Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores – this was the only way to stop the MCU (pic: Sony)



GameCentral reviews the new DLC for Horizon Forbidden West but does it offer enough reasons to return to the post-apocalyptic world?



When publishers send review copies of games on or after the release date, you can be pretty sure something’s going on, whether it’s last minute tinkering to fix a technical problem or, more usually, trying to avoid bad press for something they know will review poorly. The latter is exactly what happened with the disastrous PC version of The Last Of Us Part 1 and so when the review code for Burning Shores, the first DLC for Sony’s blockbusting Horizon Forbidden West , only appeared at lunchtime the day before launch the timing was, in the parlance of Among Us, a bit sus.



So it was with a degree of scepticism that we dusted off our copy of Forbidden West and plunged back in, the first surprise being that you can only play the DLC if you’ve completed the final level of the campaign. If, like us, you’ve already started a New Game+, you’ll need to find an older save to let you access Burning Shores, which begins with a message from Aloy’s old antagonist, Sylens – a man whose name autocorrect firmly believes is Spleens.



He explains that there was in fact a thirteenth Zenith – the baddies from the original game, all of whom Aloy reduced to mincemeat – and that you need to find and kill them. It also turns out that they’re not in the Forbidden West but a new territory, a place ‘…once known as Los Angeles.’ A line that Sylens’ voice actor, the sadly missed Lance Reddick , somehow manages to deliver with a straight face.



So Aloy heads off to post-apocalyptic L.A., where film fans, or those who’ve visited the city, will be able to spot all sorts of decaying landmarks, from the arches outside the airport to the Capitol Records building and the good old Hollywood sign, which hardly looks in worse shape than it does today – albeit that here it has a giant, multi-tentacled robot carcass sitting behind it.



You’ll also meet Seyka, the series’ first and only love interest, who needs Aloy’s help in locating her lost sister. Like fellow Horizon spin-off and PlayStation VR2 launch title, Call Of The Mountain , this starts with an exposition-laden boat ride that enables you to catch up with what’s going on while taking in the scenery – and the games’ relative lack of ambition in how narrative is delivered.



It’s scenery that’s well worth admiring though, given its consistent resplendent beauty. Like the main game there seem to be glorious and perfectly arranged vistas everywhere you glance, its blue skies and lush tropical jungle looking gorgeous throughout. You’ll also spend plenty of time actually in those skies, thanks to a greater emphasis on using your Zelda style glider, which you can also now launch into the air using thermals and conveniently sited geysers.









Along with the glider wing, you’ll be making good use of the Sunwing, Aloy’s existing flying robot dinosaur mount, complemented during one memorable sequence by the new Waterwing, which seems to be based on a gannet and can dive under the waves for a few seconds to avoid incoming attacks. There’re plenty of other novelties to discover too, with the removal of the old level 50 cap and a bunch of new skills to learn.



Each of the game’s skill trees receives three additional nodes to unlock. As ever, they range from useful to almost entirely redundant, but that’s as much to do with the way you play the game as anything inherently wrong with the perks themselves. We’ve always found combat easy enough that traps and ropecasters, which let you tie up robots so you can give them a good drubbing, were never really needed anyway.



While enemies in Burning Shores pretty much assume you’re at or near level 50, fights are fun rather than brutal. Upping the difficulty level to hard changes that, essentially reducing your weapons to peashooters, turning otherwise robust battles into drawn-out, hand-aching wars of attrition that can occasionally end prematurely with you getting frustratingly crushed to death in the seconds before your healing item takes effect. On normal though, it’s a breeze.



The new insect-like Stingspawn are joined by the Bilegut, which looks like a giant bullfrog and likes to pluck Stingspawn from the sky using its huge robotic tongue. You’ll also gain access to the spectre gauntlet, a weapon that has both rapid fire and single shot railgun modes, along with a number of more conventional weapons, none of which proved quite as useful or distinctive.



Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores – even prettier than the main game (pic: Sony)



However, Burning Shores doesn’t necessarily need to reinvent itself to be considered worthwhile. The base game is already a winner, and its familiar blend of stealth, kinetic-feeling battles, and traversal challenges maintains a cracking pace throughout. In this expansion, you’ll still be exploring ancient caves full of glowing, glitching artefacts, antediluvian voice memos, and the odd brood of enraged robot dinosaurs, but the whole thing’s so immaculately polished from start to finish that it’s impossible not to warm to it, despite the outward silliness of its setting.



Aloy’s still an oddly anodyne figure, though, her flat delivery and largely expressionless interactions making her seem at last 15% shop window mannequin. But then given how equally uninteresting the rest of the characters are, and the storytelling in general, perhaps it’s no surprise she doesn’t see more engaged. If anything, it makes a welcome change from all the usual over-emoting or Forspoken style ‘How do you do, fellow kids’ attempts at sounding sassy.







Compared with Horizon Forbidden West the DLC is something of a minnow, clocking in at about eight hours if you stick to the main story, or around double that if you get stuck into its side quests and relic ruins – the game’s building-sized puzzles, both of which are well worth your time. In any case it’s good to be back in Aloy’s shearling boots, smashing up outrageous robo-dinos under Sega blue skies.



We may never know why Sony held onto review copies until mere hours before Burning Shores’ release, but it certainly wasn’t because they were worried about its lack of quality.






Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores review summary In Short: An exceptionally pretty slice of DLC that does nothing to address the faults of the main game but does manage to emphasise its many successes, especially the graphics.
Pros: Beautiful to look at, with sky high production values and not a bug in sight. The new emphasis on flight is interesting and fun.
Cons: It’s very much more of the same, so if you’re not a fan of the franchise this won’t convert you. The Waterwing’s special ability feels under-utilised and the bland storytelling and characters hasn’t got any better.
Score: 8/10





Formats: PlayStation 5* Price: £15.99 Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Developer: Guerrilla Games Release Date: 19th April 2023 Age Rating: 16



*There is no PlayStation 4 version of the DLC, despite the parent game being cross-gen.









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MORE : Horizon Zero Dawn 3 is going to be a while as it looks like it centred around Lance Reddick







MORE : Horizon Call Of The Mountain review – the summit of PSVR2 achievements







MORE : Horizon Forbidden West multiplayer leaks with cartoony art style





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