7 reasons you need to check out Horizon Zero Dawn

One of the most hyped games of 2017 is just a week away from release - and the first reviews suggest it will be a winner.

Horizon Zero Dawn currently has a rating of 88 on review aggregator Metacritic.com, with some claiming it's an early contender for game of the year.

The PlayStation 4 exclusive is an action role playing game (RPG) developed by Guerrilla Games, creators of the Killzone franchise, marking a bold departure for the studio into a far more ambitious game type.

It's set in a post-apocalyptic world where nature has reclaimed much of the planet and mysterious mechanised creatures roam where human masses once ruled.

Recently, I spoke with Horizon Zero Dawn senior producer Joel Eschler and got him to give me seven reasons why the game is worth your time.

Exciting, varied combat
"All of the enemies, all of the machines have their own tactics and weaknesses, which correspond to different items you can craft like fire weapons and electricity traps. You can approach any combat situation in a number of different ways," says Eschler.

"You can go stealthy with traps and bombs, or you can go full-on assault and try to craft your bow to be as powerful as possible. The enemies are really agile so you can't just sit still and fire at them, they'll figure out a way to flush you out. We wanted to make it really responsive for the player so they're always focused on their environment with several options on how to take the enemy down."

The post, post-apocalyptic world
"This is a post, post-apocalyptic world where nature has taken over the environment. There's still remnants of our world and our near future, but we wanted to create something beautiful with the foliage, overgrown jungles and that kind of stuff," says Eschler.

"Then there's these machines which are the dominant species in the world, so we have this juxtaposition between clean lines and really modern looking machinery, against a world that we can't even see because we've taken over it, now. But nature has taken over the world and the machines are looking after it."

Horizon Zero Dawn

Genuine (and sadly rare) originality
"It was amazing to get the faith from Sony to say 'We believe in you (Guerilla Games) to build a game like this'," says Eschler.

"Not only is it new intellectual property where you need to build marketing around it and get people excited, but there was a huge risk in going from linear first-person shooter (the Killzone franchise) to an open-world adventure game, on a scale that the studio has never made.

"It was a huge risk and even internally, there were concerns about pulling off something like this, with the sheer ambition of it. But Guerilla is filled with so many talented programmers, artists and designers and we're really happy with what people are going to end up playing."

Countless hours of exploration
"You can go through the main storyline and experience that, or you can go off on the side missions which are typically more personal stories, or you can do other side activities like cauldrons, hunting grounds and so on," says Eschler.

"But then, there's other little bits and pieces - it's a whole living world where you can explore people's day-to-day lives, how they go through the settlements, how they do their trade route. You can also check out ruins and some of the art work people have created throughout the world."

Pleasant surprises
"As developers, we love when a game comes out and you watch the Twitch streams of people playing it on the first day and they're like, 'Holy crap, this is in the game?'," says Eschler.

"Maybe it's a selfish thing for us, but we want to see genuine looks of surprise on people's faces when they see we not only built deserts and jungles and snow-capped mountains, we've built all this other stuff that no one has seen yet."

Aloy learns bow shooting in Horizon Zero Dawn

Attention to detail
"We crafted this humongous open world and there's so many different parts of it. But we took time and our artists had the passion to do overtime - and the skills - to look at all the ways an area can be approached," says Eschler.

"So if the player comes into an area a certain way, we need to see what it looks like at sunset, or when it's raining and the sun is rising. So we might put a tree in a specific spot because it makes an awesome silhouette. Playing it on the PS4 Pro in 4K, there's this extra level of detail and there's so many spots where I have to just pause, take a screenshot and then have a new desktop background for the day."

Value for money
"When I think back to being a kid, I only got one or two games a year - usually on my birthday and Christmas. You really had to stretch those games out," says Eschler.

"This is the kind of game that as a kid, you'd love to get, because you can play it all year."

Horizon Zero Dawn is set for release in New Zealand next week on March 1.

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