Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC Review

 I know there is a lot of frustration about the Burning Shores DLC only being on PS5 because it's still not that easy to get the next gen console. It does make sense that studios are moving away from the previous consoles, but I understand that is frustrating nonetheless. I got lucky with mine in the fact that my husband was able to get one and surprise me with it for an early birthday gift last year. This allowed me to check out the Burning Shores DLC for Horizon Forbidden West. I was pleased to find that there was a free upgrade to the PS5 version of the game and that my PS4 save data carried over. After that I was ready to hang out with Aloy again. *SPOILERS AHEAD* 

Burning Shores takes place after the defeat of Far Zenith. It was a bittersweet moment hearing Lance Reddick as Sylens at the beginning, talking with Aloy. Sylens informs Aloy that there were actually thirteen people from Far Zenith. The last Far Zenith person is an industrialist named Walter Londra and he fled to what was downtown Los Angeles now known as the Burning Shores. Aloy takes her sunbird to fly there, but gets shot down by a tower that is firing all sorts of lasers, finding herself stranded there because Walter has essentially locked down the entire area. 

Aloy arrives at the Burning Shores. 

Aloy meets a Quen marine by the name of Seyka and Seyka explains to her that Walter has stranded the Quen marines with his actions. Right from the start there was something about Seyka that was interesting as she and Aloy agreed to work together to take down the tower and stop Walter. It turns out Seyka has some similarities to Aloy in that she's not sure where she belongs and is a bit of an outcast herself. Some of the conversations between Seyka and Aloy stand out because they discuss those feelings of not belonging and how it affects everything around them. I really liked Seyka and I thought she was a great foil to Aloy on this adventure. 

Aloy and Seyka take a boat ride. 

Wandering around the Burning Shores, I stopped often to take in the scenery. There was something beautiful about seeing nature reclaiming Los Angeles and seeing a surreal mix of decay and life blending together. There are many vistas that are gorgeous and I had fun exploring this new area discovering new treasures and doing a few side quests alongside the main story. 

Seyka and Aloy at the Hollywood sign. 

One of the things is Aloy helping Seyka find her sister and the other missing Quen marines and that Walter is involved because he enchanted them as a living ancestor. Burning Shores much like the main story shows how dangerous and manipulative the Far Zenith people are in the form of Walter. Sam Witwer does an amazing job as Walter Londra with the perfect amount of charm and malice, always keeping you on your toes with every scene he's in. All of the Far Zenith people were narcissistic sociopaths, but like Walter said himself he's different. There's something more sinister about him with his promises of a better life to the Quen who followed him. There's also an air of paranoia surrounding Walter as he demands absolute loyalty without question and Sam Witwer delivers this performance beautifully. 

Aloy sits with a holo of Walter Londra. 

There's the usual fight with machines and Aloy has all her weapons and tools to handle each one. There are also new tool upgrades and a new weapon that can be fully upgraded. Aloy has to get parts for a new type of bird machine, a Waterwing that looks a lot like a pelican. This is so that she and Seyka can bypass the lasers from Walter's tower with a mix of flying and diving under the water. It's a great idea and works really well while introducing a new machine to the game. 

As the story progresses, you start to see just how far Walter is willing to go to get what he wants. It leads to what can only be called an epic and grand showdown between Aloy and Walter as Walter tries to kill Aloy with a Horus machine. It's a brutally challenging fight, but it's also exciting giving quite a great sense of victory defeating it and Walter in the process. 

With the whole situation with Londra resolved, Aloy is ready to head home. Before she does that however, she gets a very sweet moment with Seyka where they get to confess their feelings to each other. It's a beautiful moment that is sweet with a touch of melancholy that makes sense because Aloy is looking to the future with the threat of Nemesis. However, she and Seyka both understand each other and their responsibilities while holding their hearts open for each other and appreciating that moment of joy and love they had. As a queer person, this made me so happy because it shows that we have joy and love and are more than our pain. It's a wonderful moment for Aloy and Seyka.

Aloy sends Sylens the data from Walter's Focus and when she returns home Sylens has decrypted the data showing her that there were companies working on experimental weapons that might be the key to defeating Nemesis. It's a good moment between Aloy and Sylens as he thanks her for her help. It also sets the stage for the next game. The story of Burning Shores DLC isn't too long. It's about 8-10 hours of gameplay and if you are a completionist like me, it takes about 15-20 hours. I enjoyed all of it and it was fantastic to hang out with Aloy again on her adventure. 

Aloy heads home. 

*Horizon Forbidden West is available to play on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5

 Burning Shores DLC is out now only on Playstation 5

*Join our community on Twitch as we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mothergamer Plays Biomutant

 Biomutant looked like an interesting game to me and appeared to hit all the right notes with me in regards to my love of open world role playing games. The premise of the story being set in a post apocalypse world centering around a tree of life that is being poisoned by creatures known as world eaters I found intriguing. The opening scene from Biomutant is beautiful and sets the scene for the adventure. The menu allows you to set up your character creation. The animal creatures look very cute and I chose one that looked like a cute red panda. This is also where you can choose the job class you want to play as. There are melee classes like Dead-Eye and a mage type class like Psi-Freak Class. I personally chose Dead Eye because I liked fighting with swords and pistols which gave a nice mix of close and ranged combat. 

My Dead-Eye character. 

Right from the start, you see how big the world of Biomutant is. The map is huge and you have to explore to unlock all the areas. There is fast travel in the game which helps a lot. I do wish that each area would tell you what level you should be because sometimes I would run into enemies that were a much higher level than me and I would have to run away. Level grinding isn't so bad because there are plenty of places to explore. There are also branching paths to the story with side quests such as tribal factions fighting each other and you can choose which faction to join and capture outposts. Combat itself is a lot of fun with special melee moves and magic powers like ice spikes. 

Having fun with the combat with moves like Wicked Wolf.

There's all kinds of gadgets you can use to get around certain areas that are too dangerous to walk through like a field rampant with oil pollution. This required a very cool giant mech which let me walk through unharmed. There's also a cool water bike that gets you through the water safely since the main character can't swim. I discovered that the hard way and died pretty quickly. All the tools add a little extra fun to the game, but the giant mech was my favorite. 

Giant mech time! 

There are also cute animal mounts that look very soft and fluffy. You can summon them at any time and it makes exploring new areas a lot faster. There's several different biomes in Biomutant with their own unique landscapes. There are a lot of beautiful vistas which shows the contrast between the polluted areas and bursts of beauty really well. There's crafting in the game as well so you can upgrade your weapons and armor. You can find materials in places you explore and you can also buy items from shops in the outposts which is convenient. There are a lot of options so you can tailor your job class build to your play style. 

Taking in a beautiful view. 

The main story is you have to fight the four world eaters that are chewing on the branches of the world tree. These are epic boss fights that require you to gather materials and parts for a vehicle or tool where you can use five small creatures to launch at the world eater to distract it and get some hits in. There's definitely a learning curve with some of the world eaters and it's not always obvious what you're supposed to do so I died a lot until I figured out the patterns. This is where Biomutant shows some things that are not so great like wild camera angles that block your view so you have to run around until the camera resets. This got really frustrating especially with the world eater fights. Other than that, the fights are fun. I just wish they had addressed the camera issues.

Fighting a world eater. 

The range of enemies, the exploration, and the combat are great. The story itself is interesting, but there are parts where the pacing feels a little tedious and repetitive. There are puzzles that are simple, but they're very much the same so I got a little tired of constantly solving them and sometimes the reward was not worth it. Biomutant isn't a bad game and I did enjoy it. However, there are things that definitely need work in regards to the pacing, the camera angles, and quest bugs and game crashes of which there were quite a few. The ending to the story itself is rather abrupt and not really satisfying. It feels like it runs out of steam which is unfortunate because Biomutant is ambitious and there's a lot of great things in it, but the flaws keep it from reaching the potential it could have had. For me it was fun to play through once, but I don't see myself going back and replaying it. It's a good one and done adventure.

Adventure done! 

*Biomutant is available to play on the following platforms: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

*Join our community on Twitch as we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer