Horizon Forbidden West's newly-released Burning Shores DLC is being review-bombed. Horizon Forbidden West first launched last year to rave reviews from critics, and now Guerrilla Games has expanded the story with the Burning Shores DLC.
The Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC has 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.
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 the option 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 the Horizon Forbidden West DLC 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 the base game of Horizon Forbidden West was a cross-gen experience available on both PS4 and PS5, only PS5 gamers can play the DLC. This has been controversial since the Burning Shores expansion 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 for Horizon Forbidden West that was going to be PS5 only, then the base game should have been PS5 exclusive as well. However, there were certain things in the Forbidden West DLC that Guerrilla couldn't accomplish with the older PS4 hardware, and so the decision was made to make the DLC PS5-only. While some fans may be happy that the Burning Shores DLC is taking better advantage of the PS5 hardware, the review bombing efforts make it clear that others are not happy about it.
It's possible Burning Shores will be the only major DLC released for Horizon Forbidden West. Horizon Zero Dawn, the previous game, only had the Frozen Wilds to its name, though it did receive other major updates for free. Fans may be treated to more Horizon Forbidden West updates, but they shouldn't hold their breath for another major DLC expansion.
Horizon Forbidden West is out now for PS4 and PS5. The Burning Shores DLC is PS5 exclusive.
Source: Metacritic
