Horizon Forbidden West review – an eccentric adventure with robot dinosaurs

PlayStation 4; PlayStation 5; Guerrilla Games/Sony

For a big-budget blockbuster game, Horizon Forbidden West is extremely weird. It is a detailed science-fiction story about a red-haired outcast warrior, the tribes that inhabit a post-apocalyptic Earth a thousand years in the future, and a bunch of robot dinosaurs. It's a tangle of different ideas and complicated systems that only reluctantly interact with each other. It's also a damn good time, and especially on PlayStation 5, a stunning example of just how good video games can look in 2022. You kind of get used to its beauty while you're playing, but I found that whenever I returned to the game after making a cup of tea I was newly struck by whatever awesome scene was frozen on the pause screen: Aloy mid-roll away from a murderous mechanical hippo, or standing in the foreground in her war paint with an extraordinary view of mountains and snow behind.

It's when I was out in this world, following whatever trails I found, that Horizon made me happiest. I lost hours out there, retrieving random artefacts from old train stations or crashed planes, collecting SO MANY plants and materials to stuff into Aloy's magic backpack, and scrapping with the intimidating mechanical creatures that stalk the place. Getting into fights with these things is the absolute highlight of the game. They are aggressive, impressive and varied in both appearance and behaviour; they respond to you intelligently, and the combination of bows, traps and elemental weapons that you hunt them with can make each encounter feel like a battle of wits. It just feels incredible. I could play around all day in this place, trying to shoot the tail off a screeching flying metal monster so I can upgrade my bow.