Horizon Zero Dawn

They make a distinctive noise and don't immediately cloak, iirc

You can also shoot them and take out the stealth module

Stalkers were easily my most hated machines in the early game. You can definitely run away from them, but in at least a couple quests/areas you have to kill them.

They were the first machine to take me by surprise. Usually you round a corner or something and think "Oh shit, that's something new!" But these things started attacking me before I knew what was going on.

Just finished a couple of relatively easy Meridian quests, killing some bad guys (very RDR2) and getting a couple of different machine lenses, one of which I had already. Probably time to progress the plot a bit, though I did find another town with a few more side quests and errands, so maybe not.

I took a stealth machine down. I set traps then set off one of their flares, which attracted it to is doom.

One thing I haven't quite determined yet is the advantage of riding a robot from point a to point b over just fast travel. I guess for the scenery? Or if I need to stock up but don't feel like strolling?

I do like overriding them and just watching them fight.

I went on some fun cup quests last night. One of the cups was in an area with sawtooths and a bunch of flamethrower dinos. I recruited a sawtooth as my assistant and it was really a beautiful sight

I'm a little unclear as to "what weapon I should be using" and I'm going to do a google about it

From what I can tell, certain enemies are weak to certain weapon attacks, but in a very specific way. For example, longnecks (iirc) are super weak to shock, and afaict the war bow is enough to take them down, but other animals (like sawtooths or the snapjaws) require the use of specific weapons to weaken them (remove their tanks and armor) and then once you do they're pretty easy to take down with whatever.

My biggest confusion right now is what outfit to buy/wear, or how important it is beyond cosmetics. For example (and you'll appreciate this) I've never noticed armor making much of a difference in From games, aside from very specific situations/goals. Is that true here, too? There are dozens of armor sets at various strengths, for various situations and elemental conditions. And they, like weapons, can all be repeatedly modified. Am I really supposed to be switching back and forth between outfits and modifications as the situation calls?

Google reveals that most players are running with all three bows at all times! makes sense. I got addicted to the tearjerker sharpshot situation once I got it and quickly exhausted my supplies in that regard. Something called an echo pod or something is 90 shards a pop? expensive.

It seems I should upgrade to Shadow from Carja so I'm gonna do that. I haven't been consulting much or at all while playing

some armor has inherent percentages on skills, others have a bunch of slots to slot in the best armor mods you find

you definitely want to walk the upgrade tree (light->medium-> heavy) as they become available. if you’re more into sniping and stealth, stick with projectile protection as a base, if you like melee, etc

iirc the main differences with the different factions is carja have fire resistance and oseram outfits have spark resistance. there are a couple weapons where you end up shocking yourself and the high-end oseram outfit mitigates that when you’re grinding out the weapon upgrades

no spoilers, but it’s worth peeking at a guide to make sure you don’t miss picking up the components that unlock something special

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Ancient_Armory

(Do not click if you want to organically find stuff)

btw Ted Faro was a dick

I think I saw that when I was googling outfits, but if I recall correctly you can't get all the resources to unlock that until towards endgame anyway.

so far where I'm at, stealth is definitely overpowered. Or at least, I have yet to find something that is not better handled with stealth, if possible.

the tear aspect plus the right weapon gets really useful, especially in the Frozen Wilds. hard to take down some armored machines without ripping off some armor

You can't stealth oneshot the big machines, if the game even gives you the stealth attack prompt. With them, you'll have to engage directly.

You absolutely change weapons and outfits constantly, because as mh sez they all offer different advantages. At the same time, I only ever used one bow and was principally a melee attacker, and I completely overlooked several advanced offensive strategies.

And don't be too stingy with your upgrade tree, you can pretty easily unlock all of them if you do enough side quests and play the DLC (which also has the second best armor).

oh, I've totally been filling out the skill tree, those have largely been useful. In terms of weapons and outfits, I've yet to feel at a real disadvantage, but maybe that's just because I don't know what advantage they provide? like, in terms of melee, I can be taken down pretty easy if I attack a bandit camp, but on the other hand, it is me versus like 20 people, so it's no surprise they should be able to take me down. or a powerful enemy at this stage of the game, like a snapjaw, I can't imagine any armor makes that easy.

Long story short, would it behoove me to just spend a session tasking myself with obtaining the best various outfits?

nah, you end up organically getting the necessary things for the most part

Got it. This game is interesting in that it seems like a lot of weapons and outfits are sold by venders pretty early in the game, which makes them tempting.

OK, got a good rhythm going on here. Do a bunch of main quest, do a bunch of side quests and errands, do a side thing like the corruption zones or (as I find them) the cauldrons. Spend some time gathering, selling, crafting, spending. Repeat. Fought a giant underground thing in a side quest but not sure if I did it as designed, kind of an accidental cheese. I suspect I was supposed to blow up the blaze containers, but I just hid around a corner and kept shooting arrows as it appeared.

(Reviews of the new one I've skimmed predictably skew "more of the same, but even more, which is mostly great, except when it's not!", like they want to rave but feel maybe self-conscious about doing so?)

I've seen some raves and also some measured "more of the same but MORE," which is entirely fine with me as I'm in it for the story as much as anything else.

I have grown to love this game. For the first ten hours or so I wasn't sure, and I read those articles that were like "here's what you need to do, beginners" and none of them gave me the actual goods:

1. Kill enough wildlife to upgrade your resource storage so it's not a constant concern
2. Get the shadow bows

There is a rare thing happening here where I'm finding a use for almost all of the play functions. Between a hunter bow, war bow, sharpshot bow and a trip caster, I'm finding all weapons useful. Stealth is useful in certain contexts, resistance potions are a must in others, overriding certain key enemies is useful. I'm so used to having SOME aspect of play be redundant to my build and it's pretty magnificent feeling like "a full arsenal" is being used at all times

Yeah, I just took down my second cauldron, and I appreciated getting to use all (well, a lot) of my arsenal to make things easier. I felt very Home Alone as I set a bunch of traps and wires and got into position for whatever epic fight was in store. Haven't used or needed to use any resistance potions yet, at least not in purpose. I think I applied one mistakenly before the fight, but don't know which one. It was yellow.

I stalled out on this game early but the robot creatures with specific vulnerabilities do seem like a good way of making you use all the different tools? Sort of the opposite of the Dark Souls approach where there are a bunch of different ways to do damage, but it's all damage, and you pick the one that works best for you.

I do wish the weapon wheel slots could be expanded, though.

I don't know if stuff escalates as you level up, or just based on story progression or map region, but I was playing yesterday and trying to finish the tutorial for the shadow ropemaster (or whatever), which entailed getting the heart of a Robogator, when things got messy. First, I was not sure of the parameters of the quest: was I supposed to tie down the Robogator then carve out its robo heart? Unclear what I needed the ropemaster for. But as I wore down the robot (one of the tougher enemies) I was suddenly attacked by *two* other angry Robogators, and then as I retreated I was attacked by a wave of bandits, who at first I thought were allies until I noticed they were yelling and shooting at *me*. All of this while Robobirds circled (don't know why they didn't attack, too). Burned through a ton of resources just to get out of there, killing what I could.

Anyway, did kill two Robogators, but neither gave me a heart, so no idea what I did wrong, or even if I did. Regardless, it was all pretty tough, all at once!

this seems extremely BOTW-adjacent, i sunk 250+ hours into that and am plain burned out on the idea of an open world right now. i've had this saved on my PS for a long time, even did the tutorial twice without going much further. is this different enough from BOTW to pique my fancy? something about not just an open world, but a focus on inventory management and even mechanical monsters, ehh, i'm just a little offput

It's not quite as thorough as BOTW. That is, you can just play in BOTW as a sort of sandbox for long stretches, or riff on various mechanics, or try new things or whatever, if that's your thing, and this one isn't quite that, or at least those sorts of play style avenues are more limited. I stand by my initial assessment that this is like a less novel BOTW with better graphics, plot and characters/characterization, and if those things don't matter to you than it might seem a step down. Personally, I like how the plot is being driven, and Aloy as a character is a million times more interesting (as such) than Link on BOTW, even though I consider BOTW the better game, so ymmv. Like, BOTW truly felt like an open world (despite its obvious constraints). This one seems like more of the conventional AAA sorta open worlds that I've played, like God of War or RDR2, where it's less "OK, what do I do next?" and more a directed "I know what's next, but I'm going to do this other thing first." But again, I think that's probably because it has a narrative plot and afaict BOTW doesn't. \

Fwiw inventory management in this is nbd, no worse than weapon degradation in BOTW. I do think the mechanical monster are cool. Weren't there mechanical monsters in Zelda? It's really no different from that. Things you have to fight, things you can opt to avoid, different ways to fight different things, etc.

Lol

I was doing some booze errand and saw a vantage marking nearby so I went toward it

Ran into some stalkers! ok that’s fine, I corrupted them against each other

Oh no! some glinthawks in the middle of nowhere. Strange but dealt with

Then a holy stormbird? why? I exhausted myself but dealt with it, freezing then damage is a good way to butter a bread

And I get the vantage and move forward, curious, and stumble upon some epic ruins, start to intrude, and seemingly arrive at a dead end

A Google later, I find that I’ve preemptively discovered the Gaia Ruin and they are inhibiting my progress by withholding a necessary ladder until the mission is actually activated. Dang!

I tried a glitchy jump trick but it seemed far fetched so I left

I'm at the Olin excavation mission (which I'd forgotten about), with two corrupters and some cultists, and it's kind of kicking my ass, which makes me think I'm doing it wrong.

That’s a good one to do with 90% hiding and sniping iirc

Yeah, that's how I ultimately did it. I got to higher ground and just worked from there. Same with a recent corruption zone, the baddies just couldn't reach me where I was (though at the same time sometimes my bow can't reach them). Speaking of corruption zone, I was working my way through that one when a couple of glinthawks swooped in and killed the last robot for me! Aside from Aloy messing with them, what makes the robots fight each other?

And speaking of robots, I was wandering around on the map when I encountered my first roaming giant T. Rex super robot (Thunderjaw?), which I steadfastly avoided.

I ended up doing the jump glitch and I got the filthy armour early

Something I realized kinda only recently was how the fill gauges work with status ailments on enemies, that you only need to needle with fire arrows until the robot is on fire, that you only need to needle with freeze arrows until the robot is frozen, then switch to normal damage and so forth.

The only enemy I've genuinely struggled with was the first free-roaming Deathfucker. I died five times before reading up and 'getting' how overheating works etc. etc. then beat him immediately

oh my second playthrough I think I took out the first deathfucker (which is damaged iirc) in something like thirty seconds!

the one in the big warehouse space was more of a pain

Sounds like I have a lot to look forward to! And also that my instincts that this is ramping up were sound.

It's been a while since I had an Everything Must Go battle, where I basically need to prepare and end up using all my vital resources. That was he case for me in, like, Doom, and has almost been the case a couple of times so far here, though usually by design or when I get in over my head and decide to keep experimenting.

I think I'm reasonably good at this game, but I've found Thunderjaws to be challenging, Stormbirds to be a feat, and Deathfuckers to be an ordeal. I started enjoying my corruption arrows when there were, say, three stalkers running around, and was delighted to realize that they are n/a in Corrupted Zones, you have to fight clean or die

I still find stalkers to be rather bothersome! I don't get ropey except when there's a bunch of them, then I use shock ropes as buffers for a hasty retreat

The big birdies are fun to pin down with a bunch of ropes and methodically pick off all their weapon components

are they really called "deathfuckers"

I wish.

Something I've found tangentially challenging about this game is that I have the complete version, with DLC, but it's not always clear what missions or side missions are DLC, or if the DLC only unlocks when I finish the main game. So anything that involves snow or ice missions into the hinterlands I've generally avoided.

If you hit level 30 or so, that's a good time to do the DLC stuff

You'll know when you're there, because there's a pretty fraught chase bit to get into the area the first time

DLC is gated behind a specific part of the map, so you're not going to stumble on any of its quests on the main map.

I have a lot of map left to explore, so I guess I'll see it when I see it.

I'd guess I'm almost halfway through the main quest. Maker's End?

I think that's halfway!

By the way, with regards to that quest... just make sure you're collecting everything there is to collect as you go because you CAN come back and get it later but it's a chore to do so.

This game runs about 5000x quieter on PS5 compared to my PS4 Pro. I might actually play it!

fuckin’ Ted Faro

Just finished Maker's End. Deathbringer! Exposition dump! Lance Reddick!

This game is fun. I assume someone is already turning it into a movie/tv show?

Not that I know of, though this has more than a few similarities with the game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Mother

There is a secondary character named Trevor whose backstory, told in logs, is awesome and hilarious

Most of this game felt pretty popcorn but it seems as if I'm nearing the end of the main story and there have been some emotional moments, some real "wow I do feel very nihilistic now" moments

I came across a random side quest with a weirdo who drinks robot blood. After I got him the required blood, he has a vision of ... "Horizon Zero West"?

love that dude

I think I just got the final power cell, and if I didn't I must have missed an earlier one somewhere ...

OK, got my super armor (sneaky to put one back in the very first location) and I think am primed for the final/end battle of the game, but instead I decided to start the DLC. I think I read something saying that while it doesn't matter whether or not you do the DLC before or after the main game (the game I guess adjusts accordingly), the writer of the story recommended doing it before you finish the main quest. I did find that kind of surprising, because even leveled up well above its suggested start number that first enemy (demonic scorcher?) was *hard*. In fact, even though I destroyed it, I suspect it's mostly there as a warning and that you're meant to find a way past it rather than fight it. Sort of like sneaking back through your homeland toward the end of the game, which is full of tough enemies you can fight if you want but you're probably better off avoiding, unless you just want the challenge and/or XP.

Frozen Wilds is definitely harder than the base game, but I am also better armed and leveled up, which means the enemies aren't *that* hard, they just take tons of your ammunition, which for the first time I sometimes run out of. Anyway, glad I am doing this now and not after the main game, since I think it would be a let down.

Ok, finished frozen wilds and the main game. Really well done! Looked great, fun to play, great writing with nice emotional beats. I wonder if there is a different path to writing these things than there is to writing a movie, for example. They hit many of the same standard emotional /plot marks, but games parcel them out at a totally different pace. Anyway, good job, people that made this game. Look forward to playing the sequel in a year or so.