Horizon Forbidden West’s newly-releasedBurning ShoresDLC is being review-bombed.Horizon Forbidden Westfirst launched last year to rave reviews from critics, and now Guerrilla Games has expanded the story with theBurning ShoresDLC.
TheHorizon Forbidden West: Burning ShoresDLChas been positively received by critics so far. While the reviews for the expansion haven’t quite matched up to the praise heaped onto the base game, it still has a respectable 81 average critic rating. The user rating on Metacritic is another story entirely, though, with the DLC sitting at a dismal 4.4/10 rating at the time of this writing.
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Whenever there’s such an extreme discrepancy like this, it’s usually due to review bombing efforts - people who are giving the game a ridiculously low score and not necessarily being genuine about it. Looking through the user scores, it’s clear that one of the main points of contention that the upset fans have with the DLC is that it gives players theoption for Aloy to pursue a gay relationship. This is unfortunate, but likely a reaction that was anticipated by Guerrilla Games when the choice was made to incorporate LGBTQ+ elements into the DLC.
Horizon Forbidden West DLC Review Scores
Giving Aloy the option to be gay is not the only reason why theHorizon Forbidden WestDLC is being review bombed. The other reason that disgruntled fans are flooding the game with negative reviews is due to the fact that it’s only available on PS5. Whereas thebase game ofHorizon Forbidden Westwas a cross-gen experienceavailable on both PS4 and PS5, only PS5 gamers can play the DLC. This has been controversial since theBurning Shoresexpansion was launched, so it’s not surprising to see fans still upset about it.
The argument has been made that if Guerrilla was going to release DLC forHorizon Forbidden Westthat was going to be PS5 only, then the base game should have been PS5 exclusive as well. However, there werecertain things in theForbidden WestDLC that Guerrilla couldn’t accomplishwith the older PS4 hardware, and so the decision was made to make the DLC PS5-only. While some fans may be happy that theBurning ShoresDLC is taking better advantage of the PS5 hardware, the review bombing efforts make it clear that others are not happy about it.
It’s possibleBurning Shoreswill be the only major DLC released forHorizon Forbidden West.Horizon Zero Dawn, the previous game, only had theFrozen Wildsto its name, though it did receive other major updates for free. Fans may be treated tomoreHorizon Forbidden Westupdates, but they shouldn’t hold their breath for another major DLC expansion.
Horizon Forbidden Westis out now for PS4 and PS5.The Burning ShoresDLC is PS5 exclusive.
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