3 Reasons Why Horizon: Forbidden West Hasn’t Surpassed it’s Predecessor on Metacritic (Because People are Getting Weird About it)

Sweet boiling Christ, what fresh Hell has the timeline got in store for us today?

Horizon: Forbidden West had it’s review embargo lift today, and it has largely been met with thunderous praise.

Reviews have cited improvements over its predecessor in pretty much every arena, depending on who you read. A slew of 9 and 10 point reviews herald a great gaming experience.

However, I have read some ill portents. I have seen the signs of discontent on the… Horizon.

A special subset of absolute ball-bags on the trans-dimensional hell realm known as “Twitter.com,” have raised concerns about the review process. You see, Forbidden West has failed to surpass the original games Metacritic score, matching it at 89, despite the aforementioned improvements.

These smoooooove brains (no wrinkle) have posited that meddling at the hands of Phil Spencer and X Box have contributed to Forbidden West’s failure to overcome its predecessor’s score, instead of the many, many more reasonable and less conspiratorial reasons I will detail in the following list.

Aloy begging the wide world for more metacritic points

1. Forbidden West is Not a New Idea

Imagine you live in a pre-Horizon world. You’ve never even thought about facing off against a Dr Evil style, mecha Tyrannosaurus, complete with back mounted lasers.

FRIGGIN. LASERS.

Now, imagine Horizon: Zero Dawn comes screaming onto the scene, replete not only with mecha dinosaurs, but a blockbuster sci fi story, an excellent protagonist and snappy combat. The world is vibrant, and Guerilla Games passion for their new IP is bleeding through every pixel.

How do you not give that game top marks?

Forbidden West is by all accounts a graphical showcase, a powerhouse giving the PS5 a real run for its money. It supposedly improves on all of its foundations. In spite of this, the spectacle of mecha dinosaurs and the allure of Horizons post apocalyptic setting have been absorbed into the cultural zeitgeist, partly as a result of how groundbreaking and cool it was initially.

FRIGGIN LASERS. It doesn’t hit the same way second time round right?

2. The Bar Has Been Raised.

The original Horizon came out alongside Breath of the Wild, which is consistently cited as a Breath of Fresh Air, blowing the dust off the open world genre.

It was also prior to some of Sony’s last gen narrative powerhouses. God of War, The Last of Us 2 and Spiderman all followed Horizon. God of War and The Last of Us 2 especially ratcheted up the standards with regard to narrative, giving Horizon Forbidden West much steeper relative competition.

3. Zero Dawn was Great – But Overscored.

Last but not least, it’s time for us all to admit that Horizon: Zero Dawn was a deeply flawed game.

Inspite of its excellent world building, graphical fidelity and combat, Zero Dawn has a litany of issues.

Pacing, poor animations and lipsync were only some of the issues that have become more pronounced with time. At the time they were overshadowed by the spectacle and clear passion in the game, but it’s hard to imagine Horizon: Zero Dawn scoring 89 on metacritic were it released today.

So where does that leave us?

Should we just chalk Zero Dawn up as a massive L alongside its failure of a sequel?

Of course not.

Zero Dawn was gorgeous, and laid a solid foundation, despite leaving alot of room for improvement. Forbidden West is looking to have lived up to its legacy, depeening and improving problem areas from its predecessor.

I think all of us could stand to put less stock in numeric scores and marks out of 10.

Devs have had pay withheld and been subjected to crunch over metacritic scores, and sequels live and die over the colour of a box. The only reason anything should ever die over whether a box is yellow or green is when my dad beats me at wordle.

Games are such complex, intricate machines, built by hundreds or thousands of people all working in sync. Review scores are contextual, and a poor metric by which to judge games. To reduce these artworks down to a numeric score should be a crime – such painful oversimplifications have no place in civil society, and I for one will not stand for it!