Dan

Adam Tyner

I'm mildly annoyed that Best Buy isn't shipping out HFW until release date, so it'll presumably be early next week before I'm able to play, despite having preordered nearly six months ago. And if it's USPS, it might be even further out 'cause of President's Day.

Goldberg74

Can you switch it to in store pick up?

davidh777

How attractive is the preorder content? I’m about 60% through the first one and usually wait for price drops, but I rarely get a chance to play and talk about a game while new, so if I’m getting it soon anyway, I’m thinking why not preorder and get the extras.

Decker

They ship really fast though. I never get my preorders from them any later than release day.

Noonan

IIRC the pre order bonuses are just a glamour set of armor and weapon.

Adam Tyner

It looks like that window closed.

That used to be the case for me, but it's been hit or miss since the start of the pandemic. I've had at least 4 games ship on release date, a couple of which came USPS rather than next-day UPS, which pushed 'em out further. For instance, Cyberpunk 2077 got here 4 days after launch. (And I still haven't played it, so whatever. ) Nier: Replicant got here 6 days after launch. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and New Pokemon Switch were two others, although they were each here the day after launch.

Goldberg74

Got the email that my pick up from Best Buy is ready… but they don’t open until 11am.

I’ve got things to do before then. 😉

Goldberg74

I got hit with the glitch/bug in the tutorial mission, "Reach for the Stars."



I'm also making the mistaking the fact that I'm not as powerful as I was at the end of the last game.

Music

Uhhmm... What?

Goldberg74

Basic bow and arrows with little health. She had a run in with something and lost most of her gear.

Wouldn’t it be cool to start with what you had in the last game?

davidh777

So like new game+, with an actual new game?

Dan

legend.

Goldberg74

Exactly. 🤣

This game is beautiful and so far so great!

John Carpenter.

asianxcore

Ended up buying the PS5 version since my local Gamestop had issues with shipping, not receiving any PS4 copies other than the Special Edition.

Hoping to jump into this next week after I get a little work done!

Adam Tyner

Still hasn’t shipped, but I finally got a “Delayed Item” email, and the current delivery estimate is between Feb. 24-27. Definitely disappointed.

Decker

I picked up my special edition. Nice looking larger than normal, but shelf sized box. That's all I need. I took one look at the massive Collector's Edition box and said Pass. It's cool but I don't have space for a giant mechanical elephant statue.

maxfisher

I had bought the DLC for the original, but never played it and lost my save when I upgraded to PS5, so I just played through HZD and the Frozen Wilds over the past two weeks. Over the weekend, I made it through the first 5-6 hours of HFW.

I was impressed with the upgraded look of HZD on PS5, but HFW blows it out of the water. I’d say it joins Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart as one of the best looking games made to date.

I’m still on the fence as to how much I like some of the tweaks to the game. Initially, it feels like the weapons are a step backward in terms of their flexibility, but that may just be from playing with early-game versions of them.

I know they needed to add some new robots, but it seems kind of silly to have Aloy travel a couple miles beyond the massive areas of the first game and all of a sudden all of the creatures are new.

Also, I wish they’d taken a different tack to how they make things difficult. Especially coming fresh off a play through of the original, it feels pretty cheap for Aloy to have conveniently lost all her weapons and that doesn’t explain why her health and abilities have all reset as well.

In terms of improvements, I really like the ability to make a quest out of finding any needed resource. That feels like it will make upgrading items a lot easier.

I also like that they ditched some of the inventory management from the first game. I keep having to break resources down or drop them to make room in my pack in HZD. With HFW, anything you can’t carry just gets sent to your stash, which can be accessed from any town.

Having Aloy’s focus highlight areas that can be climbed is also a nice quality of life improvement.

It feels like they did a really good job at continuing the story, but I’m curious if it will be off putting to new players. Narratively, I feel like I’d be pretty lost if I hadn’t played the original.

Lastly, I realized that while I’d thought of HZD as ‘the robot dinosaur’ game and see a lot of sites refer to it as such, it actually has very few robot dinosaurs. I think the Thunderjaw is really the only one truly based on a dinosaur. The vast majority are pretty clearly modeled on animals contemporary to our time.

Dan

Yeah, lots of great things going on with this one overall, even if a few things seem off.
I'm playing in Resolution mode (so 30fps with better detail), but I also turned black frame insertion on in my TV settings, which seems to help smooth things out a bit. 60fps mode is probably what most people will prefer, but I'd like to avoid pop-in as much as possible. What they really need is a 40fps mode for TVs that do 120Hz 4K HDR, like Ratchet & Clank has. This is, as I understand it, the best of both worlds. I have yet to play R&C, though.
The game is downright beautiful. I can't wait to see more areas where the environments really change.
Swimming sucks. I hate it in most games, and I particularly hate it here, though I've only had to do it twice so far. One early quest wasn't bad, but I came upon a cave later on, and was quite literally stuck because it was impossible to find a way back out without running out of air. Had to go back to my save point.
I don't remember, but did the first game have enemy lock-on? This one doesn't seem to, and it's kind of frustrating. It made sense in Ghost of Tsushima not to have it, IMO, but here it feels like it's missing. I'm not just talking about tagging enemies. I mean having the camera lock onto them, which is particularly useful in some scenarios.
Dialog & cut scenes are a massive improvement here. Aside from one or two voices that are inexplicably... bad... 99.9% of it seems way more natural and fluid than before. This is top-tier, IMO, and should be what other big games strive for.
I couldn't care less about the Striker board game stuff, and I kind of hate when games try to shoe-horn in these kinds of mini-games. Luckily, thank goodness, it looks like it's 100% optional/avoidable in this game, so that's one thing I'm glad I won't have to grind through at any point.

Overall, this game feels great to play, and I'm looking forward to more and more time with it.

steebo777

I put in about 8hrs over the weekend and am loving every minute. All of the QOL improvements are huge, including highlighting climbing edges and inventory management. Looks stunning on the PS5.

davidh777

I'm about 60% through the original game and finally figuring out the benefit of hunting (I got discourage early with the lack of skin and bone drops) and component separation. I hope these kinds of skills will serve me in the new game.

Also the tallneck, yes?

Music

Yes, so basically dinosaurs and other pre-historic beasts.

Decker

I would like to introduce you to a female galactic bounty hunter names Samus Aran...

maxfisher

The tallnecks make me think much more of giraffes in their design than any prehistoric animals I’m familiar with.

Watchers and bellowbacks also seem possibly modeled on dinosaurs, but the majority of the lineup is pretty clearly based on animals alive today.

That’s obviously not a criticism. I just thought it was funny the game was firmly lodged as ‘robot dinosaurs’ in my head and I kept seeing reviewers use that description as well, but very few of the robots are actually based on dinosaurs.

Noonan

Probably because of the story? They wanted to give the impression of an ancient world with the first game....then you play the story and understand what's really happening.