Considering that Guerrilla Games first started out making the Killzone games, it’s not really surprising that their first game outside of that genre took some getting used to in order to make it the critically acclaimed hit that it is today. Horizon Zero Dawn early reviews, however, weren’t nearly as positive.
Since Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world action adventure game, while the Killzone games were fairly linear first-person shooter titles, Guerrilla Games had a lot of work to do in order to make sure that Horizon Zero Dawn would be a good game. However, the early reviews not being good gave the studio even more motivation.
Horizon Zero Dawn early reviews, among other things, noted that the game felt boring. What made it more vital for Guerrilla was that those comments came just a year before the game was set to come out. Considering the game got delayed from 2016 to early 2017, that’s likely the reason why Guerrilla delayed it to begin with.
Even now, with the game out and seen as one of the Playstation 4’s best titles, Guerrilla says that there’s still some things they didn’t quite nail down. Some of the more important resources never really got to the point where they were important because of economy issues, with the studio wanting players to run around and collect everything they could to craft new items and weapons.
Regardless of the Horizon Zero Dawn early reviews, thankfully the game was able to release and become one of 2017’s best games, selling over 7.6 million copies and getting critical acclaim along with it. While we likely won’t be getting more DLC for it after its sole content pack The Frozen Wilds came out last year, Guerrilla has definitely made a game that people will likely always think of as one of the greats on the Playstation 4.
