being able to go to my stash and just hold the square button and replenish everything that I've needed. Double down to that, right? You can only hold so much on your person as a Loid, right? But when you overpick, when you have too much, it's automatically sent to a stash. So, inevitably you go on a giant battle or at least for me you go to battle exhaust your medical berries

and whatever else and your components that i was using to make arrows and then when i finished the story scene at hq or whatever i could go right to my stash hold square replenish everything i had already sent over that way and yeah that's basically i want to say it's just really great and i'm glad that i didn't have an issue with it yeah another thing on that too right there's a lot of upgrading in the game if you go to your workbench lots of it yeah lots of it and for a lot of it you have to have certain resources and so to upgrade a certain weapon, you might have to have, like, I don't know, a beak of a pelican or some shit. It's usually some random, like, oh, you need to kill these animals or these machines.

But, like, when you're at the workbench, you can create a bunch of jobs, like was mentioned earlier. And that was one of my favorite things to do where a few, like, maybe a few days before being in the game, I took a day to be like, okay, I'm not going to mainline at all. I'm just going to do side quests and activities and clear the stuff around the edges, which to that point, too, to jump off the Andy real quick, this game seems way less main lineable than the previous one. I think you do, if you're playing on normal, at least, you do have to do some side stuff to level up because the level gating is not aggressive by any

means, but if you do a level 35 mission or like a level 25 mission on 24, you might, or 23, you might have like that little bit of struggle, whereas you do that same mission on level 26. I found that like I was able to get through certain things with a breeze when I was like one or two levels above. And that's how I prefer to go into it. And so like, depending on the kind of player you are, you might be less inclined to, or you might want to main. line this one less than maybe you mainline the first one because I found the first one was a lot easier, I think, just going straightforward without having to clear out a bunch of side stuff. You're also doing yourself a disservice. Like, it's awesome to play through this and be able

to roam and you. Oh, 100%. Paris, your hand went up about levigating this long mile. I was just going to go again when blessings sent out the infamous Slack message. That was my concern. I was like, oh shit, am I not going to be leveled up enough by the end to do what I need to do? it actually turned out to be the opposite because I had done so many side activities and errands and contracts before I really deep dived into the end part of the game that I was kind of over-leveled for a lot of that stuff by the time I got to the end of it. So, but at the same time, I do feel like the game does encourage you to, again, to want to go do all these different activities because I felt rewarded for exploring throughout the world and doing these things versus just sticking to the main story and just completing. And I'm actually, and I play the whole game on normal, but I'm actually interested to wonder if someone was to just try and mainline it. I feel like this would probably be under 20 hours if you weren't doing all these other side things. I think you probably hit, yeah, probably maybe that 20 to 25 hour range.

If you were to just do the main quests, but I would, I would think that you'd have a difficult time. Like, I think you would struggle a little bit and die quite a bit if you just did that. But to like to round out my point about the job thing, right? Like my favorite, one of my favorite moments in the game was going through the workbench, creating a bunch of different jobs for the specific weapons that I wanted to level up all the way to purple. And then going out and putting the job up or like, you know, making my active job. And then the game just being like, hey, you need three rabbit heads. Get a squirrel bone.

Yeah, that squirrel bone and like 300 metal shards to make this thing. And like to that quality of life thing, right? I think the first game probably did this to a certain extent. But you open up the quest or open up your map and it'll show you exactly where the areas are and you just go hunting. And I fucking loved hunting down goose

in a random area by a pond. Like there's something about that that just felt very like geese. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, hunting geese. There's something about that. It's something I really like about open world games is how meditative they can get when you're just doing going through those open world motions.

And so just like being by a pond looking for a geese and being like, oh, finally. And then taking that thing out to get the thing so I can upgrade the weapon so I can feel powerful going to the next mission. When I need a carp skull, but I kept getting carp bones. Like, God damn this carp. I finally got it. I hate when that happens. Also, it is worth pointing out that the job thing is not new.

It was in the first game. However, you can slot multiple ones at once, which I think is, I think that aspect is the new. element though I also do want to shout out again ways they improved it in the first game for the jobs I'm pretty sure and hopefully I'm not misremembering anyone correct me if they know offhand but they did like kind of flag like the oh you need maybe like this thing from like the snap mall or something they're like oh here's a reminder like that's where the site is because you have that unlocked in your map but they wouldn't tell you like where the animals are this one does tell you where the animals are right like the regular animals so that happens sometimes for me I don't know if it happened

every time but those definitely like a colony of like um I don't know what they were called the kangaroo machines that were hopping around and I saw them moving on my compass and I was like... The leaf rithr, some shit. Yeah, it was like the regular animals like the like a goose. Like that is flagged right or is it not?

I don't remember. Regular animals, yeah, are flagged like in their area. That's a big deal because in the first one they did not flag it. So you just had to know like where would a rat hang out and I straight up had to Google Horizon Zero Dawn rat grime deer or whatever and people were like they like to be in the cauldrons

and like go by the waters and I'm just like out here going to random people's homes like outside people's houses by the river so again I do think a lot of the quality of life stuff is better. I have like a few complaints that stand out just with like the again the like a few of the aspects of it. One thing too that I want to know if anyone knows offhand because I didn't get to this part if it does exist. Is there an infinite travel pack or is that just straight up gone? I didn't get.

I don't. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even worry about it. that because the first one does have it. I know they're cheap to make, but I just feel like, why? Like my, well, my thing is like, personally, I just, I, when I used up the two free travel packs I had, because again, if you're new to the game, remember, you can travel for free between fire, uh, god damn it. Canfires. Campfires. Fire pits is what I want to keep

as angry as the reason. Uh, but you have to use a travel pack if you want to at large, random, whatever. Once I used up to the two free ones, I just always went to a, uh, the campfires. I did too, I did too, but I feel like I'm Uber pooling at that point, like back in the day. It's like, oh, they don't drop me off at the right spot. Like you got to walk a few blocks and it's worth it to save the money. I'm not shading the Uber, the Uber pool era day. It's like, I used to do that all the time.

And in this game, I did that a lot, but I was a little bit bummed that they didn't just have something just to, as soon they had that in the first game. I'm like, the fast travel packs are like my least favorite thing about the first game. I didn't understand why they had it. And in this game,

I just forgot about it where like, yeah, for me, it's immersion breaking into an extent, right? Where it is this, I mean, I know I'm fucking fighting machines and all this random as shit. But it's like,

I just like, I don't, I feel like, they're very cheap in this game I guess you're coming off of like you know Assassin's Creed or whatever like you can fast travel with all the points you've synchronized or whatever but like that makes sense for some reason to be

in a way of just like going from wherever I feel like it would be like so much of this game is the journey and it is that going over that. But like that was my thing is suddenly the campfires matter where I'd be on my way to a quest and if I'm passing three campfires I'm stopping at three campfires I feel the way in the first game though as well because yeah

like you can okay the only difference between this and this is like so granular that like I don't, you know, I feel like it's almost not worth digging too much into, but in the first game, you could make the fast travel packs, but at a certain like town, you could buy an infinite fast travel pack. So I just find it, I was just a little surprised. In the first game, in the first game, could you travel between campfires? No, they didn't have that part. So I get that they maybe like swapped them and they want to incur. Again, I think they have all those things.

See, that's what I thought. Oh, my apology. I'm going to boot up the first game right now. Yeah, if you could boot up and check. Yeah, go to do it because I thought when I went back and played, that's how I traveled around. Maybe that got, oh, no, Janet just played out. I wasn't saying maybe that got updated, but maybe. I don't remember.

I remember that being a big problem for me in the first game that I hated the fast travel system. Yeah, if you could check that, let me know. One thing I did want to ask, though, like, way more big pictures than like the granularity of having to use, like, three sticks to make these packs. Well, like, that's going to be, that's going to make up so many people's, like, a lot of people's game is like figuring out the fast travel stuff. In order to fast travel and ride zero dawn, bring up the map by pushing the touchpad and browse to a bonfire that you previously discovered.

Yep. So it looks like you can't. So in your face, you're wrong. I don't think you go from one to another. Like you walk up to it and have to, like here you walk up and have to hit circle. And then that's like a telephone call. Yeah, there's no like here like in the first game, you just had the packs. And like you have to just make them.

You didn't get to do that. But you did get to buy an infinite fast travel pack. So you wouldn't have to make them anymore. Wait, well, I'm confused. But you're saying, I'm talking about traveling from campfire to campfire. Like could you. And Andy just read that. So you're saying, Andy, we don't need to go to the campfires in the first game.

You just click on the bonfire and you can go to any bond. But that would cost a fast shot. Yes, that costs a pack, unless you have the infinite one. No, I'm caught up. My apologies. Again, this is very, like, it's very in the weeds. And I get that, like, some people are like, I am not interested in hearing about this. Shut the fuck up.

This one is the difference. And the first one. Yeah. I mean, if you want it, we just answered Aidan Dean's question who wrote into patreon.com slash kind of funny games and said, I only got two questions. Everybody's waiting to hear the review for they put them in for P.S. I love you. But Aidan wrote it said, this question is for the Horizon Redwood West review.

I really only have one. question since zero dawn is one of my favorite games of all time and i'm completely i'm completely all in regardless but i need to know are there still fast travel packs in the west or do they remove the shackles and just let us fast travel for free that's what i was going to say like obviously that's very granular and like there's probably more interesting things we can't talk about and we will but i do think for people that are on the horizon one or just played it um you know like it's those when i say that it did almost everything better i think it it is beneficial to speak to the things that i don't think it does better and it is interesting to see that to me there are a few things that were a little bit backwards.

I have Horizon Zero Dawn open right now. I will say two things, right? There are actually, I'll just say one thing. I was going to say there's less campfires, but it seems like that's just in the DLC area that there's less campfires. You cannot travel from Campfire to Campfire. Right. You need the Pax. Again, they give you a free option up front, which I do appreciate, but the fact they don't have an infinite one you still have to use packs, I think is annoying. A more interesting in general question I want to know about. You know, we talked about the melee, which is like a heavily like advertising as like, hey, we've improved this.

This is like how we got like way more like granular with the nuances of it. What did y'all think of the underwater traversal in this game? Because it was something I went into really wondering like, man, almost no games pull up underwater. How is this going to work? Like how did that work for y'all? Not a fan. Why not?

It wasn't a fan. It wasn't as the word I'm looking for. It didn't control as great as I was hoping. I guess that's the best way to say it. I mean, it was functional, but I think it could be better. Yeah, I don't think for me, it wasn't a standout, but it also wasn't a detriment. Yeah. I think, you know, somebody who plays a lot of Assassin's Creed games and there's a lot of swimming

in Assassin's Creed, like, it's a similar thing of, okay, cool, I'm going underwater and I'd pulse and look for what I need and go underneath. And eventually, you know, I think you see it in the trailers early on, so but no, whatever, you got a respirator, so you don't have to worry anymore. She might even have, she must have a respirator here. I'm looking at a postage-sized stamp, but she's really deep right now. You know, so like once that's removed,

it's like, I still like it from the exploring element. I didn't appreciate that, and this makes sense, of course, that there's machines down there that can get alert and come after you, but having, at least for my character and my build, no way to fight them, I'd have to bring them up to the surface

and go for it or hide in the kelp. I was like, all right, like, it never got my way in the similar sense of what we were talking about before. Like, it was fine. I got my carp, I did the thing. I explored it. I think again,

I want to get back to at some point, you know, Blas brought up a traversal for puzzles and things like that. I think the exploration of the game is awesome. And it worked there in terms of a really cool, like, Titanic-y, old world, what's going on? Let's explore, you know, sunken San Francisco or something. That was neat for me. That's my thing is I think the swimming provided, like, another opportunity for them to create puzzles and activities around that that never felt bad. I don't think the swimming necessarily feels great, but I don't think swimming ever feels great in video games, or at least, like, in very rare occasion.

Does it feel great? And so it is what you expect it to be, where it is, all right, cool, I'm just going to slowly trot through this water. That said, I do think that one of the coolest parts of this game is a water level. And so, like, there is that. And I really, I really appreciate it how it was implemented there. And so I don't think it's a, I don't think the swimming is to the detriment of the game, but it's the thing of it wasn't the, it wasn't the best part.

Yeah, I, I'm larger with, with most of y'all here. I think that I would have been encouraged to do more of it had I, like Greg mentioned, been able to defend myself while underwater. Like when I'm above ground, I fear no monster. I'll go wherever the fuck. If I'm going to creep through there, whatever, or if I'm going to just fight something, I know that I can defend myself.

And I think not having that ability underwater, whether it's something I had to upgrade to, I never got to that point if that even exists. But I largely avoided it because I knew, there's two of those alligators down there. I don't really know how well I can be hinted. hidden in this kelp, so I'm just going to avoid it. And I wish I was encouraged to do more of it,

because I didn't really have a problem with the traversal aspect of it. Once I kind of got the hang of ascending and descending and all that stuff, I feel like it was pretty simple. I do agree with blessing that that main swimming level that you just mentioned, I think, is like the standout of the game. That's like the kind of museum astronaut part of The Last of Us. I think that's like, I had that moment of like, oh, wow, This is really cool and special.

And yeah, that's all I'll say about that. And I like that those special moments are peppered in in a way, right? And I'm bringing up underwater examples because we're talking about it. But, like, you know, one of the collectibles are black boxes from crash planes or whatever out there. And like the first one I actually found was one that was a plan that had gone down in the water. So like, again, this puzzle of I know where it is. I'm pinging. I see the purple thing.

How do I get in there and navigate my way through to get it? That was rewarding. And another one of the collectibles they do here are these. I don't have it in front of me, but the ones that are the, you scan and you get like a digital, like, outline of a picture. A vista? A vista.

A vista points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, you have to go and then like line them up in the world. And then if you do it, it gives you like a glimpse of what the world look like in the past or whatever.

And I kid you not, I am dog shit at them. Like I am. I am too. I didn't. I did the first. I did one. It was the first one I found.

And I was like, I think I might be stupid. Like I was just. And they give you hints for them. And I did eventually figure it out. But I was like, like, she remarks like, oh, it's, it's a bias. Maybe there was a bridge here at one point. And I was like, well, there's water.

So like, is it here? And she was like, this isn't it. And I'm like, now you're too fine. And I'm just like, I don't know what I have to look. But I do think it was, I do like that they at least like shook it up because in the last game, they had the same data points. But they were just like, you kind of scan them and look at them. You could argue, obviously, maybe this one's more annoying if you don't like doing

that thing, but I like, again, how it's, it's stuff that I know from the first game, but it's done a little bit differently. And, like, the fact that there are tall necks here that you can find, and I'm like, how do I do this? Like, I didn't think I'd have that problem. Every single tallneck has, like, some sort of really cool puzzle or gimmick to it. Yes. You know, feels really cool. And I think for any, for any one of those, like, vista points or even for me, like, strike where I did not want to do them or I found they were uninteresting. I felt like there were three or four other things that filled in the places where, like, there's drone collectibles here that you'll get to. that are really cool that I think are really cool.

And it's the buffet of what we're talking about. The one thing we keep talking about is like how. The food's actually good because at a buffet usually it's not that good. It's like a Thanksgiving where you trust the people that are there. Yeah, but most of the food though, right? Because I do think the one thing we're talking about like, oh man, like, you know, the collectibles or this thing. It doesn't feel samey. For me, the rebel camps are the one thing where I'm like, I like, you know, again, I've played go.

You know, I love open worlds. Assassin's Creed, Ghost, Far Cry. and then a dying light we just did right like I'm used to clear out all the bad guys of a place or whatever so like I'm not in every game has that there's nobody I think who does it incredibly well horizon tries here where it's like the rebel camps are piecing together a story as you go of what's going on but it's into the same boat we talk about it's not that interesting it's just like okay cool I got your bad guys and I'm gonna go and then also it's this weird thing of like they just want you to kill the main bad guy in there and collect something off of them and once you do that it's a thing of like all right cool it's clear I can leave or I can just kill them all right now and then you're just kill them all right now and now. And it's like, well, I want the campfire while I'm here. I want it all right now. So I'll kill everybody. And the amount of times I'd be in these places. And it's like, all the motherfuckers are dead. I've killed every machine and it still hasn't turned over. And I have to like run outside and start doing like a perimeter sweep. And there's one guy over in the weeds just like staring at the sun or something. God damn run over. Kill that motherfucker. I do think that to,

because you're, you're probably right. Right. Like I don't, I can't really say like, no, the rebel camps were like super exciting because they're pretty much the same as last time, which was like, they're just a thing to do. I will say they are markedly harder because in the first game, like the combat was, again, because they improved the melee combat, they also made, like, the enemies, like, you know, smarter, more responsive and also just, like, a little bit, you know, with better armor or more health because, like, in the first game, I could just lurk and headshot people and they just die.

Here, it's like, you can't really kill anybody off an error to the head exactly, which sounds, like, kind of weird, but, like, they either have armor or not. You need to explore your skill trees. I'm in there like solid snake with a bone air. I'm wiping these things out, never breaking a sweat. Yeah, well, to that point, I didn't do that many of them. I only did like, like, one or two, and they might have been like weaved through the story. So maybe you can't.

XP bombs. I leveled up like three times doing one. I was like, oh my gosh. That's actually good to know because I did maybe like four of them. That's the other element too. Like this is kind of digging back into something that was brought up earlier. But as far as like level scaling and things, obviously like my bias is that I did a lot of the first area. So I did get a lot of, you know, XP from all those early things I did.

But about like, I don't know how far through, maybe like a third through the game. I was like, okay, I can't keep living this life. I have to just mainline it. I even didn't do the optional dialogue that I zone out on anyway. I was like, oh, it's so hard. I'm like, I guess I should go straight to the mission because it's due soon. And I want to be able to talk about, you know, in its entirety. But I do think it's really easy to get XP in a game like this because you can get XP from kind of anything.

Like if you just want to mainline, it's like you might as well, if you can do the tall neck. Do a tall neck while you're there. You'll get some XP from that. you get more of the map from that. Like, there's so many benefits from doing the things that are along the way when you go from point A to point B that I do think it can kind of naturally level you a little bit. That said, I did end up a little underleveled by the end of the game. Like, I did go it.

I did do the final mission, like, level 30 or 32, and like the recommended was like 35. The game was still largely fine for me. I played on normal. But, yeah, I also like that, you know, you do get the option to be super OP if you want to be. If you want to go get the extra stuff. Like, I had mostly blue weapons because I didn't have the time. to get a lot of other stuff. And that serves me totally fine.

But if you're like, this is too much and I don't feel like knocking down the difficulty or what have you, you have like a lot of options to become more powerful through the gameplay by design while also getting XP. So I feel like it's a double-edged sword of making you a stronger player. Janet, when you were playing the Horizon Zero Don before this, did it tell you the rewards for each quest before you did the quest? I'm not sure offhand. I don't know.

I think they did for XP. I don't know if they did for like the weapons. Because like in this game, Dynlight 2 did this too, and that's like when I first started being like, oh man, every single game should do this. Horizon Midwest does that thing where like, before the final quest, I realized I was a little bit under-leveled for it.

And I was like, okay, I don't want to do it now. I do want to level up a little bit before I get there. And so I legit just went through my side quest and through my activities. And I was like, okay, which one here has the most expedite is going to give me? And which ones have like the most skill points or like the cool rewards that is going to give me

because it'll also give you maybe armor or maybe like face paint or weapons or whatever it may be. And that goes back to the quality of life conversation about like, yeah, the game pretty much doesn't get in your way in any moment when it is you trying to figure out what it is you want to do and how you want to play the game, which I absolutely loved. One thing I want to toss in that quality life and the fight stuff you're talking about being underleveled that I find interesting is I ran into a really

hard time with the final boss in the game where I was, that was the only time I felt underleveled. out there I felt I had a great curve of I'm getting stronger and I'm beating the shit out of everything but then getting that final boss and when you pause or when I scanned it I guess it said like level 47 I was like I'm 32 so that's my problem but what I thought was cool

as I kept dying it would pop up with a whole bunch of tip screens that actually were helpful in the moment in the same way we're talking about Aloy for the vista point being like maybe it's high or whatever I feel like there's a lot of great context that she gives herself in you the player but anyways here one of the things they dropped was hey if you're struggling with a boss you can load a game.

We make saves that say save before boss, where it would be like your last save point before it, so you could go grind off if you really wanted to go off and get more powerful. And for me, I looked at it and it was like, that's an hour ago because it's the final thing and I had done so much. But I was still like, that's a cool feature for, you know,

other stuff if you ran into this earlier in the game. Yeah, and you can't change the difficulty at any time. And even below easy, they have story mode, which is like even easier in terms of like health. And like, I did the whole game on normal except for that final boss. the final boss I just put, I honestly just put that shit on story. And I was like, I don't, it's just so fast. I'm like, I don't want to, I don't need to prove anything here.

I'm like, I'm just trying to see the end of this game. For the record, I did the exact same thing, Janet, because we are the same person. But it was like, I wasn't doing enough damage. And I'm like, all right, I understand how to beat it. I understand what I should be doing. But I'm not doing it. And it's 12.30 in the morning. Like I understand.

Is somebody who was appropriate. I was like, I was like, you know what? You put the fear of God on us. You put the fear of God on Slack, all right? I'm not wrong. It's a long game. Though I do want to shout out like a couple things too for that. They also on addition to those difficulties, they have custom difficulty, which lets you get

like more granular. I feel like I keep saying that word, but like with how you might change stuff. You can even have stuff like auto heel, you know, turned on if you feel like you just want that or need it. They have a lot of great accessibility stuff. And then two, you know, with shoutouts to like the side quest, like again, I did a lot of my stuff early on for the side stuff. One quest I did was with these two sisters who are really into making weapons and one

was like obsessed with explosives. They gave me a spear. The spear was green level, like uncommon or whatever or common. I think it's uncommon. But anyway, I'm like, okay, cool. I'm not really going to use it. Like, it's just kind of the way it worked. I just wasn't that interested in using the weapon.

But I had it with me the whole time. And when I got toward the end of the game, when I had a couple encounters with, like, enemies that I felt like, you know, we're not machine enemies. And I just felt like they were really like hard and spongy. I'm like, okay, let's try this spear that I like never used. And this thing was like the most powerful thing I've ever.

It was like dropping bombs on people. I was blown away. And I think it's just so cool that that's a quest I did in like the first 10 hours, five hours of the game. It's not even high rarity, but it like was so effective and really got me out of that like through my underleveledness. So I think that just is a real testament to like it's not just one of those games where, oh, yeah,

and it's true that the better stuff is later in the game, right? The like higher rarities as you'd expect. But like don't discount some of the stuff you get early on too because like that stuff can also be used. The stats are so. intense and I was the same way where I'd be struggling with an enemy and I'd go in. I'm like, I'm using the acid bow. And it was like, oh, this acid bow is actually less powerful than the other acid bone. Andy, you had your hand raised.

Yeah, I just wanted to bring up in terms of difficulty and stuff like that. I think if anybody does want to mainline this and drop it to easy, it didn't feel like I was just breezing through it, which is a lot of fun. I think mainly what happens is the enemy's damage is possibly lowered. And obviously your damage output seems to be strong. stronger, but it didn't feel like I was just one shot in dudes. It still felt fun and engaging and I was still having like a fun time with the combat. And so I was happy for that because I was like, if I dropped to easy,

I really hope it just doesn't make it like, here's one shot and the dude's dead. So like some enemies did take one shot, but a lot of the larger enemies still took a while. And I had some fun with that. You bringing up the tutorials and the helpful things, I had a lot of bugs regarding that stuff. I had any time I would come back. back from the save, she would go, all right, still gotta get that bone from blah, blah, blah. It's like, what the fuck? That was like 70 hours ago, A. Loy, I always had this pop up on the bottom right telling me

that I could heal my mounts, and that always popped up. And then one of my larger issues with the game is Aloy's contextual dialogue. It is so ignorable. It is so, like, it is like a whisper in the wind whenever she does it. And I, it's always meant to help the player. It's always meant to say, maybe I needed to play with my TV louder. I don't know what it was, but I'm about to go into a battle and she'd go,

huh, why isn't it up is that jumping? You'd be like, I need this louder. I need to, like, you're saying something, and I'm not looking down fast enough to see what the subtitle said because you're just kind of passively saying like, oh, God, dude, there's no problem, you know. It's like, you got to be louder and more aggressive. Everyone wants to jump in.

My one I want to do there is I had the same thing, where I was, I'm on the giant TV I'm playing, I'm enjoying it and I was like, I'm turning off subtitles, I want to enjoy this like a movie. And so I did and then the next thing literally I went underwater and she starts like, I guess in her head talking to herself, but it was muffled like it was underwater. So it was, I'm like,

I don't know the fuck you're saying. I didn't turn captures back on. I had so many bugs to talk about the Aloid, contextual stuff for a second too. Like, I had moments where I was like Aloy, I need you to stop telling me things. I need you to stop telling me how to do things because I'll be solving a puzzle and she's like, oh, it looks like

there's an interesting hatch up there. And I'm like, Alo, I was in the middle of figuring this out. Like, I didn't need you to, like, give me the solution in the middle of doing this puzzle. And I feel like that happened half the time. And so that kind of annoyed me a bit. But to talk about bugs,

I ran into a lot of bugs during this playthrough of the game. And, you know, most of my playthrough was before the day one patch. We got the day one patch. And then afterwards, you know, I played a little bit more. And I still got some bugs after the day one patch. But I'm sure a lot of the issues I had maybe were patched out. But that's just a clarifier.

But I did have the thing where it is, I'm doing whatever. thing like I'm hanging out and a lois talking and her voice is muffled and I'm like oh that's weird and it wasn't until I was swimming and she had a dialogue during that where I was like oh okay no it was just an audio bug there are there's a there's moments where the game micro loads it seems like where you'll just be exploring the world and it faced a black for a second and then phase back in because it was loading something in that happened to me before and after the day one patch there were there was a moment during the main campaign

that I thought my whole game my whole save was bugged where the can't Payne would send me to the waypoint and I'd be on my way trying to make my way, like trying to progress through the quest and I'll go up the stairs where I think I should go. And then halfway through going up the stairs, Aloi starts swimming. And I'm not in water. She's just swimming up the stairs. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. And I get to the top of the stairs.

I'm stuck there and I can't get out. And so I reload my save. Exactly happens again. I reload a third time. Same exactly happens again. And I'm convinced that my save is broken. And I'm like, what am I doing wrong here? like is my, do I just need to like restart the game from scratch?

That happened with me for dying light too. Do I need to do it again? Turns out I just went the wrong way. It was just like a, oh no, there's two directions you can go. I was going the wrong way that maybe the devs didn't account for. Maybe it was a bug that just happened to me. But that happened as well too. And I felt like for maybe every, I'll say, hour and a half to two hours, there was some

kind of minor bug. And the nice thing about it is that most of them were minor. None of them were game breaking. None of them ruined the experience by any means. It was just like things here and there where I was like, oh man, I, I don't. feel like for how polished, I felt Horizon Zero Dawn was, Horizon Red Wind West felt slightly less polished, which I was disappointed by. I agree.

Yeah, I ran into, I think I know exactly what moment you're talking about Blessing. I played probably about 80% of this on the day one patch. So I feel like it was still as buggy as you think it might be blessing. Okay. I think I know what a moment you're talking about where they're like, all right, head to the wall on the West. and there's like a waypoint right in front of a gigantic doorway and I walk and it's an invisible wall.

I'm like, why can't I get through here? And I just had to go a different way and I think the pathing and the waypoint was off or whatever. But I had a couple of moments that I had to restart the game where I had massive frame drops, where it's like my character would move, stop, move, stop, move, stop. And that happened a couple times. It happened to me.

I had to restart the entire PS5. I kept stopping the game and coming back. And it was doing cut things too. I was like, I don't know what's going on. Same, same, same. But largely, the visual bugs were really bad for me. I had many moments where, and a lot of it was just LOD pop in, where I'm not talking like the low textures never loaded in.

And I'm talking about like 80% of the buildings were not loving. You would see the floors of the foundation just floating. Not even from like super far away either. I'm pretty close to this building and I'm only seeing these floors or these random things floating in the air. And I'm close enough to be like, man, this should have popped in a long time ago. I wonder if this is in the same spot because I had the exact same thing happen to me in like an area with a lot of buildings. And I was walking up and I was like, oh, this is a weird look for this area. I would have thought there would be more here.

It was a lot of areas. It was a lot of areas with a lot of buildings for me. And I think the worst part of it, well, like, it was just, it was pretty bad visually to, to experience. that. But I think largely one of the worst parts about it is the end credit sequence, you're flying through the world and they're showing you the names of the developers. And it's happening all throughout all of that. Like, it's supposed to be this really cool experience of like the cameras flying through this awesome kind of scenery with the names pop into the screen. And it's supposed to be a really cool, awesome experience. And it's like, here I am flying and 90% of this building has not loaded. And there's just like, props in the building that are floating and then eventually you get close enough and then the walls pop up and then this thing loads and then text like certain objects did you ever see certain objects that were like rainbow colored um I was showing this to Barrett last night Barrett happened to walk into my room and I've witnessed the moment where certain

objects would have the same sort of loading pop-in issue but in place of there not being anything as opposed to like the item not being there at all it would be like a proxy model and it's like textured and color in a very weird kind of rainbow looking way and then it gets replaced by the actual model that deserves that belongs there and that happened a lot where like there's areas in the environment that would just be this weird sort of almost like when you see um I got to assume it's some sort of proxy stand-in thing like as similar to when you see in games games using the checkerboard texture as like a proxy type um temporary texture that they used just for scale or whatever. This is just some weird kind of rainbow-looking thing and then the item would pop in but yeah, I had visual bugs galore in this game.

It was pretty distracting. Yeah, I had a lot of falling through the world as well. That's Barry Courtney on the ones and twos. Yeah, I would say for me, I mean, you guys pretty much covered it. I mean, the main bugs that I had were the dialogue bugs where I'm hearing characters talk over each other or Lloyd's coming in and I was like, I don't need you to talk right now.

Please let me just focus on what I'm trying to do. Beyond that, it would have been just the load in and kind of like the pop in and the microload in that was happening even after the day one patch. Yeah. There was one that I thought was funny. That was a dialogue bug where I was with a character. And they said something along the lines of like, hey, Loi, come here. And then they would start talking.

and then at the end of every single sentence, they'll say, Eloy, come here. Like that piece of all of this, you ended at the end of every single sentence. And I was like, oh, please don't let this be the rest of the game. Thankfully, it was just that cut scene.

But yeah, shit like that. I think the lead-in to the final boss, like Paris mentioned, these kind of like errant lines that get said, it was more egregious when you're at the end of the game, the final lead-up, and it's all like, it's all happening, and it's a bunch of action,

a bunch of cool shit's happening. And you load into the, the mission and it's got to get that bore hide for the blah blah blah don't do that right now man I'm fucking hyped up I'm supposed to be like yeah it's like little things like that that were pretty annoying a couple missions where

characters wouldn't follow me even though I was told to follow them I had one way oh yeah run with me and they would just leave they would stay behind I'm like all right I'm gonna go ahead and I hope you load into the next sequence I hope you're there I'm just gonna like kind of cross my fingers and do this part and hopefully you're there for the cut scene and not just like missing completely. Yeah, I had one of those where it was just a pathing issue where it was like there was a very specific path they wanted me to take and I went off of it and then the

person like, all right, I'll see you later. I'm like, well, no, we're, I'm still going towards the objective. I had to double back to get them and walk around. Add one where my, I was supposed to follow a character and for maybe like 30 seconds they did not, they couldn't get with their pathing where like they were walking. I was following them and then like they took an accidental right and then they were just like looking every single direction trying to figure out how to get back on the path. And like yeah, I could tell, it was a, it was a thing. It was a few times where I had to follow characters where I felt like, okay, are you going to get lost? Are you good? And then thankfully, they'll be on their path. But it was that one time where I was like,

you're lost, aren't you? You're like, you're gone right now. I only had about like me plus or minus a dozen bugs, which is still like fairly significant as many times I don't have any. So I think it is, you know, worth definitely worth mentioning. And it gives me some concern for how like launch is going to go, just in the sense that if I'm, you know, I think if I had Andy's experience, I might even have like a different opinion of the game. If it was that severe, like, And he's describing some like real wild stuff. Like I was tracking a lot of the bugs I had and most of them were, I had the random to black like loading in thing happened a few times.

I had one really wild one where like the floor like my characters were fine and then it was like fine after a few seconds, but the ground just disappeared. It was just all black. Like I was just standing on a black like arena like fighting someone and I'm like, we're just gonna keep going and it like loaded in a few seconds later. And I had this really weird one that happened a couple times where, um, I call it like the infinite like looting bug where I would like interact with like a crate and you know, she makes this like animation as she's like getting the stuff out of the crate and she just kept

doing that for like or like picking up like you know grass or something or like the you know health thing and she just kept she was stuck in animation I had to just close the game. I had one time where that bug happened and the game crashed on me like I had at least at least two or three crashes. So I definitely think it's worth noting. Hopefully by the time people actually play this they'll be like I don't know what y'all were talking about. It was totally fine. But it does give me concern that someone could get, like, massively unlucky and have, like, maybe a really bad experience. Yeah, I think it's worth noting that, like, yeah, we're playing before and after the day one patch. And Andy talking about his bugs played mostly after the day one patch.

And I played mostly before, and I still encountered a few things after the day one patch. And, you know, to grant context, you mentioned, like, bugs affecting our opinion of the game. I'm also coming, most of us here are actually coming off of Dying Light 2, which is why I say that my bugs in this game are minor, because my bugs in Dyn Light 2. were major, right? Like, I felt like the bugs, game breaking in a way where the bugs I had in Dyne Light 2, I would say were less consistent, but when they happened, yeah, they were really bad. And I, for me, like, I think the big example for me reviewing a game that had a lot of bugs with cyberpunk 2077, which I could not get away from the bugs. Like, the bugs were persistent throughout the entire game. And that was a game I reviewed before the day one patch and, like,

after the day one patch went through, steal bugs. And so, like, you know, comparing Horizon from Ben West to those games, I'll say it's better, but they are present and they are work knowing about because like I would imagine that a lot of people playing the game are going to experience a lot of these things. Yeah, I would just also say on that, like I say, it sounds like we all experienced some level of bugs while we played, but at no point for me, did it ever feel game breaking, that it felt immersion breaking like it completely took me out of what I was doing. It was kind of, uh, okay, this bug, all right, okay, now I can keep going and doing, doing whatever it is I was doing at the time. So in that sense, especially since after the day one patch, I think,

people some people will encounter some bugs but mostly they're going to be minor i don't think yeah i think i think we're spending a lot of time on it here but i think that's only because probably i think it was unexpected with how good and how well the original horizon ran and enacted right i mean we're still talking about a game that we all gave fives or a four to right that we think is amazing or great and so yeah it's just you know as it also you know in so many ways our hands are tied by not being able to spoil things like there's so much detail i'd love to get into and talk about that ending and talk about certain characters or certain things. You don't want to do that because we don't spoil the experience for you.

So it's easier to talk about what we've seen for gameplay, which I think we did in the beginning of how great these skill trees are and how you tackle it. And again, like, I think it's going to be really impressive to see how other people play. This is one of those games I'm actually excited to check in on streams and see how, I'm assuming Janet's going to stream it at some point, Amy's going to stream it at some point, see how you guys tackle a combat situation versus how I would do it and come in all stealth like or, you know, whatever you guys actually do. One thing I want to ring up really.

One thing I want to ring up real quick, because this isn't a critique, because a while ago, Tam mentioned a thing about how he reviews games, which is he reviews what's there, what isn't there, right? Because he can play backseat game designer however much he wants. But like, if he's reviewing a game, he asks them to review it for what the developer gives him, not for what he would do. There are moments in this game where I was surprised that there's not like a companion system along the lines of like what you get out of a mass effect. Because Horizon's Forbidden West, for what you guys mentioned, right? in the first 10 hours or so, it's very standard. Like, okay, yeah, this is what I got from Horizon Zero Dawn. But then the game opens up in really cool ways where it's like, okay, no, I see,

I see how they're making things fresh. And like, you know, these are things that I don't want to get too much in the details of because I think people out there should experience it for themselves. But I was surprised how much they took influence from things like Mass Effect and other RPGs, but then didn't go the full way. And one of the things I thought they were going to do, especially with us talking about like Aloys Army on PSLW, I Love You, like looking at the, marketing in the trailers and all that stuff.

I was kind of surprised there wasn't some kind of companion system where it is. I'm going to hang out with whoever, right? I think Aaron was definitely in the trailers. I'm going to hang out with Aaron to go on a mission. I'm going to hang out with XYZ character to go on certain missions and have it work that way where you are getting companion quests and stuff. I feel like the game sets that stuff up a little bit,

but then doesn't follow through. And I think, I don't know, I felt like it, by the time I finished the game, I was like, man, this felt like it was almost missing. Like, I wish this is here. Well, I think it's interesting, yeah, because they do so much with Panyi and like we were talking I was talking about earlier where I don't think the side quests or Mass Effect two kind of side quests or you know companion quests or loyalty quests and so yeah I think it also I wonder how much of that's influenced by the fact of course there was you know rumors slash

well there's rumors and then there were job postings for multiplayer over a gorilla what does it actually look like where could they take the franchise and you had your hand up sorry um yeah I wanted to point out the uh something we talked about like two hours ago at this point now but the uh I didn't like the glider. What? Really? I don't want it. I second Andy's assessment there.

I wanted it to feel good. I just, maybe it was like too much of the dual sense trying to take, take center seat. Dual sense, chill out with the vibration. No bike. No bike. Enter to chat, everybody.

It felt like it was fighting back at me. Like I, I wanted it to just feel better and I, it was more, it was more of a fuel thing. Obviously, I use it a lot because it's, It's a really important utility to have, but I just wasn't a fan of, like, the way that it felt using it. Like, I, uh, Bear and I had the exact same thought of like, like, if you're going to copy breath of the wild, just make it feel exactly like it.

And that would have been perfect for me. But I just had a, yeah, it just didn't feel as good as I wanted it to feel. Um, and to, to jump off of you all mentioning just like the gameplay and stuff like that, uh, in terms of multiplayer and things like that, like, God damn, this would be the perfect multiplayer game. This would be the perfect. Blessing and I were talking about it a bit, but like just having

that Ghost of Tsushima multiplayer experience, but somebody's going to go melee, somebody's going to go this and that. I want to upgrade this piece of armor and go get that component from this enemy, make sure that you're not destroying it. Like all of that stuff. Yeah, like having a bud that was like going all in on the lightning

like arrows, right? They have all lightning element or somebody else who's all fire or somebody else is all healing or like somebody else who's all adhesive so they can trap the enemies so that my friends can go take him down. Just make it monster hunter. Yeah, they have all the makings of like a monster hunter spit off type game and like I hope they make it. Like I'm not convinced that they're, well, I'm a little convinced that they will but like I'm not 100% but I think it'll be really

cool because I mean the gameplay in this one really does shine so well. I don't see why not with the fact that like ghost is sushi with a multiplayer is something that I wouldn't have thought was going to be good. That sounded like a weird thing, a weird addition and it worked out perfectly and they nailed the formula. And I think that I think those teams talk to the, I think the guerrilla teams talk to the ghost team to say how did you all do this? We want to do something like that for our game. And they have

a, they have the perfect formula for a really cool multiplayer experience. Well, a couple things on that. It goes back to what Greg brought up earlier. I don't, I don't think they'll be able to do that until they get actual loadouts into the games. But, you know, because that's where that's really going to come in handy, having specific loadouts for different, obviously, in a multiplayer, certain different encounters that you'll potentially have where, oh, shit, he's coming with this. I need to flip over to this load out, be able to take them out kind of thing. The other part of that obviously goes into the news that's happening right now with the Bungy acquisition

and then talking about the live service games, this is where it's headed, right? This is where it's kind of leaning towards where you can see them having a Horizon live service game down the road. Now, if you don't mind, if we could take this a different route because we haven't really talking on this too much. Andy, you brought up a little bit with the dual sense. Shout out the Snowbike, Mike, you're wrong. The audio in the game, I thought it was phenomenal. I played with the 3D headset the entire time and just the audio reproduction that was

happening throughout the world was, it was phenomenal. Just I'm hearing little things off in the distance, right? Are you getting into these big battles and just the music just gets cranked up? And I thought it was, yeah. The score is incredible. The score is incredible. Yeah, it has that, like, machine feel inlay. It's like dubstep, but that doesn't go full dubstep

where you are hearing machine sounds practically in the score, which I thought was really cool and a big step up from Horizon Zero Dawn. And when I was playing sound-wise, right, I was using my Razor-Kaira headset that I just got. And I really liked it playing with this headset. Because this headset, the thing about it is that, like, it has haptic feedback in the actual, like, headset itself. So you hear and feel-

So you can, like, shot with an arrow and you could, like, feel that? Pretty much, yeah. Like, you feel the vibration. Oh, fuck. Oh. It's like, oh, god damn. Back of the skin covered in blood. I heard.

Why'd you do that? But, like, it is things like you are hearing, like, the deeper, the deeper tones get vibrated in the headset. So, like, if I'm shooting an arrow, I'll have, like, a small bit of haptic and stuff like that. That felt really cool. But also, you know, speaking of, like, Paris with 3D audio and how good the sound design is in the game, that was really cool and useful when hunting, where I'd be looking

for a rabbit or, like, that. an animal that makes more sound than a rabbit. And like, I'm like a boar squealing. Yeah, a boar or something. I'm looking for a cow. There's not cow in the game. But I'm looking for a cow and I hear a moo. And I'm like, oh, I know where you are now?

Yeah. Also, where's my animal farm? I was so sad. Then there's that one shop that has like far does farming. And I was like, where's the animal farm? Maybe next game. Because there does seem like there's going to be a third. I do think story-wise, one thing I really want to shout out is the way that I think the

gameplay and the story pair really well together in some of the bigger deal, main quests, again, like, not spoiling anything, but they're definitely like main quests that stand out in my mind, both mechanically and narratively, and they're often the same quest, which I think is super impressive. I was, like, you know, texting blessing throughout this, and, like, I shot Greg a message as well and was like, there's, you know, this story thing just happened, and I had just gone through, like, the most intense, like, battles of the game so far, and then, you know, they only got more intense as they went. Like, I really loved some of the challenges and some of the bigger deal main quests that I had.

Like I was looking at my Apple watch and like my heart rate was kicking up. I think I'm frankly like pretty good at Horizon. Like I think the game lends itself to my skill set and my style of playing where you have like that slowdown when you open the wheel. And I'm like, I'm going to keep this wheel open. So I figure out what I'm doing. Like I do a lot of those like cheesing strats and like I was really into the first game. Like I put like 60 hours, 70 hours into it. So I'd say I'm pretty like well versed in the game.

But I still found myself at those moments where like those buzzer beater moments of oh my God. My health is almost gone and I'm fired. You know, you get to that point where you're just pouring in arrows and you're like, forget aiming anything. I'm just, you know, there's only this much left of the health. Maybe, maybe they're rushing at you or they're charging their attack and it's like going to be you or them. Yeah.

I wish. So many moments like that. I wish I had more time to prep those, Janet. Like I wish whenever a new enemy was introduced, um, I wish the first focus moment was maybe a full pause stop. Yeah. as opposed to the usual slowdown that you get. Because I like kind of trying to be as methodical as possible

and knowing that this thing is expletable. And if I shoot it with acid, it's going to destroy everything. And I might destroy the parts that I need. So I really need to get granular with what I'm doing here and make sure that I'm targeting the right areas because there's definitely some parts that I don't want to highlight because I don't want to target those parts. And largely what happens is the enemy is introduced.

and it's go time. And based on your positioning in the battlefield, you may be too close up and it's like, shit, I wish I was further back. I just wish it that maybe they did this thing or maybe it's an accessibility thing that they add later on, but like the first focus pause you do in the beginning of a big battle,

it's a full pause stop. It's not just a slow down thing. I think that would be a cool addition. I think a nice, again, not to be like backseat developer, but I think like an auto scan feature in those moments would be nice if they go into like a pseudo cut scene, because one of the challenges with that, if you're meeting an enemy for the first time

where it's like a boss enemy that you're not really going to see again, you still have to scan the machine and it takes like a little while to get that to focus and get the info. Now you can, you know, hack that by like, once you scan the machine, you can go into like the menu

and then look at like the data point there. That's what I was going to say. And I don't think that's a hack. Like honestly, I would use that all the time where when I was scan an enemy, as soon as that scan goes up, I press the touch pad because it brings up the menu that shows like,

okay, this is what the enemy is weak to you. This is what they're, strong too. Like these are what all the components do. This is the loot that you're going to get off that enemy. I think that's a really, really smart addition to the game. Damn, I never use that. Yeah, I think it's exactly where you're asked for Andy. Like it doesn't you still do have to scan the enemy fully so you're

in danger during that moment. But so that first thing, usually you can be at a distance. You can be a bit better. I think needing though that extra step and needing to also go into the menu like you are your work. It is a strategy that is like a good one but is to work around that layer of that. I don't know if it's a work around.

I personally, well, this is like so theoretical. Like, I mean, I'm sure we asked the developers they'd have, you know, varying answers for like why they have, like how they imagine people using that functionality. I think it's partially meant for that. But I feel like, I don't know. I still think that initial scan if the enemy already sees you, which oftentimes when you are drop into these boss like scenarios, you're just like out exposed in the open. Even like scanning the final boss where I'm like, she's like, I should scan it first.

And I'm like, we miss that. You don't have to go. We just don't have to go. Like, it's over. you know um but yeah like i think little stuff like that could be you know nice editions jenn i think you mean i think you meant that she was like i should scan it first like i think that that's how she said it that's probably how she said it i do like what sad you know the death animation's so brutal also like it's so sad when a little died the ragdoll drop of dead i'm like does she need to like spiral underneath

the like you know feed of this machine like for 30 seconds i think i know she's gone like yeah she's classic i do wish that when uh you scanned i do wish that like enemies or machine that you've already scanned before, then automatically just, like, get brought up. I think that would help a lot with what Andy is saying, because it's like, I've scanned this enemy a million times in the past. Why are you asking me freeze? I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and that's the thing about it. Like, there's so many great systems that play here where I like the idea. I do like that, especially like, you know, not every razorback or, I don't know if that's one of them, I forget, is it going to be the same, right, where you scan it and is it fire, is it, ice, is it whatever. Like, I appreciate that there's that level of granularity to it about, okay, cool, I'm going to go in there and use that thing. But again, yeah, there's a few different ways of getting me that information faster would be

helpful. But it is a game that, like, when you were talking about earlier, right, looks like an uncharted, but actually, you know, wants to play a bit like fallout with VATs, where it is like, it wants you to have that plan. It wants you to have that plan of attack as you go into it. And I think, you know, to wrap this all up, because obviously we're going to talk about Horizon for Ben West for quite some more time. Like I said, PS, I love you today.

Get your questions in. Watch it on Tuesday if you don't want to be on Patreon. Let's play on Thursday. Obviously, streams and stuff happening as we get close. to launch date because we don't want to ruin things for you. For me, it's Horizon in Forbidden West, right? The things that encapsulates it, again, because we're talking about all this. And I do think it's great.

I do think it's a five out of five. Like, it was for me of going, the first time I saw a drone, it was guarded by a thunderjaw, right? And I was like, oh, man, I remember this guy from the first game. And I remember finally being able to beat him. I'll try to fight and just not doing shit damage to him and just getting climbed out and being destroyed. And then you jump ahead 30 hours or whatever. and one of the final missions I was doing, there's an apex thunderjaw I had to fight

and doing it and starting it. I was like, oh, I've got this guy's number. And that was the thing suddenly now of having, you know, this elevated skill tree, this fleshed out arsenal, like knowing all these different things, having my packs all set to go. At no point, when I ran in and lost the first time, I didn't think, oh, man, like I feel like they've tied my hands behind my back.

It was like that natural progression the game did to get me all the way to it. And now to be playing at the, you know, end game, right? and, you know, be running through, be super powerful, like, cloning out enemies that gave me trouble before, but still running into you. Like, I went to do a question mark the other day, yesterday, I guess, and landed there and started doing it. And, like, you know, I think he's in some of the stuff, but I wanted to say. A giant monster stood up. And I was like, I got this guy. You beat my ass.

And I was like, well, I'll see you in 10 levels. I'll be back. Yeah, the combat is one thing I want to talk about even more because I, combat might be one of my favorite things about this game. And it's funny because Horizon Zero Dawn combat just did not click for me. and it's not inherently different. It's not reworked from the ground up. It is very similar, if not the exact same combat system, but I think all the design around it is just done and executed so much better.

It's so refined. And like my arsenal weapons now, now that I'm post-game, and this is the same arsenal weapons I had going into the end game, it's like half purple, half blue. It is made of diverse types of weapons. It's made of varied elements, you know, from electric to purge water to like, you know, all this stuff. I go into any combat situation excited and ready to figure out how I'm going to dissect these enemies.

And it is that thing of being in the combat scenario, having like a, I don't know, a snap mall or whatever, like, about to come at me, but then like making that perfect aim of a shot that like goes for the throat and then explodes a component that it didn't know explodes. Like those are the moments for me that really made the combat fun and dynamic. And you mentioned that, Greg, that like it has that middle point of being this uncharted action experience in like this fallout vats thing. But I would say that it does better than both, you know, just in the way that you've, for me, at least when I was playing, I feel so in the moment. I feel like I have to be so strategic. And it has like, it has more strategy than uncharted, but like less of the cheesiness of fallout when it is that's like click something three times and like let it do the thing itself. Um, the action just feels so deep and yet like so refined in the actual like mechanics of it that I'm so impressed and I'm so into it. Damn, was that purge water or freeze or electric?

Fuck, let me go back and look. The amount of times that happened to me. Holy shit, the amount of times that happened to me. I feel that. Now, ladies and gentlemen, is why we think Horizon Forbidden West is amazing, except for Andy, who thinks it's great. Remember, like I said, so much more coming up on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games about this. P.S. I love you, XO, XO.

Your questions answered tomorrow on Tuesday. Get them in on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games right now. Of course, while you're there, of course, you can subscribe. You'd be able to write into other shows. You'd be able to watch other shows live like Paris on the X-Xcast, like Janet on PSI. love you. Of course, you could also get the show with the post show we do. We're about to do a post show right now for this one. You can get it over there and have a great time. However, if you have no bucks tossed our way, all of our gaming content goes up on YouTube.com slash kind of funny

games and podcast services around the globe. We've also got an amazing TikTok. Rogers doing a lot of great stuff there. You can go catch Blessing 60 second review of Horizon Furbin West on that right now at Kind of Funny Games. And of course, remember that this review is possible because the game was provided by PlayStation for review purposes, as they often do. Thank you, PlayStation, for continue to put us on the press list and not blackballing us so we can't play your games um we have a post show to do believe it or not ladies and gentlemen so for now blessing andy thank you for being here more importantly janet paris thank you for being here coming in and doing your thing uh janet where can keep up with you or you can follow me on twitter and twitch under the handle of game monosus that's

game o n y s us paris you can find me on social media at vicious 696 and make sure you check out xcast we talk xxbox stuff over there it's great Don't bother. Don't waste your time. All right. Gary hasn't played anything. Snowmike, Mike. He hates the dual sense. What's his problem?

God, he doesn't play Halo anymore. I heard that too. I saw that thumbnail. Get out of here. Give me some paddles. Give me some paddles, man. Come on, guys. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a post show to do.

But until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.