One of the most beautiful titles to be released on the Playstation 4 has dropped one hell of an awesome expansion. The Frozen Wilds, it’s everything you could have hoped for. Anyone who has played Horizon Zero Dawn has fell madly in love with it due to its gameplay as well as its beautiful visuals and it’s the same for the DLC. The Frozen Wilds introduces a huge new area in the mountains, brand new quests, weapons and a few more new machines.

To avoid any spoilers, i’ll give a slight snippet of the DLC’s story. The Frozen Wilds story takes Aloy to the mountains up the north of the map. It’s a completly new area, and at first when looking at the map it will be covered with clouds until you explore that section. The story isn’t just about Aloy who was the main character of the base game, but you’ll also meet a lot of other characters, most notable the Banuk Tribe. Where the Banuk Tribe live isn’t the ideal living conditions for most, only the tough will survive there, but i’m not trying to sell you a holiday so I’ll move on. The Frozen Wilds brings not just a new area but also new machines that are a new threat to the game. Some are big bastards too. Across your time playing this expansion you’ll do many quests and errands along with much more. The DLC is a must have for any fan of Horizon Zero Dawn.

In the past, games have brought out expansions that require you to be a certain level before being able to access it, this is not the case for The Frozen Wilds DLC. Though it is advised to be at least level 30 or higher to have any fighting chance at the start of the DLC. Example being, not too far before I got to the actual start of the DLC I was confronted by a huge monster machine, and that’s just the start. Not every part of the DLC is big machine fights, but they are here and there at times.

Now, it has been a while since I last played Horizon Zero Dawn, but what I did notice was the new thing’s added in-game such as a brand new skill tree “Traveller”. This gives 8 new skills from dismount strikes, mount repairs+ and machine repairs with metal shards. Your focus ability isn’t anything new but it’s used as much as it was in the base game. It’ll have you finding things such as places you’ll need to go as well as trails and voice recordings.

The brand new area is connected to the rest of the Horizon Zero Dawn world and is called ‘The Cut’. It’s a snowy section that also contains blizzards. The realism the game shows to it’s world is magnificent. Just as the base game was, this DLC is PS4 Pro Enhanced and has both HDR and Dynamic 4K (Checkerboard). The game is the best i’ve seen on the PS4 up until now and the DLC looks amazing even on the base PS4.

The DLC also brings 21 new trophies. There are two sections for them, quests and feats. Some are easy to get, others will take some work. Now my entire time playing The Frozen Wilds wasn’t always happy, the DLC isn’t glitch free. I found myself falling under the ground of the area I was in being able to see everything above me until i’d fall into a pit and dying. Other glitches were machines would block your way and there was no other ways to get around. Luckily I found an easy fix which was to fast travel to another location and to go back to where I was stuck, which was annoying to have to do that.

This was long awaited by fans of the game but it was worth the wait. It’ll take roughly 10-20 hours to fully complete. The minimal 10 hours is if you don’t bother answering questions and just doing the main quests, but to discover everything and to do all side quests will take roughly 20 hours or more. I was quite surprised of the size of the new area, it’s massive and it’s as great looking as the rest of Horizon Zero Dawn.

Written by: MKAU Gaming