Now Playing: Forbidden West

When Horizon: Zero Dawn released on PC in 2020 it quickly became one of my favourite games of all time. I loved the world, the characters and the story, but I also loved the combat and the creative range of options available to the player. So, as you can probably guess, I was very excited for the sequel to arrive on PC and I spent nearly two years avoiding spoilers for the game as best I could.

As I said in my First Impressions post, Forbidden West is probably the best PlayStation to PC port yet. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the game from a technical point of view. It runs flawlessly and looks absolutely stunning. It’s a real step up in terms of visuals from the original game, particularly in terms of faces and facial animations. The game is simply gorgeous to look at.

And, overall, I thought Forbidden West was excellent. It’s a fantastic game and a great sequel. I want to make that clear now, because this is one of those reviews where I’m probably going to spend more time talking about the aspects I didn’t like more than those I did. Because as excellent as Forbidden West is, I don’t think it’s as good as Zero Dawn and I want to explain why in the hope that the next game won’t repeat or double down on these mistakes.

Talking about story is always tricky when you want to avoid spoiling things but I’ll do my best. The story of Forbidden West picks up around 6 months after the end of Zero Dawn and sees Aloy attempting to locate and retrieve a back-up of the Gaia AI. The story is essentially split into three acts.

The first act is about finding Gaia and revealing a new threat. The second is restoring Gaia to full functionality whilst coming to better understand the new threat. And the third is about defeating the threat and setting up the next. I’m not going to talk about the DLC in this review as I’ll cover that separately for reasons I’ll explain later.

The big problem the story of Forbidden West has, is that what made Zero Dawn so compelling from a narrative point of view – discovering what happened in the past and uncovering the truth – is something that Forbidden West sadly lacks. That was to be expected, to a degree, as the ‘big’ mystery of Zero Dawn simply can’t be replicated here – it’s already solved.

Now, I can’t say I didn’t find the overall narrative of Forbidden West pretty enjoyable, especially during the first two acts. There’s a real sense of focus and structure to the plot as you attempt to locate and retrieve Gaia and are then confronted with an unexpected new enemy. It’s intriguing and it made me eager to press on. However, I’d say Forbidden West’s narrative problems start to become noticeable in the second act.

Whilst I liked the structure of it – hunting down the missing pieces of Gaia to restore her – the new enemy you face makes little to no appearance. You’re still very in the dark as to who they are or what they really want. The story relies far too heavily on long exposition scenes as you converse with Gaia or other characters, and this problem sadly persists throughout the rest of the game.

There’s a particularly annoying one around the start of the third act in which the game pretty much just stops so Aloy can sit down and chat for fifteen minutes. It’s like the game doesn’t trust the player in the same way Zero Dawn did to put the pieces of the puzzle together themselves. Everything is relentlessly over explained through dialogue, rather than allowing the player to discover and learn through gameplay. That’s something Zero Dawn did brilliantly as you felt you were learning alongside Aloy.

In Forbidden West, it just feels like every important plot detail is just thrust upon you and Aloy through lengthy conversations. This means that you never really feel that strongly about this new enemy one way or another because they don’t actually feature that heavily throughout the entire game in . . . actual gameplay. What you know about them and who they are is just told to Aloy through others. It’s that old ‘show don’t tell’ rule and Forbidden West likes to tell and tell a lot.

The same is true of another enemy – a rebel leader – who also barely features throughout and then, in the third act, her plot is abruptly resolved in a pretty weak final mission. In fact, I’d say much of the third act is a little weak. The last mission in particular doesn’t feel like something the game has properly built up to.

Once again, that’s something Zero Dawn did really well – giving the player a real sense of all those plot threads, enemies and allies, all coming together for a final showdown. You don’t really get that here. None of the plot revolving around the rebel leader or the local tribes really means anything at the end which is pretty disappointing because those were the strongest narrative aspects of the game as a whole. The last mission feels so disconnected from everything else. It’s like the game wants to compartmentalise everything rather than tie everything together in a meaningful way.

I’m also not sure I like the concept of the next threat the game sets up at the end. I did, at first, when it seemed mysterious and interesting. But, once again, rather than leave it somewhat ambiguous as to what’s coming, the game seeks to over explain what it is through lengthy and unnecessary dialogue that takes any sense of excitement away. It just doesn’t sound very compelling.

Okay, time to reiterate that, overall, I did still like the story. There’s some cool stuff, some interesting twists, and some fun revelations. It’s just not as well paced, structured or composed as that in Zero Dawn. I did like Aloy’s development though. I feel like that’s one thing the story really did do well because it was at least a little more subtle about it than everything else.

So, what’s next? Forbidden West is just too damn big. I think it’s best described as ‘overstuffed’. On the one hand, there’s some excellent side content to explore. In fact, all of it is excellent in terms of side quests and objectives. The game does a fantastic job with all of its side characters and missions. There was absolutely nothing that didn’t feel worth my time.

The problem is, the game also shoves in a lot of unnecessary and pointless filler content in the form of the firegleam and metal flowers. I kept hoping they would lead to something more interesting than another bloody supply chest but I was always mistaken. The Relic Ruins were also kind of annoying because they devolved into ‘push this block to climb up’ kind of puzzles. Speaking of supply chests, the bloody things are absolutely everywhere.

Forbidden West is a game that’s sadly bloated by too much stuff. Your inventory is a never-ending mass of machine parts, outfits, weapons, potions, traps and ammo. There’s just too much to keep track of. There’s new weapon and ammo types, but frankly, very few of them feel useful or effective. I love the outfit variety, but the upgrade system is such a tedious chore in that every single item has multiple upgrade tiers with multiple item requirements. It’s a terrible grind, even if you just want to max out a couple of outfits or weapons – especially the higher tier stuff which requires multiple rare machine parts that don’t always drop on a kill.

Combat in Forbidden West feels faster paced than Zero Dawn with more aggressive machines. Whereas in Zero Dawn I’d spend more time planning my strategy and using traps or tripwires to create ‘kill zones’, I rarely did in Forbidden West. I think that’s a combination of the faster paced combat and more agile machines – that always seem to jump over or around tripwires and traps – and how much a pain in the ass the UI is to actually select what you want to use.

You have an active inventory of tools such as potions and traps, but with so many new trap and potion types, it becomes an absolute chore to try to scan through on the fly and select exactly what you need in the middle of a hectic fight. In the end, it’s just not worth the bother. The same is true of many of the new weapons and ammo types in particular.

Aside from the powerful blast variation of the spike thrower, none of the new weapons or ammo types felt worth the inclusion when the most effective and fast way to take down any machine was to just stack up on their elemental weakness and then target their weak points after stripping any parts you need.

I do like the new abilities you can activate in a fight for various boosts or weapon skills though – they add a nice twist on the utility of each weapon type and how you like to play. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that more options are bad. I’m saying the options themselves are kind of bad. Most of the new ammo types feel more like novelty items than actually useful tools.

A great example is the shield variation of the tripcaster which is neat the first time you try it, but then realise it’s totally useless in a fight. Or ‘sticky’ ammo – it’s undoubtedly fun to use, but I typically never bothered with it in actual fights because it just makes killing things slower. Or the canisters you can attach to machines and then detonate . . . or I can just hit them with elemental arrows to achieve the same effect faster. There are better, more efficient, more effective and simpler options – that’s the problem. A lot of the new stuff just feels totally redundant.

I still really like the combat though. Stripping machines for every part is still as fun here as in Zero Dawn and the new machine types are great. I also appreciate the attempt to make melee combat better and they really do make it better but it’s still not very good. It still feels wild and imprecise and once again – not as effective as just using your bow.

One problem I do have with the combat in this sequel is how easily Aloy gets knocked off her feet. So many of the new machines like to jump right on top of you and even if you dodge, it’s easy to be knocked off balance. If you’re fighting a pack, it can result in a irritating chain of knock downs one after another as they continually fling themselves at you. Like I said earlier, the more agile and aggressive machines don’t leave as much room for tactical play. You don’t get to control the flow of the fight the way you could in Zero Dawn.

I did warn you this review would seem overly negative so let me say once again – Forbidden West is excellent. I just don’t think it’s as excellent as Zero Dawn. It’s too bloated and overstuffed and it falls into the trap of feeling the need to over explain everything to the player. That’s why I’m going to do a separate review of the DLC – because I need to take a break.

So here’s what I want to see in the next Horizon game – dial it the f**k back. DON’T TRY TO GO BIGGER. In fact, GO SMALLER. Keep it tight, and more focused. Let us learn alongside Aloy. Don’t rely on tedious exposition dumps. SHOW DON’T TELL. Cut back on all the traps and potions and ammo types. We don’t need more. Seriously. No more.

I’m all for variety and giving the player creative freedom but too much of the new stuff feels ineffective in practice. If you’re adding in new stuff, make sure it’s actually useful and serves a particular purpose. Make sure exploration is more rewarding than endless supply chests.

I really want to be excited for the next game and maybe the DLC will help with that, but I am worried that the developers will just push for bigger again when that’s not what made Zero Dawn special. It’s not what makes this game special despite its problems. Horizon is special because of its world and characters and cool robot designs and fun combat. The next game doesn’t need to be three times bigger. No. Just no.

8/10

Gallery: Phantom Liberty (Part 2)

Now Watching: The Marvels

Is Marvel or ‘superhero’ fatigue really a thing? I think so, but not in the way people usually mean. I don’t think the problem is one of quantity, but quality. With the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, much of Marvel’s recent cinematic outings have been mediocre and forgettable at best, or downright terrible at worst – I’m looking at you, Love & Thunder. So it’s not a surprise to me that The Marvels flopped when preceded by such a string of disappointments.

And it’s even less surprising when you factor in that other aspect of Marvel ‘fatigue’ – the shared universe in which everything exists to set up or to be set up by everything else. The Marvels is a film with three main characters – Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau. But if you’ve not seen the two Disney+ series which introduced Ms. Marvel or Monica, The Marvels does a terrible job of establishing who they are or what they can do.

The film begins as if it expects the audience to already be familiar with these two characters. We get a fast flashback montage for Captain Marvel which, frankly, is an awful and lazy way to reintroduce the character, but Ms. Marvel and Monica get nothing. And they were the two characters that really needed to be established for the audience because not everyone will have seen the Ms. Marvel series or WandaVision in which Monica was introduced.

Ms. Marvel with her energy and enthusiasm is easily the best thing about The Marvels, but I already liked the character because I liked her in her own series. But for anyone who hadn’t they probably wouldn’t have a clue who she was or why she was here. As for Monica, she was only a supporting character in WandaVision so she needed even more time to be established and introduced. But we get nothing. If you’re not already familiar with these characters then you’re shit out of luck because the film doesn’t want to take the time to set them up.

Or did it? The Marvels is unusually short for a Marvel film and all throughout the first 40 minutes or so I kept feeling like I was missing scenes. There are some jarring hard cuts during that opening and I’m really curious as to what was lost. The pacing is just too fast, which isn’t a complaint I’d usually make but in The Marvels, which is attempting to combine the content and characters from three different films and Disney+ series (actually, four I guess, if you factor in Nick Fury) it really needed to take it slow and ease the audience in, one character at a time.

Maybe the film did try to do this. Maybe it all just ended up on the cutting room floor. If that’s the case, then it was a terrible decision but that said, that isn’t the only problem with The Marvels. The overall plot just isn’t very exciting or engaging and the villain is terrible.

Now, to be fair, I’m not saying the plot and villain didn’t have potential, but once again, none of it is properly set up or established. The film just rushes along at a breakneck pace and expects the audience to know what’s going, who everyone is and more importantly – to care. But we don’t care. The film hasn’t given us a reason to.

The film can’t quite decide if it wants to be serious or not which doesn’t exactly help the audience invest in the plot or what’s at stake – we go from a harrowing scene in which dozens of people die to our heroes landing on a planet in which everyone is prancing about and singing. At that point, I felt like just giving up and switching off.

But I kept watching because I do like these characters. I like Ms. Marvel and I like Captain Marvel. I don’t know if I like Monica or not because the film gives her absolutely nothing to work with. In fact, none of them really do. What a waste. And then the film ends just as you’d expect – trying to set up the next thing. When will they learn?

4/10

Now Playing: Jedi: Survivor

I reviewed Jedi: Fallen Order back in 2020 and said – ‘I can’t say I didn’t enjoy playing Fallen Order but I also feel like the game doesn’t quite live up to its own potential. It’s the kind of game you’ll play but also be frustrated by because it just falls short in too many key areas.’ Well I’m pleased to say that this sequel – Survivor – is a perfect example of a sequel done right. It’s a game that addresses the flaws of the original whilst also building upon, expanding and refining everything that made the first game so good.

Jedi: Survivor picks up the story of Cal Kestis who has continued his fight against the Empire – a fight that feels increasingly futile. A fight that has also seen him lose touch with those closest to him. After an opening mission on Coruscant goes awry, Cal seeks out an old friend for help, which inadvertently sets Cal off on a new mission involving a hidden world that may serve as a safe refuge from the Empire.

Overall, I did like the story, but I do think it has a couple of problems. The first being how Cal just kind of falls into this plot by chance – he literally just stops somewhere to pick up some new ship parts and discovers some ancient Jedi technology nearby that sets him on a new path. Will of the Force? Eh, whatever.

I also don’t think the villains of Survivor are as strong as those in the original. Trilla was such a good antagonist in Fallen Order because she was a dark reflection of Cal. She represented what he could have become had he not escaped the Purge. But she was sadly underutilised within that game and I was really hoping they’d bring her back or at least hint of her return here – but sadly not. The villains in Survivor are fine, but none of their motivations quite added up for me or felt properly explored.

That said, what Survivor does so much better than the original is the development of our key characters. Cal feels much better realised here than in the original and I’m so glad they also gave more time to the supporting cast. All of the character stuff in Survivor is great, even though the overall plot – I would say – isn’t quite as compelling. It’s . . . fine, but I’d also say it’s unfortunately the weakest aspect of Survivor. I kind of want to dig into the plot more but it’s pretty difficult to say anything else without seriously spoiling things so I’ll leave the plot stuff here and move on.

In terms of gameplay, Survivor plays just like the original in the sense that it’s unashamedly derivative. But I do feel that Survivor does far more to create its own sense of identity. It cuts down significantly on the modern Tomb Raider / Uncharted climbing nonsense. Sure, there’s still a fair amount of platforming involved, but it’s not just climbing and jumping from wall to wall like the original was.

And whilst it retains the Metroid style map progression, Survivor has much better pacing in terms of ability unlocks and the overall map design is much more accessible in terms of revisiting areas. Whereas it could prove a bit of a chore returning to locations to explore in Fallen Order, Survivor makes it much easier – not to mention providing better reasons to explore with a significantly improved range of side content and cosmetic items to discover.

The Dark Souls style combat of Fallen Order has been significantly improved and expanded with more lightsaber styles, more combo moves and more force abilities – exactly what I asked for. In fact, it feels like everything I wanted and asked for in my review of Fallen Order has been addressed here.

The customisation options for Cal in Fallen Order were pretty terrible but they give you a fantastic selection of items here. It makes seeking out those unlocks all the more worthwhile. Not only are you exploring for fun, you’re also getting a neat reward at the end of it. The side content is also worth exploring with platform and combat challenges, Jedi puzzle rooms, bounty hunters to defeat, legendary creatures to kill and plenty of skill / health / force upgrades to discover.

There’s also a new ‘perk’ system that lets you further customise your combat style. These aren’t, admittedly, the most game changing kind of perks – they’re more about providing a small boost to certain things – but they’re a welcome addition nonetheless.

I also really liked the development of a location in the game that sees you ‘recruit’ people you meet on your travels and transform the location as a result. Unlike the first game which was very limited with its supporting cast, there’s a lot more characters to interact with in Survivor and developing this location adds yet more worth to your exploration beyond the core mission locations.

There’s just so much more content packed into Survivor and yet it doesn’t feel like they’ve bloated the game with unnecessary nonsense. Everything serves a purpose, everything feels worth your time and no matter where you go, you’ll always find something fun to fight, find or explore.

Visually, Survivor looks fantastic. The environments and effects and of course – the music – are all top notch. But I do have to address how shoddy this PC port of the game is. Survivor has a frame rate that just won’t behave. It doesn’t matter your hardware or your settings – it simply refuses to be stable.

I had a few crashes and sometimes when the game transitions into a cinematic it starts to stutter and you get a few freeze frames. It’s also ridiculous how the game has to ‘optimise’ files for 20-30 seconds every time you start it up. I don’t know what happened during development but something clearly was f**ked up. None of it is game breaking – just really annoying.

But, overall, I can’t deny that Jedi: Survivor is a fantastic sequel. Technical issues aside – and a plot that I didn’t find quite as compelling as the original – Survivor is a perfect example of how to do a sequel right. I really don’t have much, if anything else to say about it. There’s nothing really here I feel the need to criticise or complain about. Whereas Fallen Order didn’t quite live up to it’s own potential, Survivor does.

I really hope we’ll get a third game to round off this series. And if I must make a suggestion for the next one it would be – bring back Trilla! Oh, and don’t f**k up the PC port next time, please?

8/10

Gallery: Phantom Liberty (Part 1)

Now Playing: Ghostwire: Tokyo

I didn’t really know anything about Ghostwire: Tokyo going in but I certainly wasn’t expecting Far Cry with ghosts. Because that’s kind of what it is and I really wish it wasn’t. It feels like there’s a really good – maybe great – game buried in here beneath the layers of absolute shit. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know I’m not a fan of the Far Cry open world formula and GW:T adheres to that formula so strictly – and unnecessarily – that it makes me feel physically ill.

It’s such a f**king shame because there’s some great stuff in GW:T. So let’s get the negatives out of the way first, shall we? After an intriguing opening you are plunged into the open world of GW:T, and whilst I’m sure it’s a loving and presumably somewhat accurate representation of Tokyo, your heart will sink when you see your first radio tower . . . sorry, I mean shrine.

The map is covered by deadly ghost fog and you must ‘purge’ each and every shrine to clear the fog from the local area. This, in turn, unlocks the map and any local side quests in addition to vendors and other collectibles. So many f**king pointless collectibles. Now, I can’t say the Tokyo environment isn’t a nice change compared to the typical Far Cry rural / jungle themes, and I can’t say GW:T isn’t a very pretty game.

But what I can say is that traversing this open world is boring as f**k. You’ll rely heavily on fast travel to get around because there’s nothing fun or interesting about traversal. There are ways to rapidly ascend onto rooftops which you might think will allow you to parkour your way across the city. But no, that might be too fun. Instead, you just get a ‘float’ ability which lasts a few seconds, maybe long enough to reach a nearby rooftop.

Most of your traversal in GW:T will be slowly jogging from A to B. It’s almost like the game wasn’t designed with open world traversal in mind and all this unnecessary bullshit was added in later? Honestly, that’s what it feels like given how badly it’s structured within the game.

So, like Far Cry you get an extensive skill tree . . . that’s mostly just slight upgrades on abilities you unlock as you progress such as ‘do this 1 second faster’ or ‘increase radius of this by 1 metre’ or ‘carry 5 food items rather than 4’. It’s not exactly exciting stuff. You also get lots of collectibles to find like capsule toys, rare goods you can sell, graffiti art, world / lore notes, special spirit types and statues.

Oh, and 240 thousand spirits to collect that help you level up. Yes, you read that right. Thankfully they tend to be bunched together, so you can collect hundreds at a time, but even after finishing the game and unlocking the entire map after 15 hours of play, I still only had 80k in the bank. But then . . . what’s the point of these? I was Level 37 when I finished, despite not even collecting half the spirits and I still felt far too powerful for the last few chapters and boss fights that were far too easy as a result.

It’s almost like the game wasn’t balanced around all this additional open world shit. Or even balanced for an experience based level system. It’s kind of telling once you get to the end of Chapter 4 and realise the last 2 chapters take place entirely within a series of linear environments separate from the open world. It’s almost like the entire game was supposed to be a linear, more focused narrative driven action game but at some point someone decided to dump a terrible open world on top of it but they couldn’t apply it to the entire game. So they had to segregate the last few chapters.

The Far Cry feeling is really hammered home when the game gives you a bow and arrow . . . to fight ghosts. Oh, and a terrible ‘stealth’ system and ‘spirit vision’ to highlight objects and enemies within the world. F**k me, even writing about this makes me feel sick. You’ve got a completely unnecessary ‘Inventory’ of cosmetic clothing and a ‘Database’ full of useless information. And then you’ve got that map. That classic open world Far Cry map that looks like someone vomited icons all over it. And that f**king terribly bland UI.

The only good thing I can say about the open world is that the side quests are pretty good. Well . . . most of them. Some are just boring filler set within the open world, but many others actually take you to unique locations out of the open world – into a school, for example – and these small, linear, more focused missions are where the game really shines. It’s almost like . . . the game was designed for this kind of thing.

I don’t know if GW:T was designed with this open world in mind but it sure as f**k doesn’t feel like it. Everything about the open world sucks. It even ruins the enemy variety which, if GW:T was a smaller, more focused game, would probably be considered pretty good. But in the open world that spawns these f**king ghosts all over the place, you’ll soon get really sick of fighting the same five or six enemies over and over again.

I just can’t help but wonder if GW:T was originally built as a linear, focused 8 hour experience with no level system, no open world, no collectibles, no stealth system, no poor attempt at traversal mechanics and no f**king bow and arrow. I really want to play that game.

That said, the story and characters of GW:T aren’t all that great either. Our hero, Akito, is kind of a whiny git, and his relationship with his spirit guide – KK – ain’t no V and Johnny Silverhand. There’s a couple of moments of good banter and a couple of nice emotional beats, but nothing particularly memorable.

As for the combat, ignoring the bow – that actually makes the game way too easy – you also have magical attacks you can shoot like finger guns based on Wind, Water and you guessed it – Fire. It’s stylish and kind of fun to mix it up during battles, but it’s also undeniably shallow and lacks any real depth. And pretty much all enemies are defeated the same way – by pounding on them until their ‘core’ is exposed and then ripping it out. Once again, in a shorter, more focused game I’d say it was fine, but you really get to see just how shallow, repetitive and broken (with stealth and the bow) combat is the longer the game drags on.

Is that enough ranting? Okay, time for the good stuff. I really liked the focus on Japanese folklore and urban legends and spirits and all that cool cultural stuff that gives the game a unique feel. It also – because of that – has some cool enemy designs. And those smaller, more linear and focused side missions really are great.

The ones that really lean into the spooky horror element as the environment and reality warps around you. All of that stuff is a lot of fun and I wish there was more of that within the game. Unfortunately, you have to wade through so much tedious open world bullshit to unlock and get to those side missions.

And . . . yeah, I don’t have many more positive things to say about GW:T. Now, I know not everyone is as absolutely sick of the Far Cry formula as I am, so maybe you won’t have quite such an adverse reaction. But that said, GW:T is, to me, a game that does not feel like it was designed with it in mind. It feels like something shoved in needlessly to pad out a short, more focused experience.

I wouldn’t say it ruins the game – because you can focus just on the core quests if you want and do your best to ignore all that other shit. So no, it doesn’t ruin it, but it does make we wonder just how good GW:T could have been without it. If this had just been a smaller, more focused experience. Because once you strip out all the bullshit, there is a pretty good game buried in here and I can’t say I didn’t have some fun on those few occasions I was able to dig it out.

5/10

Forbidden West: First Impressions

I loved Horizon: Zero Dawn so as you can probably guess, I was super excited to play its sequel when it eventually made its way to PC. It sure took its damn time, and avoiding spoilers for going on 2 years hasn’t always been easy, but I was able to go into Forbidden West largely blind. And I’m glad to say that that this port – unlike the The Last of Us – is incredibly well done. In fact, it’s probably the best PlayStation to PC port yet.

Forbidden West looks absolutely stunning and it runs super smooth. Even without frame generation enabled I’m clocking an average 150 FPS at 1440p. I can’t remember the last time I stopped to take so many damn screenshots or use the photo mode – expect at least two Gallery posts for Forbidden West, maybe more.

Visuals and port quality aside, I can’t say I didn’t go into Forbidden West a tad apprehensive. Because whilst I had avoided any big story or gameplay spoilers, I had seen a general sentiment expressed that the game was great, but maybe not quite as great as the original – with the story going in a direction it seemed some players didn’t like?

I can’t really comment on where the plot goes yet, but I’m certainly not disappointed by what I’ve seen so far. I’m about 20 hours in although I must admit, most of that time hasn’t been spent on the main quest, but on simply exploring the fantastic world. I really like the map design so far, because not only is it clearly marked into individual regions, but those regions have their own ‘natural’ borders within – rivers, cliffs, terrain types – breaking each region into more manageable chunks.

It makes it easier to focus my own exploration so I never feel overwhelmed. I can set my own limits and know exactly how far I want to press. And that’s an important and perhaps somewhat overlooked aspect of open world design – building a map that offers the player not only scale but direction. Very few open world games get it right, but from what I’ve seen so far, Forbidden West nails it. It also makes my exploration feel rewarding as I’ve always found something neat at the end of every path – obvious or not.

Gameplay wise, Forbidden West isn’t a significant departure from Zero Dawn. It plays largely the same but with just more stuff. More weapons. More ammo types. More abilities. More robots. There are new traversal and exploration tools to unlock, although I’ve only got a couple of these so far. I am a little concerned that they might have gone a little over the top with the alternative robot types though.

The game has new elemental damage types in addition to the old, and more machines come in alternative variations with different weaknesses or abilities related to specific parts. I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing, more a concern for how much there will be to keep track of as I progress. You really have to spend more time scanning a machine pack to nail down exactly what version – or versions – of that machine you’re dealing with and therefore what they’re vulnerable or resistant to and where their weak spots are.

I mean, I love that the game gives me so many options in terms of weapons and tools, but the game already feels like it’s overcomplicating some things more than it needs to and I’m already questioning how useful or necessary some of these things – like the new ammo types – really are. But I guess we’ll see how it shakes out over the entire game.

Melee combat has had a welcome overhaul although it still feels rather random and imprecise. The new skill tree system is neat and lets you unlock a lot of cool stuff that lets you customise how you want to play or the kind of weapons you want to focus on. I also like the new weapon / armour system and I appreciate being able to set a different ‘visual’ armour to that which I’m currently equipped. It means I can spend resources upgrading my preferred set, but also be able to change how Aloy looks as and when I please without worrying about the loss in stats or skills.

Oh, and did I mention how pretty the game looks? The character models are top notch and the VA is excellent. And I almost forgot – Aloy can now swim. I’m limited how long I can stay underwater at the moment, but I suspect I’ll find an item to improve that at some point in the game. It really adds a cool new layer to the experience.

Overall, I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with Forbidden West. It’s expanded. It’s refined. It might – though it’s too soon to say – have overcooked a few aspects, but I can’t pass judgement on those until I’m finished. I’m going to take my time and enjoy this one.

Now Playing: Ghostrunner

After sinking countless hours into Starfield, Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3, it was somewhat refreshing to jump into a short, punchy little game like Ghostrunner. I played it over two days and clocked about 8 hours – although I’d estimate 4 hours of that was me repeatedly dying. I can’t say Ghostrunner quite clicked with me at first. I was expecting Titanfall with a samurai sword in which I’d be bouncing off the walls of a cyberpunk city cutting hapless minions in half.

And whilst that is, essentially, what you’re doing in Ghostrunner, it’s not quite the action focused game I was expecting. It’s a platform puzzle action game in that specific order. The bulk of Ghostrunner is made up of first person platform segments as you wall run, jump, grapple and ride rails in order to progress from A to B.

There’s a large dose of trial and error at play in some of these sections – in fact, in the game in general – in the sense that you can’t always react first time to the challenge before you. Only by replaying it and memorising the positioning of walls, grapple points or rails is how you progress. There’s a generous checkpoint system in place so if you do fall and die, you won’t ever have to replay too much but, if you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know I’m not the biggest fan of games that require trial and error to proceed.

Fortunately, Ghostrunner isn’t too guilty of this – at least in terms of platforming where you can rely, on the most part, on your reflexes and skill. Combat though is a little more trial and error based. There are times when you really just have to replay a combat encounter multiple times in order to learn the placement of enemies in order to plan the best route to take them out because you won’t know where they all are the first time and it’s easy to get hit from an enemy you weren’t even aware of.

After platformer, Ghostrunner is very much a puzzle game and the action sequences and boss fights are all little puzzles in their own way. That’s something that took some time for me to get my head around and I did find Ghostrunner pretty frustrating at first because I was trying to play it more like a pure action game – like Titanfall with samurai swords.

But it’s really not. You can kill enemies in one hit but you also die in one hit, and in an area with multiple enemies, the key is to plan and memorise the perfect route to wipe them all out and unlock the next area. Once I did get the hang of it – and the game introduced a few fun little abilities to help mix things up – I really did start to enjoy it. The game does do a decent job of pacing out new enemy types and new skills to keep things feeling fresh. The environments don’t change much, but there are new platform elements introduced as you go.

 

The best boss fight is easily the first – it’s the perfect example of a challenge that initially feels impossible and yet, once you pull it off, it’s incredibly satisfying. It’s fantastic and I loved it. Unfortunately, the next two boss fights after this aren’t quite so good. The second is fun, but pretty easy once you get your parry timing down and the last feels a little like a ‘we didn’t know what to do with this’ kind of fight. In fact, a lot of the end of the game feels a little like that, especially the last level, but we’ll come back to that later.

At certain points in the game you’ll enter the ‘cyber-void’ or something like that. It really kind of sucks and although this is where you’ll unlock your new skills, for some reason they put in these tedious sections where you have to collect glowing balls and solve basic puzzles. It just feels like dull, pointless padding.

The story and characters are pretty terrible. You play as Jack The Robot Who Growls and there’s a guy called the Architect who gives you directions over the radio who is clearly evil and will betray you at the end of the game. That’s not a spoiler because it’s so f**king obvious. The ‘lore’ of the game world isn’t well presented through the environment which is designed to facilitate the gameplay – in other words, it don’t make no sense as an actual, living world unless everyone gets around by wall running and jumping from floating platforms. Maybe they do.

There are collectibles to find but they’re really not worth your time. And whilst I appreciate the game doesn’t bother with intrusive cut-scenes, it’s kind of hard to listen to the dull exposition over the radio when you’re repeatedly dying and reloading on a tricky platform section. So yeah, you won’t know or care about the story or characters at all. At least, I didn’t. But I didn’t need to. Ghostrunner is a game that’s at its best when it focuses purely on its gameplay.

The game runs nice and smooth but it’s not without a bug or two – such as all the times I jumped through scenery and got stuck. Annoying more than game breaking because checkpoints are so frequent, but worth mentioning.

I wish I could say the game goes out on a high but the last level is by far the worst thing in the game. It really does feel like the developers ran out of ideas before the end so they just throw you back into the cyber-void and make you run a gauntlet of tricky platform sections in which they throw waves of deadly red balls at you. To make matters worse, there’s a few ‘jump pad’ parts that sometimes toss you away from the next platform you need to hit, instead sending you hurtling into the void.

It’s f**king terrible. Whereas the first boss fight felt like the perfect balance of challenge and frustration and then elation when you beat it, this final stretch is a perfect example of how NOT to do difficulty – it’s simply designed to be as tedious and frustrating as possible for the player for the sake of it. Dodging walls of red balls isn’t a ‘test’ of the player’s skills – it’s just some random shit thrown in at the end of the game that’s unrelated to everything else.

I really wanted to come away from Ghostrunner wanting to play more or to pick up the sequel, but I’m not really convinced. The fact the developers couldn’t even keep this game, short as it is, from feeling repetitive and padded isn’t a great sign, nor is how the game pretty much just gives up at the end like they really did run out of ideas.

I do think there’s a really fantastic game within Ghostrunner – that first boss fight is tremendous – but it feels like that fantastic game is really struggling to escape from a lot of unnecessary padding, dull puzzles and a pointless story. It’s a shame, and maybe the sequel does address these issues. It’s something I’ll have to look into. But if it’s just more of the same, then I probably won’t bother.

Overall, despite me going on a bit of a rant about Ghostrunner, I still think it’s a pretty solid and fun game. It’s certainly not for everyone – not everyone will have the patience even for its best sections, let alone its worst. It’s not amazing, but it’s decent enough and I’m glad I played it for those few great moments.

6/10