Horizon Zero Dawn

Soldato
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I can safely say 3440x1440 on ultra is supremely playable at 60fps. Really enjoying it the new patch has made a world of difference. The aspect ratio on load still needs an ALT+ENTER double tap to fix but hey, game looks and runs great now so a minor annoyance I guess.

RTX 2070S with a 6700K, I'm confident for cyberpunk now given that it uses DLSS 2.0.

I'm running this at 3440x1440 also.

I get two narrow (maybe half an inch) black bars each side of the display.
Nothing major, just curious if this is normal in the game.

Do you get this as well?

*EDIT

Never mind, sorted it, you have to have aspect ratio set to "Auto" rather than 21:9, meh.
 
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Soldato
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9,505
Just got this game a few weeks ago and finished it.

Wow, what a great game. Original, good action, etc. Hope the developers took a nice long holiday after release!
 
Associate
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9 Jun 2004
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1,399
Just finished it too.

The game just oozes quality. Besides the story, gameplay etc., not a single crash, bug, glitch or even annoyance through many hours of playing. This is how games should be.
 
Soldato
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I am absolutely loving this, the sounds when you hit crits are so good. Playing on hard which seems to be a little bit easy as I beat my first thunderjaw without taking a hit though stormbirds can kick my butt if there are other ground foes about to distract me.

It does make the 5820K cry though, the 3080 is a bit too powerful for it.
 
Soldato
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3,814
Been playing this since the post-Christmas period whenever I get a moment free, and been genrally enjoying it quite a lot. It has a different feel to most other open world games and it seems ages since anything seemed fresh like this in this kind of game.

I do like that even when you get to a high level the enemies remain dangerous. Sure, it's possible to take most machines down in fairly short order with the right approach once you get good weapons and mods, but going in unpreprared, messing up or just getting lazy and not using the right strategy and loadout can still see the death animation coming into play.

I have a few areas of irritation, though.

The verticality is really not well implemented for a game with quite a lot of it. Having to scour the base of mountain ranges or structures for the only possible, arbirarily predetermined, route up, whilst having to ignore numerous reasonable-looking but insurmountable climbs is one of my bugbears in games in general, and this is maybe the worst example of it in a good few years.

It is good that different machines require different approaches to take down, but the need to keep switching weapons to adopt the most efficient strategy can get really tedious when you have seven or eight weapons you would ideally cycle between as the situation demands but only four slots on the weapon wheel. I find myself going into some situations under-optimised because I can't be bothered swapping in the ropecaster or sling or tripcaster or whatever for the umpteenth time. Sure, you can play without doing this, but the game is clearly set up to reward optimising your loadout situationally and yet militates against doing so with an unnecessarily clunky system of weapon management.

It also takes the tack that too many open-world games take by requiring specific materials for crafting QoL improvements and weapons and then gating these behind stingily low drop rates. When you have spent a good couple of hours hunting down and killing some of the rarer creatures or machines and still not had a single part you need drop, that's a cue to tweak the drop-rate. Otherwise it just feels like artificial busywork to bloat the playtime.

Unlike some other people, I've not been that lucky with crashes, either, and have had seven or eight now in my 33 hour playtime to date, mostly when entering or leaving cutscenes. Thankfully not too much progress lost for any of them, but it has been annoying. No glitches or problems otherwise, though, aside from some finnicky climbing/falling physics at times.

I really like the world, the story, the atmosphere, piecing together the lore from various sources, and the combat is often really fun and feels fresh, but I do hope the forthcoming sequel tightens up some elements of the gameplay.
 
Soldato
Joined
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6,280
Location
GPS signal not found. (11)
Been playing this since the post-Christmas period whenever I get a moment free, and been genrally enjoying it quite a lot. It has a different feel to most other open world games and it seems ages since anything seemed fresh like this in this kind of game.

I do like that even when you get to a high level the enemies remain dangerous. Sure, it's possible to take most machines down in fairly short order with the right approach once you get good weapons and mods, but going in unpreprared, messing up or just getting lazy and not using the right strategy and loadout can still see the death animation coming into play.

I have a few areas of irritation, though.

The verticality is really not well implemented for a game with quite a lot of it. Having to scour the base of mountain ranges or structures for the only possible, arbirarily predetermined, route up, whilst having to ignore numerous reasonable-looking but insurmountable climbs is one of my bugbears in games in general, and this is maybe the worst example of it in a good few years.

It is good that different machines require different approaches to take down, but the need to keep switching weapons to adopt the most efficient strategy can get really tedious when you have seven or eight weapons you would ideally cycle between as the situation demands but only four slots on the weapon wheel. I find myself going into some situations under-optimised because I can't be bothered swapping in the ropecaster or sling or tripcaster or whatever for the umpteenth time. Sure, you can play without doing this, but the game is clearly set up to reward optimising your loadout situationally and yet militates against doing so with an unnecessarily clunky system of weapon management.

It also takes the tack that too many open-world games take by requiring specific materials for crafting QoL improvements and weapons and then gating these behind stingily low drop rates. When you have spent a good couple of hours hunting down and killing some of the rarer creatures or machines and still not had a single part you need drop, that's a cue to tweak the drop-rate. Otherwise it just feels like artificial busywork to bloat the playtime.

Unlike some other people, I've not been that lucky with crashes, either, and have had seven or eight now in my 33 hour playtime to date, mostly when entering or leaving cutscenes. Thankfully not too much progress lost for any of them, but it has been annoying. No glitches or problems otherwise, though, aside from some finnicky climbing/falling physics at times.

I really like the world, the story, the atmosphere, piecing together the lore from various sources, and the combat is often really fun and feels fresh, but I do hope the forthcoming sequel tightens up some elements of the gameplay.
Agree with pretty much all your irritations. Vertical traversal without the predetermined climbing holds is terrible, you can try to skyrim your way up mountains but it's too easy to slip off and die. With the holds it's too trivial.

Switching between the 4 weapons using the weapon wheel is really quick and responsive. Changing the weapons which are on the wheel is a right faff even though you can do it with the game paused.

My main problem with the crafting is that each of the crafting mats like eyes and hearts take up a whole inventory slot which quickly adds up to a majority of the inventory and you don't know if you'll need them later.

Not had any crashes though have found holes in the world and gotten stuck.

I am undecided if I like the armour system. It doesn't seem too important which armour I wear in most situations as dodging is the preferred method of damage mitigation and the armour sets don't actually reduce the damage taken too much. Getting rammed by a big machine hurts a lot regardless of whether I am wearing Nora Protector with melee weave. However this means I don't have to spend a lot of time switch armours like in BOTW can play a bit of fashion souls, choosing armour I want to wear rather than have to wear.
 
Soldato
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PA, USA (Orig UK)
I 'think' I'm fairly well into the main story... and it's all being revealed, so much so that I don't want to keep playing because I don't want the game to be over lol.

Fantastic game, one of the best I've played tbh.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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9,505
I went back and played the frozen North - I thought it was just another little mission I left out but didn't realise it was a good 5/6 hours extra play.

I agree with the issues:

- It's not very intuitive as to which weapons are best for certain enemies.
- I found it easy to game the bosses. For example i'd just sit on a ledge and pepper away at them rather than getting stuck in and rolling around.
- Inventory space also an issue - not sure what I could have gotten rid of without having an 'oh no' moment and realising I have to go and fight a load of machines to go get a certain part I sold to make space.
- I also had crashes - maybe....7/8 in my entire time.

Still, had great fun with corruption arrows. Big dude surrounded by screaming chickens? Corrupt them all and wade in after they've done the most damage to each other.
 
Soldato
Joined
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4,897
Location
Dublin
I 'think' I'm fairly well into the main story... and it's all being revealed, so much so that I don't want to keep playing because I don't want the game to be over lol.

Fantastic game, one of the best I've played tbh.

I was the same, game is so good that I kept hunting thunderjaws and exploring every corner of the map and putting off the final mission. I finally completed it last night (last mission was great fun too) after 158 hours according to steam. I genuinely feel sorry for people who blast through games like this in 15 hours or whatever.

Now into the Frozen Wilds, so far so good, I love the snow setting and the machines are tougher!
 
Soldato
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In the Land of Grey and Pink
This really is a fantastic game, I couldn't play it on my PC when it came out due to it requiring AVX, so bought it for the PS4 and had a great time with it.

Then when AVX was patched out, I just couldn't resist seeing what it would be like on my UW monitor.

I wasn't disappointed, it looks even better! (as you might expect :p)
 
Soldato
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4,897
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Dublin
Love the new machines in Frozen Wilds, just found my first Frostclaws. While they are definitely a challenge and significantly tougher than similar-sized machines in the normal game, they are not overly hard, it feels really well balanced. The first fight was pretty epic and very satisfying when I finally brought it down. Where other games can feel too easy after a while, in this game I am still sometimes panting after a really good fight. They have struck a really good balance here, the tougher machines can still take you down quickly enough to keep you on edge.

A great game just got even better. And I love the snow, stopping to take lots of screenshots, some of the views from up snowy mountains are glorious.
 
Caporegime
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Chestershire
Not accurate, they said they will keep an eye on public forums for any game breaking bugs and will address them.

Which is why I put "final" in quotes. The post was worded badly, I was expecting people to have read what I've just read which obviously won't be the case.

But I don't expect them to ever have this PC port running from start to finish without a single crash.
 
Soldato
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Didn't realise there was a thread here.

I decided to play this using family share on steam after completing cp2077. I had a desire for a decent single player game. Not sure what I was expecting, but wow. Just WOW!!!

The game feeella so polished and everything about it was incredible. The combat was balanced, fun and rewarding. Especially, as mentioned above, when you hit crits. I found it great and engaging. The open world is absolutely stunning.

Running it on high/ultra on my 35" and 2070s, averaging 45fps but doesn't drop below 40, couldn't tell where it was but silky smooth.

I took about 65 screenshots in photomode as each time I was just stunning at the beauty and detail.

The story was what kept me playing. Finding out what happened historically and why she was motherless. Multiple point in the story I was sitting there in silence, just stunned at the dialogue and story. Absolutely phenomenal!!

Can't wait for HzD2.

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