Horizon 3 Won’t Grow to Its Full Potential Until It Breaks an 8-Year Curse

Aside from Nemesis as a looming threat, Horizon 3’s story doesn’t have as many hard-and-fast expectations ascribed to it as, say, Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 does. Gameplay, however, has many low ceilings it could shatter, but it’s unknown how much Horizon 3 will commit to either elaborating on currently established mechanics or introducing new features to the franchise, which, at least at a macrocosmic level, hasn’t budged too drastically from the core gameplay formula it’s clung to for two games. That may not be wholly fair, though, when brand-new machine enemies have demanded new strategies to optimally hunt and dismantle them with the weapons that are available, and that’s the Horizon experience’s unctuous beef bone marrow.