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Only on PS5
It was a no-brainer that the hit game Horizon Forbidden West got a DLC, very much like did the first game Horizon Zero Dawn. Even though Horizon Forbidden West got released on PS4 and PS5 consoles, this time around the DLC was only on PS5. I get where the developer Guerrilla Games was going with this; they wanted to give the best experience and heavily outdated PS4 hardware couldn’t porbably do that. With this, did the developer put the expectations too high?
Beautiful Horizon World
(Before you can play the Burning Shores, you must finish Horizon Forbidden West‘s Main Story by completing the final main quest Singularity).
Burning Shores DLC continues story of Aloy, the main character of the game series. This time Aloy travels to the south, former known as Los Angeles. The area has been molded into an archipelago. There is a new threat and Aloy must stop it at all cost. In her way she comes across with new characters and tribes.
The story was good and it didn’t contain anything extra. Everything was built up throughout the gameplay until the very end. As a character Aloy is still very one note, always tense—but this time she did show her other emotions. We could finally witness Aloys sexuality in the end, which was nice to FINALLY see.
The gameplay got basically nothing new, exepct some new weapons, which I didn’t even use. When I did play the Zero Dawn and Forbidden West I usually just stick with the main few weapons. I just see it cumbersome to try to use many various weapons in a battle, when they usually are very fast paced and barely time to react to anything. Some more experienced players will like these extra weapons and in harder difficulty, only using the bow isn’t going to cut it.
Burning Shores wasn’t difficult game, excluding the ending part where Aloy takes a lots of hits that are very difficult to avoid. I usually play games first on Easy mode then the next run is on Normal. I played Burning Shores on Normal, but I had to adjust the difficulty in the final boss. This is nothing new to me, though.
There’s also lots to discover—more than just the main story of this DLC—hidden things in the area and side missions. There were actually only three new machine types (if you don’t count the final boss), which I thought was a rather little. But thinking this is only a DLC, so it is probably enough.
All the visuals were simply just stunning. Very much like the base game, all the environments looked lush and realistic. Characters’ models and faces sharp, and skin life-like. Technically Burning Shores runs smoothly, if there were any frame rate drops I at least didn’t notice any. Well, I rarely notice them unless it’s very noticable. I did notice lots of pop-ins when I fly with my machine and little graphical issues here and there, but it wasn’t anything game-breaking. I also saw little bit of lazy design. There were collectable objects stuck inside walls and rocks that I couldn’t get.
Burning shores utilizes Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers with the controller. It is always a nice final touch to make the player immerse with the game.
Final Words
Burning Shores DLC was rather enjoyable experience. The main story was about 7 hours long and I didn’t have any dull moments with it. I don’t think there’s much more to say other than I do recommend this, if you already own the base game and PS5.
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is only available on PS5 at 19,99 price point.
SCORE:
5/5
“All the visuals were simply just stunning. Very much like the base game, all the environments looked lush and realistic. Characters’ models and faces sharp, and skin life-like”
One More Level 