{"id":533,"date":"2018-09-01T22:09:53","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T02:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=533"},"modified":"2018-09-01T22:09:53","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T02:09:53","slug":"game-ramblings-36-1-horizon-zero-dawn-the-frozen-wilds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #36.1 &#8211; Horizon: Zero Dawn &#8211; The Frozen Wilds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.guerrilla-games.com\/play\/horizon#horizon-zero-dawn-the-frozen-wilds-1\">More Info from Guerrilla Games<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=169\">Original Ramblings<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: Open World Action\/Adventure<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Horizon: Zero Dawn &#8211; The Frozen Wilds<\/em> does do a lot to generally continue what was great about the first one.\u00a0 The setting is still fanastic and drop dead gorgeous.\u00a0 The moment to moment combat is still a lot of fun with a lot of variety in ranged weapons.\u00a0 Exploration is still always worth it, with things to find all over the place.\u00a0 Basically, they didn&#8217;t screw up what was good.\u00a0 Luckily, they also fixed my two biggest gripes with the base game, and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ll talk about here.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_534\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-534\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-534\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_yellowstone.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-534\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This time around you&#8217;re running around Yellowstone and the surrounding areas. It&#8217;s definitely seen better days.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The end of\u00a0<em>HZD<\/em> really annoyed the hell out of me, and it was because of two reasons.\u00a0 The first was the lack of progression with the main melee weapon leaving the end hours of the game focused on much stronger ranged attacks, and the second was the design of many of the boss fights being an effective circular arena fight where you could generally stay safely at range the entire time.\u00a0 While neither of these problems really ended up being a killer in the game&#8217;s overall result, they were definitely annoying problems that left me scratching my head a bit.<\/p>\n<p>The melee weapon itself is definitely helped this time around by having an end game upgrade path.\u00a0 One of the first side quests you come upon when entering the new area of the game ends with you upgrading your spear to support the modification system that the ranged weapons all had.\u00a0 While I could definitely gripe about this being hidden behind a side quest, and I could gripe about the spear still not having inherent stat upgrades, this change alone is huge in changing how late game melee combat worked for me against higher level enemies.\u00a0 Now I could build the staff to my play style, whether that&#8217;s a pure damage build, one focused on debuffs, or one focused on getting some ticking damage out on enemies.\u00a0 While this was simply using a system that already existed for the ranged weaponry, gaining this system for melee was a huge change for the better.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_535\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-535\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-535\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_boss.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-535\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">While boss fights are still in relatively obvious arenas, they are much more varied landscapes, and the bosses themselves are significantly more aggressive against the player.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The handful of bosses in the expansion are also much improved over the base game.\u00a0 While they still take place in relatively obvious arenas, there&#8217;s a much better variety in how the arenas are laid out.\u00a0 In the example above, the player is sort of ducking in and around little outcroppings, giving a lot of line of sight breaking when fighting the boss.\u00a0 In general, that is pretty common, allowing the player to fight in a much more stealth-based way.\u00a0 This is really important based on a change in overall design of the boss AI.<\/p>\n<p>The original game suffered from bosses that could generally be kept at range, letting the player just kind of tick away at them with the bow with very little danger.\u00a0 The bosses here feel a lot more like large versions of the world machines instead.\u00a0 They move around a lot to keep the player from being grounded.\u00a0 They do a lot more melee and charge attacks, keeping the player&#8217;s dodging finger ready.\u00a0 Even when the bosses are doing ranged projectile attacks, the danger of being hit and knocked down is a lot higher due to the ability of the bosses to close the gap and melee the player while they are down.\u00a0 Overall the fights just feel a lot more dynamic, rather than the circle strafe grinds that the original game suffered from.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_536\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-536\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-536\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/hzd_lava.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-536\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Since this is Yellowstone, lava is the name of the game. It looks even better in motion than it does in screenshots.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Overall this was really just a solid expansion.\u00a0 It took what was great about the original and gave you more, and fixed a few of the larger problems while it was at it.\u00a0 The new content was a lot of fun, the new weapons felt impactful and slid naturally into my arsenal (super bonus mention to the energy projectile cannon you get about half way through the expansion), and the handful of new enemies fit into the existing roster really well while giving some new mechanics to watch out for.\u00a0 In general, this one leaves me wanting more of the series than the original game even did, and that leaves me excited for the future of the series going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Guerrilla Games Original Ramblings Genre: Open World Action\/Adventure Platform: PS4 Horizon: Zero Dawn &#8211; The Frozen Wilds does do a lot to generally continue what was great about the first one.\u00a0 The setting is still fanastic and drop dead gorgeous.\u00a0 The moment to moment combat is still a lot of fun with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=533\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #36.1 &#8211; Horizon: Zero Dawn &#8211; The Frozen Wilds&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,37,6],"tags":[18,35,48,29],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action","category-adventure","category-ps4","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-arpg","tag-ps4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}