Horizon Forbidden West review – a gorgeous sequel that continues to borrow more than it adds

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: If you’ve enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn and are already looking forward to the sequel, there’s likely only a very small chance you won’t enjoy Forbidden West. Guerrilla Games made sure of that by giving you a game that is functionally identical to a lot of Zero Dawn. You will take on herds of machines so you can harvest them for parts. You will shoot animals for their hides. You will climb Tallnecks and rappel down. You will take out countless camps of near-identical human opponents.

Horizon Forbidden West reviewPublisher: Sony Interactive EntertainmentDeveloper: Guerrilla GamesPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out 18th February on PS4 and PS5.

And, if you’re anything like me, you will also take a lot of pictures – of swirling red sandstorms, snow-tipped mountains and views of sprawling forests. In truth, I can’t calm down about the way Forbidden West looks. Someone made this, and you can walk around in it!

All of these elements worked well before, and I expect many players to embrace Forbidden West just as they did in 2017 because of them. What I’m interested in, however, is change. Since this is a sequel, it feels fair to ask whether Forbidden West improves on elements that could have done with improving. I can recognise and appreciate that Guerrilla made attempts to address some common criticisms of the first game. However, in most cases these intended improvements don’t actually improve a lot.

The new map is once again a stunner. I got a lot of enjoyment from just discovering each new part of it and taking it in. I often made my own quiet moments – coming up to a star-studded sky after a night swim, or watching trees sway in a storm for a while before moving to the next objective. It’s not an entirely bug-free journey at this point, but I consider most bugs I encountered to be minor and most should be fixed with the day one patch that arrived towards the end of the review period. (Side-quest progression bugs, due to an NPC not going where they’re supposed to, cleared after reloading my save, and the rest of the bugs were camera or lighting-related, with music overlapping sometimes, plus some pop-in that’s since been reduced by the patch.)