HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST

A finely honed sequel

FORMAT PS5, PS4 ETA 18 FEB PUB SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DEV GUERRILLA GAMES PLAYERS 1

The land is being ravaged by a red blight that kills all natural life it infects, while potent storms and the rise of a combative tribe make ‘safe passage’ little more than a pleasant daydream. On top of all of that, there are the machines, of course. As Aloy laid to rest an apocalyptic swarm of military death machines in the last game, rogue robots are perhaps the least of her worries this time around.

Venturing beyond the canyons of the Daunt that lie at the edge of the Carja Sundom, Aloy explores a world of trouble in this sequel. The titular new area is the domain of the Tenakth, a group the Carja regards as especially bloodthirsty. (In Zero Dawn there was only one Tenakth Aloy could encounter, Ullia, and she certainly lived up to this reputation.) That said, everything we’ve seen so far centres on a rebel faction within the main tribe, called the Regalla. What this group is specifically rebelling against remains to be seen but perhaps we’ll see eye-to-eye with at least some of the Tenakth along the way.