Horizon: Forbidden West is already stacking glowing review after glowing review into its heavily feathered cap. One of the most anticipated games of the year, there was huge interest in the critical consensus when reviews dropped last week. The sequel to Guerilla’s hit post-apoc, open-world action RPG, the game sees Aloy venturing deep into hostile territory. Her mission: stop a deadly terraforming agent before it consumes the entire world.
The game was met with largely positive reviews from games press, including myself. I personally found it to be lovingly made and polished to a perfect shine, but ultimately iterative in nature. The new things it throws into the mix are meaningful but, to me, Guerilla seems more interested in fully nailing down those aspects that already worked. With its fundamentals now perfected, any third game in the series is primed for dizzying success.
I also have the desire to keep playing it beyond the review window. I feel like that’s the true mark of quality. You know it’s good when you chew through new releases for a living and still want to go back to it after.
Over on Metacritic, the consensus was a wide range of scores in the green, from perfect 100’s, 90’s, 85’s and 80’s. Only six outlets scored it below an 80. All of these reviews make fair critiques regarding the game’s weaker side quests, the metric ton of often unnecessary dialogue to chew through, and the way its elemental combat system can be subverted with explosive spearheads alone.
The user reviews told a similar story, with the lion’s share of scores sitting above an 8. At the time of writing, the community reviews sit at 4,222 positive, 229 mixed, and 889 negative. Of the negative reviews, most are complaining about graphics issues the team are already working to address.
But there’s something else we should address as well. As reviews rolled out, Australian outlet Stevivor began to take heat for its review, written by Joab Gilroy. Longtime readers of Kotaku Australia will be very familiar with Joab and his work, I’m sure. I’ve read Joab’s review, and I hope you do too because I think his takeaways are really valuable. Every one of his critiques is entirely fair, and well-rationalised. Naturally, deep PlayStation Twitter did not agree, deciding that both Joab and Stevivor were biased Xbox fans with an axe to grind, which isn’t true and never has been.
The brigading that both Joab and the site’s founder Steve Wright received, all from hardcore Sony fanboys who had not yet played the game, was monstrous. I don’t like using my position on this site to take a swing at fandom. It feels like punching down because it is. But here, a line has been crossed. To issue death threats and target someone’s husband over a review for a video game (again, a game that none of them had played at the time) is beyond the pale.
Reviews are opinions, and you’re free to disagree. That difference of opinion is why we have reviews in the first place. It’s so you, as a player and a customer, can hear a wide range of views and make a decision on whether to carve out the time and 100 of your hard-earned dollars on the experience. But going in on someone like this is never okay.
A pretty shameful week for Twitter’s hardcore PlayStation fandom. We send our love to Joab and Steve and we hope they’re holding up okay.
With that out of the way: it’s over to you. Have you jumped into Horizon: Forbidden West yet? Are you loving it, or did you bounce off it like a poison arrow of a robot meerkat? Hit us with your takes in the comments below.
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