DO NOT BUY Horizon Forbidden West - VERY Disappointing

Hello and welcome back to a new video game

review. So recently I've been playing the

brand new Horizon Forbidden West game on

the PlayStation 5, and as an avid fan of

the original game and open-world

action-adventure games in general, I just

had to play this game. Unfortunately, it

was a massive disappointment and extremely

lacking in luster. I can't believe Sony

has the audacity to charge £70 for this

absolutely abysmal video game. I just feel

so let down and disappointed by this game.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to

get my hands on a PlayStation 5. It was so

difficult. I had to do some extremely

questionable things in order to get my

hands on this PlayStation 5 in order to

play games like Horizon Forbidden West.

This is supposed to be Sony's flagship

game that's supposed to blow everyone's

socks off their feet, and I'm just not

impressed at all. So if you're unfamiliar

with the Horizon video games from Sony,

basically it started off with the first

game Horizon New Dawn, and now we have

this sequel Horizon Forbidden West, and

it's basically just like a rip-off of

Zelda Breath of the Wild with some Witcher

3 and some Uncharted elements thrown in

there for good measure. And you can

clearly see where they took inspiration

from when they were coming up with this

game. You can easily see that they

blatantly copied elements from Breath of

the Wild. For example, the cliff climbing

and the parachute gliding kind of gameplay

mechanics from Breath of the Wild are very

obvious to see in Horizon games, even down

to the cyberpunk-themed robotic animals

with lasers their backs is very similar to

the types of enemies you would encounter

in Breath of the Wild. Now, there's taking

inspiration from other games, and then

there's just downright copying. And as

someone who's very against stealing

people's ideas and an advocate of

originality, I just wasn't really

impressed with what they were able to come

up with in this Horizon game. So the

Horizon games follow the story of Aloy, a

young, strong, and independent woman who

knows how to handle herself in this

dangerous apocalyptic world. She doesn't

need a man to look after her because she

knows how to take care herself, and she's

on an epic journey with her companions to

travel to the Arcane Frontier, also known

as the Forbidden West, to find the source

of this mysterious plague. Now, I don't

want to spoil the story, so I won't say

anymore, but the story just wasn't really

that great in my opinion. I played it

until the end, and the ending was

extremely lacking in luster and very

disappointing and anticlimactic. The story

kind of feels like a very low-budget grade

B independent sci-fi movie, and it just

feels very cheesy. It's got all of these

sci-fi tropes. If you've seen any kind of

movie where there's some kind of

mysterious disease or virus and humanity

is on the brink of extinction and trying

to survive, then you'll kind of get a gist

for what kind of story this is. Now, for

the characters in the game, I really felt

like the characters were very uninspiring,

very dull and flat. I just found it really

difficult to get into the story. The story

just didn't hook me in at all in any way,

and that's a real shame because you can

obviously see that Sony is trying to make

this some kind of epic masterpiece in

storytelling. The main protagonist Aloy is

a very cut-and-dry, kind of like a wannabe

Lara Croft, who has none of the charm and

none of the beauty that Lara Croft has.

And as a 32-year-old virgin, I definitely

did not find Aloy's face to be beautiful

or up to my standards. In fact, I would

even go as far to say that Aloy is a

pretty ugly female protagonist. If I saw

her on Tinder, I definitely would not

swipe right. Every time she was in a

cutscene, I found myself desperately

trying to skip the cutscene just so that I

wouldn't have to look at her face. I just

really don't understand why Western game

companies have this strange obsession with

trying to make their female characters as

ugly and unfeminine as they possibly can,

in comparison to games like Lost Ark,

which was made by a Korean game studio.

So this is my character in Lost Ark. As

you can see, this character is gorgeous

and cute and feminine. This is what women

are supposed to look like, not like this.

This is Aloy from the Horizon games, and

she's just not really attractive in any

way. She just has no female qualities at

all. She even looks like Nikocado

Avocado's female sister. I don't know what

the visual art team were smoking when they

came up with this as a female protagonist.

You would think that they would try to put

more effort into making a more attractive

female character for the probably 95% male

player base. As a straight male, I just

found it very difficult to care about

Aloy's story when she's so damn ugly. If

she was more beautiful, I'm sure I would

have cared more about her story and her

challenges in life and trying to get her a

happy ending. It seems like she would

prefer a Happy Meal. Horizon Forbidden

West? More like Horizon Forbidden Burger.

I just really find it difficult to get

behind a female character if I don't find

her attractive. Either it has to be a male

character who's really macho and alpha,

and I kind of feel inspired by him and I

respect him as a male. If it's a female

character, she has to make my heart feel

tingly and beat faster, and I want to be

able to pine over her. But unfortunately,

I just really didn't find Aloy to be a

very interesting or attractive protagonist

or character in general. And once again,

the West has shown that they have no idea

what an attractive woman is supposed to

look like. Now, aside from abysmal

character designs, the graphical fidelity

of the game was also not quite up to my

standards. Even though this PlayStation 5

is supposed to have state-of-the-art

modern hardware and we're supposed to have

amazing new technology like ray tracing,

and this is supposed to be a

next-generation state-of-the-art video

game, I just didn't really find the

visuals of the game to be that great.

Sure, the particle effects look amazing

and some of the lighting reflections do

look pretty impressive, but I really was

not blown away by what this game has to

offer in the visual department. I found

that in my experience, the textures just

weren't very good and were not very high

quality in certain areas, and the pop-in

draw-in distance rates were just kind of

abysmal in certain parts of the game.

I've played games on my pro gaming setup

on my PC that look way better than Horizon

Forbidden West, and I'm running it on an

RTX 3060 graphics card, which isn't

exactly one of the most high-end expensive

graphic setups. So what is the combat and

the gameplay like in this game?

Unfortunately, the combat isn't really

that amazing either. If you've played

Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3 or

any kind of third-person adventure game,

you kind of have an understanding of what

this gameplay's game is going to be like.

It feels very similar to Zelda: Breath of

the Wild. You have a bow and arrow as your

main weapon, and there's also melee combat

and special abilities, but 99% of the time

you'll find yourself using the bow and

arrow. And as someone who doesn't really

enjoy ranged combat using a bow and arrow,

especially in a third-person setup, I just

didn't really enjoy the bow and arrow

shooting gameplay. It felt very fiddly and

very unresponsive and just didn't really

feel very satisfying when you get hits on

the enemy. I just found the gameplay and

the combat to be kind of boring and kind

of flat. I didn't really feel challenged

by the enemies. The enemies in the game

are just kind of boring to fight against.

They're all of these sort of robotic

animal-looking things, and then there's

also human enemies to fight as well,

which I find more enjoyable to fight

against. It's just the enemies are kind of

stupid. The AI is not exactly the best AI

in the world, and every encounter with the

enemies just felt kind of repetitive and

tedious. I didn't really feel like I was

having fun. I felt like the main problem

with Horizon Forbidden West is that it was

just trying too hard to be something that

it's not. It's trying to take too many

elements from other video games and trying

to make it as if it's its own thing, when

in reality it's just like a mishmash of

stolen ideas and not very original ideas.

And what you get as a result is a very

bland and uninspired video game, which

unfortunately I don't think I can

recommend at this price point of £70,

which is extremely expensive for a video

game. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend

buying this game, and I'll have to give it

a score of 3.6 out of 10.

But if you really want to give the game a

try, then I can't really stop you from

buying it. But don't come running back

crying to me if you've wasted your money

and you realize that the game was not very

good.