While both, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, and Horizon: Zero Dawn, are slated to be flagship exclusives for the PlayStation 4 next year, I am being completely honest when I say that one looks far more exciting than the other, to the point that my excitement for the other has paled to a subdued acknowledgement at best.
I have made my dissatisfaction with what we have seen on Uncharted clear in the past - it looks like just a prettier Uncharted 3, with no real evolution in gameplay, sans an appropriation of binary approaches to each encounter from The Last of Us - but it is only when you compare Uncharted with Horizon head on that you realize how much better Horizon has a chance of being.
- First off, Horizon just looks better. It has a far prettier artstyle, and it is graphically stunning. There are some noticeable framerate drops, yes, but the game is in a pre-alpha stage, and there is no reason to believe they will be in the final product. Uncharted, by comparison, while technically sound and proficient, lacks the personality and vibrancy of Horizon's graphics.
- Horizon promises to be a more interesting game to play, and with far more lasting value. While Uncharted has the multiplayer mode (that I personally do not care about, but it's there, so let's acknowledge it), Horizon promises to be a sprawling, epic, 30 hour open world action RPG, with thrilling, dynamic encounters, loot hunting and crafting, and exploration. Uncharted, on the other hand, is promising a tightly controlled joyride that is always through one path and one path only (though Uncharted 4 gives you more room to play within that path than previous games in the series did). Uncharted 2 was a revelation when it did this, because it was something new, but the law of diminishing returns has kicked in, and there is a distinct sense of staleness and 'more of the same' that is hard to shake off with Uncharted 4. And while I do speak out against the Ubisoft style cookie cutter open world games flooding the market currently, Horizon looks like a far more sensible approach to open world design than that.
- Horizon looks like it will have better combat. Let's be clear here, Uncharted has terrible gunplay. It's just awful, and far outclassed by other shooters. Horizon's combat, on the other hand, looks thrilling and dynamic, against massive creatures, where your skill and presence of mind matters as much as your gear or armor do. It looks very exciting, and at the very least, better than anything that Uncharted has shown us so far.
- Horizon has the better premise. We know the drill with Uncharted- old treasure, friend who betrays you, but comes over to your side to help you in the end (this will probably be Drake's brother, who will betray him on the adventure, but in the end, in a 'touching' scene of redemption, comes over to the right side, and dies trying to save Drake), and the treasure is lost as Drake barely escapes with his life. We have seen this happen and play out four times now.
Horizon, though? Horizon is new. I don't know what's going on here. We have a primitive, tribal society, with what seem to be high tech weapons, squaring off against massive dinosaur robots? What? Clearly, there is something more going on here, and I want to learn more. Lore or narrative, I don't care, but because Horizon is intrinsically new, it excites me far more on a personal level here than Uncharted does. - The one thing that goes in Uncharted's favor here is the respective studios' track records- Naughty Dog is an amazing studio who have done great things in the past, and deserve the benefit of the doubt, even if I can't bring myself to care for Uncharted 4. Guerrilla Games have made middling games in the past at best (though an argument can be made that they were just trapped by the Killzone universe; now, freed from it, they will get to exhibit their real ability), with Killzone 2 being the only standout, and even that not approaching what Naughty Dog has accomplished. Given that, I can see someone simply using studios as a reason to prefer Uncharted 4, which is the safer choice. I can understand and respect that- but everything I have seen of Horizon tells me that it will be better.
TL;DR- Horizon will be better than another fucking Uncharted, and Sony fans are getting all worked up over the wrong game. They've backed the wrong horse.
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