7 Reasons Horizon Zero Dawn Is Better Than Uncharted 4
1. Breaking Genuinely New Ground (The Necessity Of Existence)
Delve deeper into Uncharted 4's narrative and it's a comment on how to age with grace: How often we tend to metaphorically lock our favourite pastimes away in the attic inside our heads, occasionally treasuring them personally, but sacrificing them for a blander, more stereotypical sense of 'growing up'. This factored into the endgame, as we see Drake is a far healthier human in a spiritual sense by embracing the fact that his other half is just as into his personal interests as he is.
All of that, is the only new territory Uncharted 4 delves into - making sure 'the one' you're settling down with truly understands your base wants and needs. Take this messaging away and you're left with, for all intents and purposes, "just another Uncharted",
In Horizon, immediately we've got the never-before-seen mesh of sci-fi dinosaur mechs and ancient tribes warring across the land, but that merely provides the backdrop (until near the end, anyway). Aloy's personal story opens incredibly powerfully, casting her in a unique light as someone who has to fight to even be accepted by anybody other than her father.
Philosophical and political views on individualism, tribalism, leadership and religion get dissected on various levels the more you explore beyond the confines of the starting area, and by the time you've made it to a capital city or two, Horizon has made some incredible comments on human thought, how much stock we put into the unknown, and how many of us are happy to be ruled by it.
Uncharted 4 is possibly the best looking game of all time, purely on a level of rendering environments and facial technology, but it lacked something gameplay-wise to truly back that up. Horizon has the looks too, but from its tallest towers to the depths of the machine world below, Zero Dawn has all the hallmarks of a game that knows its importance and placement in history, before executing with perfection.
--
Are you planning on picking up Horizon? What did you make of Uncharted 4 after the credits rolled? Let us know in the comments!