February this year is likely to be an unforgettable month in the gaming career for most game lovers, whether it is the already released "Extinction 2", "Master" or the upcoming "Old Man's Ring", all of which have put a few magic colors on this day that still has some old flavor. But even if it goes live in this blockbuster cycle, Horizon: Desperate West, released today, still has the potential to become a potential contender for what many people think of as the "best game of the month."
After all, as early as 5 years ago, Horizon: Dawn of Zero was once amazing with its beautiful graphics and solid game quality, creating a subtle post-apocalyptic style sci-fi world while breaking the outside world's doubts about Guerrrilla's "only FPS".
To be honest, despite the fame of the Horizon series, Before the release of the original work, Guerrilla, who was the creator of the game, did not have a high reputation, which largely made the lack of early publicity of Horizon: Dawn of Zero not get very positive player and media expectations.
Although he played in the Sony camp for many years as a first-party studio, he even developed "Killzone: Mercenaries" with "black technology" level graphics on the PSV, a less successful handheld platform. But one thing to say is that the only work that the Dutch studio really had before 2017 was the "Killing Zone" series. More than ten years of single-genre development process, and the fact that the diversity of categories is insufficient, Guerrrilla has long been labeled as a "Killzone" professional", and the output speed of a film in 2-3 years is not fast, which also makes the studio's production capacity look very questionable.
If you want to use one word to describe Horizon: Dawn of Zero, then the word "solid" is the most appropriate. While it still doesn't break through the traditional generalization of open-world gaming, Guerrilla has achieved the perfection of the PS4 generation at every level that technology can touch. To this day, Horizon: Dawn of Zero remains one of the most outstanding works on the PS4 platform, and it is not inferior to the works released at the end of the generation, such as "No More In the Past" and "Soul of Tsushima".
Five years ago, Guerrilla used the limited functionality of the PS4 to polish a delicate picture expression for the North American continent after the end of the world. Whether you're walking through the lush jungle or on a snowy peak, pressing the "Share" button at will makes it easy to get a photo-level landscape wallpaper. The vegetation lying on my feet as I sneaked, and the Tindall halo that diffusely reflected in the sunny sun on the meadow, impressed me with the production team's "anti-heaven" technical prowess when I first entered Horizon.
Based on top-notch graphic expressiveness, Guerrilla is the true protagonist of the Horizon series— a mechanical beast all over the world. Unlike the other mechanic enemies whose main duty is to "boost the fashion point", the mechanical beasts in Horizon: Dawn of Zero completely replace the disappearing birds and beasts in this apocalyptic world, becoming an important component in shaping the background of the story. Not only do they have feeding habits, predatory relationships, and population social systems like carbon-based beasts, but even on this apocalyptic journey to North America, you can see these "iron lumps" nibbling on grass like carbon-based cows and horses with horn mills in their mouths.
Surrounded by stunning graphics and stunning monster design, Guerrilla created an open-world gameplay logic centered on combat and hunting, complemented by a rigorous post-apocalyptic backstory, making Horizon: Dawn of Zero a work that was barely a problem at the time.
After the success of the original production, Guerrilla quietly devoted himself to the development of the sequel, with rare producer comments in the media and little rumor among players about them. The pace of development of the new work still seems to continue the Dutch studio's Buddhist tradition of "ten years of grinding a sword", and in 2022, when the "four princesses" returned home and the "five princesses" first appeared in the court, the half-generation-long "Horizon: The Desperate Situation of the West" was finally released.
Fortunately, slow work is a normal law applied to the "sword sharpener" Guerrilla, and the new game is also worthy of the player's long wait, compared to the previous game, it has made great progress in all aspects.
The change of generations and the strong performance of the PS5 have made horizons in the graphics and gaming experience of Horizon: Desperate west. Details such as the ravines on the surface of the rock walls and the texture of the roots of the vegetation are clearly visible, and even the smallest leaves of the moss lichen can be clearly distinguished in the picture, which is very detailed. The reflection effect of the water body can also be regarded as the "strongest in the game circle", and the imaging of the rocks at the bottom of the river will produce "size changes" when viewed at different angles, and the player has been given a junior high school physics lesson in the game. The reading of the disk completed between the breaths during transmission finally makes the experience fragmentation caused by the 2-minute ultra-long reading disk of the previous game completely a thing of the past.
In addition, the more varied and funky mechanical beasts, and several new items from Elloy have greatly expanded the worldview of the Horizon series and further enhanced the game's playability in combat. The heavily armed mechanical mammoth is extremely visually impactful, and the powerful firepower and heavy armor make people suffer in the research stage. The mechanical giant snake that breaks out of the sand beautifully reproduces the unique posture and movement of the snake, and can trigger the fear that is engraved in the DNA at a glance. Even the "Clawed Beast", which is used to replace the "Observer" of the previous game, is oppressive because of its velociraptor-like appearance and more elaborate mechanical structure.
In order to deal with these more powerful mechanical beasts, Guerrilla tailored a number of new guys for Eloy, and the active liftoff and rappelling abilities brought by hook locks and glider wings gave Horizon: Desperate West exploration and combat a whole new dimension in space. The completely reworked melee system makes the overall combat rhythm of this game very different from that of the previous game.
In five years, Guerrrilla has polished a new "Horizon", which follows the rigorous and attractive worldview and storyline of the previous game, creates a richer ecological relationship of mechanical beasts, completes the experience of hunting and fighting, and even the micro-expressions of the characters in dialogue are meticulous.
Horizon: The Desperate State of the West, which is still seeking a breakthrough in the traditional open world overview, may not be destined to become a "next-generation god work", but Guerrilla, who works slowly and meticulously and perfects all the elements that can be touched by technical power, may already be the top "knifemaker" of this generation.