Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon's highlight reel is unlike anything you've experienced before, but the time between these tentpole events could have been more engaging.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a work of considerable finesse and technical bravado, but it falls into the trap of past Guerrilla games in being all too forgettable. For all its skin-deep dynamism it lacks spark; somewhat like the robotic dinosaurs that stalk its arrestingly beautiful open world, this is a mimic that's all dazzle, steel and neon yet can feel like it's operating without a heart of its own.

It’s a world stunningly and meticulously designed – with the most care and imagination lavished on the machines themselves.

With Horizon, the studio is finally let loose to show us how much more they’re capable of, and what they’re capable of is jaw-dropping.

This is a game where, a full 32 hours after starting, with all the key mysteries uncovered... I still felt like I'd only scratched the surface. That's a rare thing in video games. But that's Horizon: Zero Dawn.

The other reason Horizon: Zero Dawn still holds some allure to me after so many blandly satisfactory hours is that it is unquestionably the most woke game released by a major studio in years, a “core gamer” game in which women and mothers are revered as righteous warrior goddesses and in which almost every single dude is either a maundering sad boy or an emasculated angry boy or simply a concerned bystander boy, waiting for your help. [Review in Progress]

At times it tries to do too much, but its ambition is refreshing, as is the fact that it somehow manages to pull almost all of its grand ideas off.