HomeFeaturesHorizon Forbidden West
The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 16thGrapple with this door handle
Grapple with this door handle
Image credit:RPS
Image credit:RPS
It’sHorizon Forbidden West!
James:Structurally, Horizon Forbidden West adopts a fairly routine open-world setup, which I think sometimes gets lumped in with the kind of factory-produced map marker collectors one might associate with certain France-based publishing houses.
Fighting the robot dinosaurs is also a pleasure in itself. Partly because of the beasts: I love the detail of their creaking carbon fibre muscles, or the constantly spinning chainsaw-teeth on some of the deadlier predators. Mainly though, it’s just because there’s something innately satisfying about peeling apart a futuristic mechasaurus with a bow and arrow. Forbidden West leans into this even further thanHorizon Zero Dawndid, ramping up enemy aggression while adding a few new hyper-agile machines whose tricksiness encourages you to widen your toolkit.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/PlayStation
(There’s also a new grappling hook, which I remember finding sadly underused in the base game when I first played it on PS5 in 2022. However, the PC version’s inclusion of the Burning Shores DLC means you can add its expanded combat applications to your repertoire as soon as you get enough skill points. My favourite: a wonderfully gratifying grapple-into-jumping-spear-attack combo that instantly became my go-to finishing move for damaged machines.)
Headback to the advent calendarto open another door!
