Review: Forspoken

New IP’s are tough to pull off these days. People say they want the new stuff, some new world to explore and story to be immersed in but unless the gameplay is absolutely perfect from the off and the hype train is storming along then people simply won’t buy that new IP, causing developers and publishers to fall back on tried and tested franchises. 

Enter Forspoken, Luminous Productions and Square Enix’s latest action RPG. It fell into this exact trap, but it is my belief that the game hasn’t been given it’s due credit as, while I admit it's not all perfect, once you get a few hours into the game and get the flow of things you will be treated to a cool world to explore with some interesting story/lore concepts and a battle system that provides some of the best attack animations outside of a Final Fantasy game. 

Forspoken begins in modern day New York, our protagonist, Alfre ‘Frey’ Holland is trying to look after herself and her cat while dodging local gang’s and the police. We find that Frey has a mysterious past having been orphaned as a baby and abandoned. After an encounter with said gang results in her home being burnt down, Frey goes on the run and eventually finds a magical amulet called Cuff and is thrown into a portal to appear in a world called Athia. 

It turns out that Cuff is sentient and talks to Frey via a psychic connection they share. Cuff is also very useful, granting her magical powers, both for battle and for traversing the world of Athia. That open world is massive and contains a lot of stuff to discover. Regular readers will know my disdain for open world games with too many icons on the map and while Forspoken does fall into this trap, it marks those icons with the rewards you get for completing them, be that mana, new gear or one of the various other collectibles.  

So I am a little torn on this subject, as on one hand Forspoken does fall into the checklist trap, but it never felt like a chore. A major reason for this is something that other open world games should implement, which is being able to add more than one way point to the map. You can have up to five going at any given time, as well as the one for your main story objective. It allows you to plan a path towards that objective while also picking up major upgrades along the way. It’s a genius idea that, at least for me, stopped the icons becoming a chore you have to do. 

It promotes exploration and, since the items you need to increase your magical abilities and upgrade your gear are just strewn about the world, you can get plenty for upgrades without having to grind out battles over and over again. Those items include glowing orbs of Mana, which is an interesting way to handle that age old mechanic and I really like it as currency rather than a meter that drops down to power your abilities and most powerful attacks. To be clear, you still have a meter to govern that, but it's stamina. It’s a little twist on the same formula, but keeps things that little bit fresher. 

As you travel around you discover that there is only one city left on Athia, Cipal, and everything else has been destroyed by ‘The Break’ as Frey dubs it. This is a miasma that corrupts creatures caught in it, causing them to become grotesque and powerful monsters with exposed bones and, for some reason, gold covering sections of their bodies. This fate awaits creatures ranging from bears to deer to crocodiles, and of course, the humans unfortunate enough to escape. 

The humans are just zombie mobs that prove, especially with the later powers, trivial to defeat, but some of the bigger creatures are no joke and can come at you with large groups. Each creature also has a weakness to a specific type of magic that Frey can use based on four elements: Earth, Fire, Water and Lightning. Switching between each magic type is easy and paying attention to what weakness a given enemy has is crucial to success. This can easily be found by performing a ‘Cuff Scan’ which reveals more information about the creature in question, as well as revealing collectibles and resources. 

The cuff scan becomes vital as some of the upgrade resources are really hard to see, because they don’t glow or anything like that. As you get close you do get a little, and I mean a little, icon on them to say where they are, but when using her magical parkour abilities Frey travels so fast that it can be difficult to spot them. This is especially as a lot of them are flowers that just blend into grassy areas. It adds to the overall look, but can be maddening when trying to farm for upgrades. 

The aforementioned magical parkour is a true gem of the game. While it can be a little hard to control in spots and you can easily overshoot things you are aiming for, the sense of speed is immense and charging across the landscape, flipping and bouncing over obstacles is an absolute blast. It again means that finding all those icons isn’t as much of a chore as it would be in other games and is a stand out mechanic. 

I mentioned previously that Frey has access to four types of magic. While one of those, and the first one  you get, is all Frey’s, the others are acquired by defeating the god like Tanta’s, beings of power that used to benevolently rule Athia, but now are part of its downfall. This concept is super cool and one of my favorite story aspects of the game, though the remaining tale falls pretty epically into “I can see where this is going a mile away” territory not long after you reach the magical land. It’s a shame that overall the story is pretty generic as there are some really cool concepts and lore dotted over the world, but I guess we can’t have it all and frankly, the game play’s so well you can easily ignore the story, though it does take quite a turn at one point that makes it worth it. 

Some of the magic attacks available to Frey are some of the coolest animations of any game in recent years. For example, one water based attack engulfs an enemy in a ball of swirling water and when you attack it, the ball explodes and damages everything around it. It looks awesome, and gives fights a spectacle only matched by using the summons in Final Fantasy. The basic magical attacks are just that, but with three levels and multiple options allow you to play around in combat. The biggest attacks are secondary magic, but even bigger than that is the surge magic, screen filling powers that at their fullest power destroy everything in their path in one hit, though I admit that does depend on exactly what you are fighting at the time. 

Charging up a barrier of molten rock to raise from the ground to hit anything Frey is facing is deeply satisfying and while not all of the abilities are particularly useful, and trust me, there are so many that there are more of those than you would really want, battles are fast and exciting. Fluidly dodging attacks while switching to attack magic before unleashing a powerful secondary attack before finishing a group of enemies off with a surge attack just feels great, and rarely gets old. 

Ultimately the biggest problem with Forspoken is the writing. As I said previously the story is as predictable as they come, which is disappointing but not the real problem. The worst sin is that when Frey is talking, while a fine performance from the actor, the dialog is just dire. I don’t mind swearing in games, or any medium save for content made for kids, but the way Frey talks borders on the unbelievable. I have seen things floating about the internet saying that if this is how the developers think New Yorkers talk they are very much mistaken. 

It can get grating when you play a game for forty odd hours, and this is compounded by the fact that certain actions have exactly one set of dialog. I get that the more sound you record with an actor makes the costs of a game go up, but hearing the exact same thing every time you interact with a certain object, and there being multiple objects of the same type around the world, gets very annoying very quickly. I almost would have preferred it to say the thing once, then never have a voice line again after that first one. To be fair, that does happen to some stuff, just not everything. 

Honestly though, go into Forspoken for the gameplay and you will be greatly rewarded with a fast paced beautiful game with satisfying combat and enough abilities to really play around in fights. You will probably take or leave the story, but don’t give in to the rumors, it’s actually a pretty great game, you just have to give it a chance. 

Review: Horizon Forbidden West

How do you know you are playing a good video game? For me, it was the fact I put nearly one hundred hours into Horizon Forbidden West without even realizing it. I thought I was on about sixty max, so the extra hours meant I was just enjoying the game. It doesn’t all hit the mark, but it's still a fantastic game. 

Forbidden West takes place a few months after the events of Zero Dawn and has you once again take on the role of the Nora Warrior and Clone of a thousand year old scientist, Aloy. It opens with Aloy trying to save the planet all by herself, believing it is her burden alone and not wanting to risk anyone else in the fight against the machines. Obviously this doesn’t last long, and soon you are sent out into the titular Forbidden West to try and find the games initial big bad, Sylens, the smarmy archaeologist and researcher from Zero Dawn. He is planning something big, and Aloy is out to stop him. 

At this point, the game becomes…an Horizon game. If you played the first one and loved it, there is much to enjoy in its sequel. The story is great though this is mainly due to a lot of excellent side quests rather than the actual main story, the combat is as good as it ever was with some fantastic new machines to slowly rip apart with an assortment of weapons and the RPG aspects have been expanded along with the map and some new gameplay options. 

All these things add up to a fantastic sequel to an already fantastic game. Unfortunately it is bogged down again by some graphic issues and real frustrations with climbing, which in a game where you spend a good amount of time climbing cliffs and buildings searching for loot and collectibles, gets tiring very quickly. We will cover the bad points later. For now, let's look at what's changed. 

Some of the changes are quality of life changes that are really good, sensible additions to the game, such as the ability to change the time of day at any of the numerous shelters dotted around the map. The climbing has been expanded too over Zero Dawn, so it's much easier to do, but that comes with its own problems, again, to be covered later. Your focus, when scanning machines, has been changed so that tapping left or right on the D-Pad will allow you to see the various breakable parts and weak points and hitting R2 allows you to highlight it. It makes it way easier to highlight parts during the heat of battle, and lets you learn what each weak point is so you eventually can do it by eye without the scanning. 

The best change, though, and one more games need to implement, is the stash. Horizon games are a collectible-a-thon, in terms of missions to do, weapons to gain and most importantly, resources to gather. Those resources could be machine parts, medicinal berries, animal parts for your pouches or a hundred other things. Normally you can only carry a set amount and once your pouch for a particular thing is full you cannot carry anymore until you use some or all of it up. Now, if you pick up more it is automatically sent to your stash which has an unlimited capacity and you can refill from that from any town or shelter with the handy ‘refill all resources’ button. 

It’s a brilliant addition and while some people might enjoy the need to keep collecting the same part over and over again, most will be happy that it just happens for you. Another change from the previous game is that you can now change the time of day at any shelter, meaning that the machines that come out at night can now be accessed much more easily, making the expanded grind that bit more manageable, and the grind is significantly increased. 

Gameplay changes come thick and fast. The skill tree system has now expanded from four to six and now includes a new addition: Valor Surges. There are two per skill tree, and range from upgrading the power and range of your traps, to making it easier to rip parts from machines. They are a great addition though to be honest there are far too many. One per tree would have been more than enough, especially since there are three upgrades per surge. 

When you remember to use them they expand Aloy’s abilities quite a lot, especially in tougher fights, but again, remembering they are there can be tough. I didn’t start using them properly until many hours in just because I kept forgetting it was a possibility. The combat options are pretty expansive, though to be honest it's more than likely you will just start shooting arrows until stuff starts flying off machines. 

Melee combat has been expanded too, now including more combos that are unlocked via skill tree and a kinda cool new addition, the resonator blast. Your spear builds up a charge as you attack, once it turns blue, hitting the power attack button will smack down your opponent and leave a blue mark on it. Firing an arrow into that mark will set off a massive blast for huge damage, and is one of the most satisfying things in the game. Especially when you pull off the combo that allows you to jump back off enemies and slow down time. 

Aloy has two major out of combat additions: The ability to swim and the pullcaster. Swimming is a cool addition that really adds to the size of the map and gives some new side quests to mess around with. It stops you from being able to fight, but the number of enemies in the water is minimal so it's not too bad. The pullcaster allows you to move things around and open new areas for climbing and exploration. It’s another cool addition, though can’t be used everywhere. That's where the Shield Wing comes in. 

The Shield Wing is all very Breath of the Wild, and yes, that does mean it allows you to glide down from things. When I tell you jumping off a mountain and slowly gliding down, just panning the camera around really does bring home how amazing this game looks. It is breathtaking, especially at night and is truly one of the best things in the game. Just the simple joy of taking in the view. While there is a photo mode, there is something special about seeing it as Aloy would. 

The roster of machines to fight has been greatly expanded, with many taking the form of dinosaurs rather than regular creatures. Another area Horizon really shines, the designs of the machines are something to behold. Remember that first reveal of Zero Dawn? When the Thunderjaw trundles into view and you went ‘WOW’? That is like every new encounter. Add to this the addition of ‘apex’ variants, that are black armored and way more powerful and the combat can be some seriously fun challenge. 

The story is good too, not as good as the first one, but still good. Aloy’s journey through the Forbidden West is cool with the main story, but it's the side quest where things really shine. These aren’t, for the most part, just a way to get you to go collecting things in the wilds. Some of them are unique story elements, and include some of the best representation in any game I have encountered in some time, let alone a massive AAA RPG such as this. It’s brilliant to see, it really is, but that representation is entirely relegated to the skippable side missions and that is where it sucks. A little more confidence that such things could be part of the main story would have had way more impact. It’s a real shame and spoils what should have been one of the highlights of the tale. 

That tale takes you through various biomes, standard stuff like snow and desert, and has you interact with various new tribes that occupy the Forbidden West. These range from the Tenakth, who worship ‘the Ten’, to the Utaru who are the farmers of the land. The main human enemies hail from these and other tribes from the first game, and form a part of a rebel band who can override machines and aim to take over everything, not just the forbidden west. 

I won’t go into further detail on the story, so I don’t spoil anything, but it takes some twists and turns and sets up a third game. All these changes are great but the game isn’t without its problems. The climbing is simply dire, no two ways about it. I was able to find multiple spots where I could cheese my way up a mountain by simply spamming jump because there were no climbing areas nearby. The climbing areas are indicated by yellow lines on rock faces when pinging your focus, though I highly recommend going into the settings and turning on the setting that allows you to see them at all times, it just makes it easier. 

This problem is compounded by the fact that you can look at the rock face you are climbing, see what should clearly be a grabbable/climbable section and be completely unable to use it simply because it wasn’t marked as such. It’s really frustrating and for a game that relies so much on climbing for exploration, isn’t really forgivable. I would say that making it ‘go anywhere’ but gated by an upgradable stamina meter would solve it, but that can be annoying as well and probably isn’t quite as easy to implement in a game this good looking and this massive as it was in Breath of the Wild. 

There are some issues in combat as well, especially against human enemies as it can be really hard to filter between multiple foes. Spamming attack helps, but doesn’t always mean you are hitting the biggest threat, and you constantly have to juggle the camera to make Aloy attack who you want. It’s a smaller issue than the climbing, but still provides frustration, especially in some of the side missions which teach you how to use unlocked combos. 

Switching between ammo types for attacking weak points on machines at first glance is easy, but the heat of battle changes things and it can become confusing as to which type you actually have selected, and this goes the same for weapons as well. The weapon wheel is brought up easy enough, but the game doesn’t pause, just slows, so you can still be attacked while you are picking. Quick decisions can mean you overcompensate on the stick and instead of choosing frost ammo pick , say, electric ammo which the machine is strong against. Like I say, annoying, but it's something you get used to and I honestly don’t believe is really a better solution. 

There are some graphical issues as well, not many but enough to notice. The main one being Aloy’s hair, which is some of the most annoying things I have ever seen. Serious, they can take the same assets, add it to a model of Medusa and be done, it would take five minutes and the hair would move like you would expect. On Aloy, it just doesn’t stop moving and its insane, it can really mess with your mind and gets very annoying very quickly.

Add to this the fact that the hair and a lot of the main models clip through the environment and each other at times and you can see why it gets distracting. These are the only main graphical issues, other than a bit of expected texture pop in, so its a case of taking these small niggles for all the other beauty.

The final thing I want to talk about is the accessibility options. While you get a lot of standard things to help players, you can also set some interesting things, like the health of enemies. The easiest of these is ‘story’ and means two or three well placed shots, even on the apex machines, takes them down quickly. Combine this with the ‘easy loot’ setting and the grind for upgrade resources or those collect x number of these missions becomes a breeze. I highly recommend turning at least ‘easy loot’ on, as well as the setting for always on climbing holds, as it doesn’t affect the difficulty but does lessen the impact of the RPG grind. 

Horizon Forbidden West is a fantastic sequel to the splendid first game, and while it doesn’t have the same impact, and the main thrust of exploration is the shockingly bad climbing, as I said at the start of this review you can tell you when you played a great game when you don’t even realize you have put nearly a hundred hours into it. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about exploring the Forbidden West, I don’t know what will.