The Platinum Diaries | Horizon: Zero Dawn

Why This Game?

My deci­sion to go for the full plat­inum comes down to a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent things for Hori­zon: Zero Dawn. It’s both an awe­some game that I was hap­py to con­tin­ue play­ing and the remain­der of tro­phies weren’t that bad to round up in the end. Don’t get me wrong, this should­n’t be on your short list for easy plat­inums, but if you’re going to play it any­way, you may as well go the full dis­tance. Con­sid­er­ing it’s a game where you fight giant robot dinosaurs, con­trol a com­plex and badass female char­ac­ter and the sto­ry is engag­ing and inter­est­ing, there are plen­ty of rea­sons to play it and grab that plat­inum by the end.

Was it Quick?

As I had men­tioned ear­li­er, this is not going to be a quick one. For me per­son­al­ly, I spent around 45 hours fin­ish­ing this one up. That’s not to say it could­n’t be done faster, but you should take the time to real­ly enjoy Hori­zon: Zero Dawn as there is quite a bit there to explore. There are a num­ber of col­lectibles to get and points to hit across the map. Most of this you’ll end up hit­ting any­way if you explore around and do side quests as you go. That being said, I would be sur­prised to see any­one grab­bing this one in under 30 hours with major­ly main­lin­ing the tro­phies. (3 out of 10)

Was it Easy?

This kind of depends on how good you end up being at this sort of game. There is a lot to do before you hear that sat­is­fy­ing ding of unlock­ing that plat­inum tro­phy, but none of it felt insur­mount­able. Thank­ful­ly, there are no dif­fi­cul­ty-relat­ed tro­phies, so you can tack­le this one at a com­fort­able chal­lenge. Noth­ing through­out the game real­ly had me stuck for any length of time, though some of the robot dino bat­tles are tougher than oth­ers. Once you unlock the spe­cial armor, which is a tro­phy itself, you basi­cal­ly become invin­ci­ble, so there is lit­tle resis­tance ahead of this plat. (9 out of 10)

Was It Fun?

This is one of the best games I’ve played thus far in 2017. If that’s not defin­i­tive enough for you, then I’ll just say yes. Blend­ing ele­ments of games like Far Cry and even a lit­tle Mon­ster Hunter, it was hard to put down from start to fin­ish. Some of the tro­phies involve just going places to find a thing, and that’s not always thrilling, but a good chunk of your time here is going to be spent play­ing a stand­out game in a year already filled with some impres­sive titles. (9 out of 10)

Any Oth­er Thoughts?

This game feels pret­ty sim­i­lar to my expe­ri­ence with get­ting the plat­inum tro­phy for Mid­dle Earth: Shad­ow of Mor­dor. I did­n’t exact­ly start out try­ing to get it, but after look­ing over the list well into my play-through, it seemed like a good enough excuse to con­tin­ue play­ing an awe­some game. I’m cer­tain­ly proud to have the plat­inum for Hori­zon, but more as a sym­bol for my appre­ci­a­tion of the impres­sive work done by the devel­op­ers than as a per­son­al accomplishment.