Almost a year after its release Forbidden Horizon West, Guerilla continues to expand the world of Aloy with the Burning Shores expansion. Judging by the past and the excellent expansion. frozen wilds that the studio had released for Horizon Zero Dawn, we’d say we went into Guerilla’s latest installment with high expectations.
The new DLC takes place in Los Angeles, after the end of the title, so you’ll need to complete the main story first. Then, after the end credits of Horizon Forbidden West, Silens contacts Aloy to inform her of a new threat, based in Burning Shores. This time, Aloy goes to the now destroyed Los Angeles, where he meets new allies, but also enemies. Unfortunately we can’t give more details to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t seen the original title yet.
The most important addition to the script is Seyka, who closely resembles Aloy in behavior and personality. In this way, the creators give Aloy an ally, with whom he can interact on equal terms, helping each other. We’d say the Burning Shores story focuses more on Aloy’s development as a character, taking a backseat to the central theme of the series’ script, if only for a while. The only dark spot in the story is the central villain, who we would simply describe as indifferent.
Kylie Liya Page’s performance as Seyka meshes well with Ashly Burch’s as Aloy, while Lance Reddick as Sylens continues to be excellent, in one of his last performances. The level of dialogues and the script remain in the style known from the series, without particular improvements, giving us some small clues for the next Horizon.
Just like it did with the Frozen Wilds DLC for the original Horizon Zero Dawn, in Burning Shores the studio kept the good gameplay elements of Horizon Forbidden West, and fleshed it out with small additions and new ways for Aloy to deal with enemy machines. .
In addition to the new abilities that Aloy gains, Seyka takes an active role in battles, helping out a bit more substantially and not just throwing ammunition at the player, as has been done in the past with other allies. In addition, we can use elements of the environment in the encounters, creating explosions or using jets to fly through the air quickly for attacks from above.
New machines also appear, such as Bilegut, a machine inspired by a very dangerous frog that spits acid and covers distances quickly with its jumps. The design of the new enemies carries over to the familiar high levels of the series, with the difficulty being a natural continuation of the last zone of Horizon Forbidden West. For this reason, we recommend that you be at a high level and well equipped before you decide to start the new expansion.
Burning Shores is about a third of the original map and visually follows San Francisco as presented in Horizon Forbidden West. Los Angeles, destroyed by earthquakes, is now an island complex, with spectacular beaches, dilapidated buildings, green landscapes, flowing lava hills, as well as the area’s iconic landmarks, such as the Hollywood sign.
The technical and visual mastery is superior to Horizon Forbidden West. Guerilla has improved the lighting, clouds, and underwater environments, delivering one of the most beautiful worlds we’ve seen this generation. The machine encounters are still impressive, especially the final battle which we won’t be referring to further for obvious reasons, while we didn’t see any fps drops in any visual mode. The only thorn we notice is some texture popping up at long ranges. Sound production also remains excellent, with ambient effects and engine sounds taking center stage.
At this point we should mention that Burning Shores is only released for PlayStation 5. And here comes the question why Guerilla made this decision since Horizon Forbidden West was also available for PlayStation 4. Based on what we saw in the title, and Without exactly knowing the technical details, in addition to the obvious improvements to world display that we already mentioned, there are some encounters, as well as a new addition that requires immediate switching from one environment to another, which we consider to be the PlayStation 4 hardware. could cope
At around 10 hours long and with improvements in key areas, we’d say Burning Shores lives up to our expectations, it’s a definite buy for fans of the series, and we can’t wait to see what the next Horizon brings now that it’s out. Guerrilla off the hook from the limitations of the previous generation.
expansion pack Horizon: Forbidden West – Burning Shores starting 4/19/23 for PS5. Our review was based on a review code we received from PlayStation Greece.