Tag Archive: Horizon


EGM’s Best of 2022 – Ray Carsillo’s Picks

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment
January 23, 2023

2022 was a year that started and ended strong, with a slew of massive triple-A titles and darling indies that kept gamers busy for hundreds of hours across dozens of genres, making deciding my games of the year a particularly tough task. The only thing I am truly sure of, though, was that it was an unforgettable year as I rode the waves of adventure, hashed out my best strategies, and saved the world a few dozen times over before finally whittling down the list of contenders into this top five. 

05Sonic Frontiers

I’ll admit, I had low expectations for Sonic Frontiers, and maybe that’s why I was blown away by the experience it was able to deliver in the end. A couple of issues with the camera couldn’t take away from the fact that Sonic in an open-world setting just plain works here. Every island he explored to save his friends from a digital purgatory was a fresh new adventure that also found various ways to call back to Sonic’s past. Both the islands themselves (pinball anyone?!) and a half-dozen “levels” contained within that you could teleport to paid homage to Sonic games of the past. By the end, the Blue Blur had never looked better, and I had a hankering for some chili dogs. 

04Marvel’s Midnight Suns

Developer Firaxis is likely best known for XCOM, an intense, punishing, turn-based strategy series, so them taking a crack at the practitioners of the dark arts in the Marvel Universe seemed like an interesting idea. The studio was able to deliver both a memorable strategy experience and a game far more accessible than its usual fare. Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ card-based system, the removal of XCOM staples like fog of war and permadeath, and an explorable hub world outside of battles that holds its own secrets come together to provide a special strategy experience that is enjoyable for newcomers and veterans alike. Even the grind outside of story missions in order to enhance the Abbey, your fully upgradable base, never got old. When you take all this and throw in the settings of the larger Marvel universe, it made it difficult for me to put this game down. 

03Nobody Saves the World

It was late January and I had nothing on my docket to play, so I went scrolling through Xbox Game Pass and noticed Nobody Saves the World. It had a catchy title and a cute art style, and I saw it was made by DrinkBox Studios, the folks behind the Guacamelee! games and Severed, some of my favorite handheld releases from recent years. So, I took a chance and was not disappointed. Imagine an overhead adventure game, but filtered through the lens of DrinkBox’s humor and art style. It was both something familiar and new at the same time as you play the titular Nobody who has the power to become anybody: Mermaids, warriors, ghosts, dragons, and more as every new persona opens more to explore and offers you greater power as you try to save the world. It was so brilliantly done that it stayed in my top five the entire year. 

02Pokémon Legends: Arceus

The formula for Pokémon has worked so well for 25 years that while the mainline games have tried adding some bells and whistles, the series has stayed relatively close to its roots. What makes Pokémon Legends: Arceus so special, then, is that it’s probably the biggest deviation from what makes a great mainline Pokémon game, but still has those tenets of exploration, capturing, and battling. Journeying through the ancient Hisui region, finding variations or new evolutions for classic fan favorite Pokémon, and having to strategize more about each catch with the player character doing much of the workwas such a breath of fresh air that it made my return to the mainline series later in the year with Scarlet and Violet almost disappointing. The only hope now is that we’ll get another legend sometime in the future. 

01Horizon Forbidden West

This was my only easy choice on my list this year. There was no other world I spent as much time in as I explored every nook and cranny, completed every quest, and got to know every character on the way to my lone PlayStation Platinum trophy. Aloy and her allies took part in the most captivating story I experienced this year, and when combined with an unbelievably gorgeous world to explore and gameplay that never got old, it was the singular, most complete package I experienced in 2022. Every main and side quest felt organic to the world, whether it was helping out all the strangers Aloy met, laying waste to every robot animal in her path, or clearing the land so that it might heal. It did all this while setting up the next heart-pounding adventure that I cannot wait for. 

SPThe “Best Reason to Dust Off Your PS VR Headset” Award
Moss Book II

With Sony focusing on the future with its next VR headset, it should come as no surprise that support has somewhat dried up for the headset that’s still currently on the market. But one of my most anticipated sequels did finally drop on the PS VR (and later PC) this year, and it was absolutely worth digging out my PS4 controllers for. Moss: Book II continues the tale of Quill, a field mouse turned unlikely hero. With a larger world to explore and more powers to wield, Moss: Book II brilliantly builds on the first game in every way imaginable, and provides a premiere experience as VR continues to slowly grow in the gaming market.

SPThe “Unsuspecting Addiction” Award
Vampire Survivors

Sometimes there’s a game that’s so simple on its surface but has so much depth to it that it takes the gaming world by storm. This year, that game was Vampire Survivors. All you have to do is move around and try to avoid the ever-encroaching horde of undead enemies. But as you find items, meet new bosses, unlock new arenas, and continue to try to stay alive for longer and longer periods of time, a quick pick-up and play experience soon becomes one of the biggest time sinks, and most pleasant surprises, of the year.

SPThe “Don’t Forget About Me Because I Released So Late” Award
High on Life

It’s easy for a game released in mid-late December to get lost in the awards shuffle and then slip from people’s minds the following year. So, I wanted to highlight a solid shooter that is one of the funniest games you’re likely to ever play. If you’re a fan of Rick and Morty, then High on Life will be right up your alley. It feels like you’re injecting a full season of the show directly into your eyeballs as you’re guided through alien worlds by a set of talking weapons whose lack of filter is only matched by their bloodlust. 

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Ubisoft CEO says Horizon, Breath of the Wild “borrowed” gameplay from them

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment
March 15, 2018

If you’ve played Ubisoft games over the past decade, you’ve probably noticed a lot of parallels between their titles. From how the player character gets around to how a map is opened up, there are usually striking similarities to be found between franchises whether playing Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed, The Crew or a Tom Clancy title. It’s like an artist who paints in a particular style, or a writer that relies on certain narrative structure. This isn’t to say Ubisoft doesn’t break from their own mold at times (Child of Light, the Rayman series), but most times you can almost tell just by seeing a little bit of gameplay what’s an Ubisoft game.

And like any other art form, games can inspire people, and lest we forget, that can include other game developers. In an interview in the most recent EDGE magazine (issue #311), Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot talked about how two of the year’s most acclaimed games—Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—seemed to utilize several gameplay mechanics that Ubisoft popularized.

“It’s interesting, because The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took a lot of things that existed in Far Cry and other Ubisoft games, but did them perfectly,” Guillemot said. “I think the most important thing is not the systems as they are, it’s how they can be perfected; how they can give the player the best experience possible.

“The same system can be in two games, and not be seen as the same thing. The job, really, is to make sure that you have a certain number of possibilities and that you are able to combine them in such a way that provides a great experience. When systems are similar, it’s because developers have not been able to take full advantage of what those systems could bring.

“When a system is really good at providing fun, the team knows that that will work—and at the end of the day what counts is the experience. But we are taking more and more time on our games so that they are very different from one another. That has always been the objective. But if you look at many of the games that are being launched—even the last Sony game, Horizon: Zero Dawn—again, they took some of the same systems that we have. Because, in the industry, we always look at other games and other publishers. A game is very complex, so it helps us to provide a good experience.”

Of course, Ubisoft did the same thing themselves recently with Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, which saw many of its game mechanics inspired by 2K’s XCOM series. Much like how Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn made Ubisoft’s bread-and-butter gameplay their own, though, Ubisoft did the same by adding their own touches to differentiate and even improve on certain systems. So, it should come as no surprise really that someone took inspiration from another game and made it their own; arguably improving on things that weren’t perfect, as Guillemot insinuates. After all, this has been going on in games for a long time, even leading to the rise of certain genres, and permeating how we, as gamers, describe them. Metroidvania anyone?

Before he was finished, Guillemot also commented on Ubisoft’s recent shift towards more multiplayer driven experiences, adapting to changing times, and trying to show there’s more to them than just climbing towers in open-worlds.

“It’s the kind of game that is more and more in demand from players. As a company, we have to adapt to this evolution in demand,” explained Guillemot. “So it’s a question of generation: some people have been playing linear adventures, and they tend to want to continue to play that kind of game, even if they’re starting to open to other types of games.

“For each revolution or disruption, there are steps where you are in the middle and the new thing is not yet very interesting. The first people that try the game might say ‘It’s good, but it’s not as good as I expected’ and sometimes they don’t want to try it again.

“But after a while you improve the quality of this new experience, and you arrive at a level where the new people who try it love it. It always takes time to change mentalities. For us, we had no choice but to introduce the types of product that most of the customers, most of the players, wanted.”

Ubisoft will be getting back to their open-world roots a bit before the year is over, however, with the latest Assassin’s Creed set to release on October 27th, and dip their toes back in familiar waters next year with Far Cry 5’s planned release for February 27th, 2018.

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