Horizon Forbidden West (2022): The Review
Overview
A triumphant blend of thrilling combat, outstanding creature design, and a captivating open world, Horizon Forbidden West is both an absolute blast to play and a stunning showcase of the PS5’s power. While the return of a few familiar series tropes and the limited climbing freedom keep it from feeling truly revolutionary, they never dull the experience. Instead, Guerrilla Games delivers a bold evolution in all the right areas, offering countless hours of adventure with Aloy, who continues to prove herself as one of gaming’s most compelling modern heroes. At this pace, Forbidden West makes it clear that for Aloy’s future, not even the horizon is the limit.
Score: 8.5 out of 10
The Positives✅
Horizon Forbidden West is what a sequel should be, confident, cinematic, and bursting with ambition. Guerrilla Games didn’t just make a bigger Horizon; they made a smarter, richer, and more emotionally grounded one. The world feels truly alive this time, from the lush jungles and golden deserts to the coral-dusted ruins of San Francisco, every inch of the Forbidden West is dripping with visual splendor. It’s arguably one of the most beautiful open worlds ever created, even in performance mode. The art direction, costume design, and sheer environmental diversity make exploration constantly rewarding, with settlements like Plainsong showing just how far Guerrilla has come in worldbuilding.
The story strikes an impressive balance between epic science fiction and personal introspection. Aloy’s journey, from isolated outcast to reluctant legend, continues to evolve, and the sequel wisely lets her share the spotlight with a compelling supporting cast. Saga-like companions such as Varl, Erend, and Zo give the narrative warmth and levity, while new faces like Angela Bassett’s fierce Regala and Carrie-Anne Moss’s enigmatic Tilda lend genuine star power. The writing shines brightest in its quieter moments, revealing the cracks beneath Aloy’s perfectionism and the cost of carrying the world’s weight. Thematically, the game’s core conflict, between nature and machine, life and synthetic rebirth, feels sharper and more resonant than ever.
Then there’s the combat, a masterclass in mechanical design. Horizon’s trademark bow-based battles are back, but now layered with even more strategic depth. The new weapons, from the explosive Spike Thrower to the enhanced elemental ammo, give players more ways to dismantle machines piece by piece. Every encounter feels like a puzzle: strip off armor plates, disable weapons, exploit elemental weaknesses, and adapt mid-fight. The machines themselves are spectacular, aggressive, cunning, and terrifying in motion. Taking down a Tremortusk or Thunderjaw feels like orchestrating chaos, and the game never stops throwing inventive enemy designs your way. Melee combat, once a weak link, now feels powerful and impactful, while stealth remains a satisfying opener for any skirmish. The DualSense implementation deserves special mention, every bowstring pull and impact reverberates through your hands, adding tactile immersion that’s hard to beat.
Most impressively, Guerrilla finally cracked the art of the side quest. Borrowing inspiration from The Witcher 3, Forbidden West’s side missions are rich, emotional, and consistently worthwhile. Whether helping a tinkerer fulfill his grandfather’s dream or solving political disputes between tribes, every detour feels authored rather than filler. The rewards, both narrative and mechanical, are substantial, and they feed back into the feeling of a world that reacts to your heroism.
The Negatives⚠️
As breathtaking as Forbidden West is, it occasionally trips over its own ambition. The first few hours, heavy with exposition and callbacks to Zero Dawn, drag the pacing down before the new threats and mysteries take hold. It’s not that the sci-fi lore is bad, far from it, but Guerrilla sometimes forgets that long-winded hologram monologues aren’t nearly as gripping as the world they’re about. It finds its rhythm later, but the uneven opening may lose some players before the story properly takes flight.
Traversal, too, still shows its seams. While the addition of the Pullcaster and improved climbing is welcome, Aloy remains oddly restricted for a heroine of her agility. Being unable to scale small ledges or freely climb walls feels archaic in 2022, especially when contemporaries like Breath of the Wild or Assassin’s Creed offer near-total freedom. The grappling hook is more functional than fun, a situational tool rather than a genuine mobility upgrade. These constraints are sometimes highlighted in combat, when a desperate attempt to flee or find higher ground ends with Aloy awkwardly pawing at an invisible wall.
And while the world is vast and alive, it can occasionally feel overwhelmingly busy. Objective icons, markers, collectibles, and side content compete for attention, it’s beautiful chaos, but chaos nonetheless. There’s also the sense that Guerrilla could have trimmed some excess dialogue; even great writing loses punch when characters repeatedly explain mechanics or lore concepts you’ve already grasped. Minor camera quirks and animation stiffness creep in during close-up cutscenes, but they’re small blemishes on an otherwise dazzling presentation.
The Experience 🎮
Playing Horizon Forbidden West feels like stepping into a living painting, a world teetering between ruin and rebirth, where machines roar across landscapes that are as deadly as they are breathtaking. Guerrilla has built a sequel that’s as much about growth as it is about spectacle, not just for Aloy, but for the studio itself. The cinematic flair, refined combat, and deeper human storytelling all signal a developer hitting its stride.
Every fight, every discovery, every dialogue exchange feels part of something greater, a saga of humanity clawing back meaning in a post-human world. The variety in encounters ensures there’s never a dull moment, whether you’re hunting rebel camps, scaling Tallnecks, or diving through shipwrecks for ancient tech. Even the small things, the glint of sunlight through crimson grass, the faint hum of a machine in the distance, make the experience feel tangible, cohesive, alive.
Sure, it stumbles now and then, caught between its cinematic ambitions and open-world sprawl. But when Forbidden West hits its stride, and it often does, it’s nothing short of breathtaking. It’s the rare blockbuster that marries scope with soul, a sequel that expands on everything that made Zero Dawn special while carving out its own mythic identity. Aloy’s world has never looked or felt better, and it’s a place worth getting lost in, again and again.
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