Set in the 31st century, hundreds of years after some cataclysmic event that left humans living like prehistoric tribes, while robots, taking the form of various modern animals and dinosaurs, roam the land.  Thanks largely to the art team, the setting feels natural, and not in any way a contrivance to mix bow-and-arrow combat with futuristic augmented reality HUDs and those super-cool robot dinosaurs.

You play as Aloy, a young outcast on a mission to discover what happened to the human race that brought them from being the globally dominant species, to eking out a way of life in pockets of ‘civilisation’. It’s open world fare, with gameplay made up of specific missions, and hunting the robots for specific resources, to craft and improve your arsenal.



Horizon: Zero Dawn Mar 2017 PS4 - Windows

Released in March 2017, it had the misfortune of coming out just before the Nintendo Switch released, which meant that a lot of potential players were focussed on something else, and the exploration of the open world suffered from (unfair) comparisons to Breath of the Wild. To get the negative points out of the way, the response to the much-hyped facial animation tech was not good, perhaps in part due to the unimaginative and overused over-the shoulder camera angles during dialogue.

However, there was a lot to like. The world is wonderfully realised, with visually-arresting tribe styles, a gorgeously-lit landscape, and although 21st century architecture overtaken by lush vegetation is a familiar sight to fans of apocalyptic games and movies, it works well. More importantly, though, that bow-and-ammo combat against cool-looking robots is an absolute riot once you get into the swing of things. The range of bows, arrows, tripwire and proximity traps, as well as the staff and weapons you could detach from the largest creatures meant that a variety of playstyles could be adopted in a single encounter, stealthing through the long grass with quiet kills and booby traps taking on outliers, before leaping into the fray to take on the rest.

Expansion:
The Frozen Wilds Nov 2017 PS4 - Windows

Comics:
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Sunhawk Jul-Nov 2020, collected paperback Dec 2020
Horizon Zero Dawn: Liberation Jul-Dec 2021, collected paperback Feb 2022

These are worth a look if you like the world of Horizon. They’re all written by the same author, but a different illustrator was used for each series, so it’s neat to see different takes on the same design. They also let us see more of some of the supporting cast.



Horizon: Forbidden West Feb 2022 PS4 - PS5

So far, this looks great, with a mix of the familiar and the new. The journey west appears to lead to more lush environments, with a shift to topical climates, moving away from the dry deserts of Zero Dawn, and snowy mountains of Frozen Wilds.



It’ll be interesting to see how Guerrilla use the haptics and adaptive triggers of the DualSense. If Astrobot, Returnal, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart are anything to go by, it should add to the immersion, connecting the player to the on-screen combat. Hopefully, there will be a little bit more imagination with the cut scenes (Ghost of Tsushima was criticised for weirdly distant cameras, but at least Sucker Punch were mixing it up). And, without mentioning spoilers for those who haven’t finished the first, it will be great to see where they are taking the story.