The jury was very much still out on Horizon: Zero Dawn until just a few days ago, but Guerrilla Games' open world role-playing release looks poised to become Sony's next big franchise. Reviews have been generally very positive, with only a couple of outliers raining on protagonist Aloy's robo-dino parade. GamesIndustry.biz have compiled a wider look at the critical consensus, but here's a more general round up for your perusal.

Giant Bomb - 5/5

Horizon: Zero Dawn is familiar but also really refreshing. It's not a short game (I spent around 30 hours with it), but the storytelling still feels concise and efficient. The combat has some nice options that make encounters fun, even when you're just stacking up stealth kills from the relative safety of a bush. And the presentation end of the game holds up its end of things with a solid soundtrack, great voice acting, and a cohesive design that makes all its disparate parts fit together. All in all, it's a great game, it's Guerrilla's strongest release to date, and I suspect I'll go back in after the fact to clean up whatever side quests and errands I have remaining, if only to spend a little more time in that world.

Polygon - 9.5/10

Horizon: Zero Dawn thrums with the energy of a creative team finally allowed to explore something new. It builds on elements of open-world and loot-and-craft gameplay that we've seen before, but it does so within a context, a setting and a style that feel fresh. Horizon: Zero Dawn discovers a stronger sense of its own personality in one game than Killzone ever managed across half a dozen. Guerrilla Games has long been developing some of the most buzzed-about games in the industry; with Horizon, it feels like it has finally found its own voice, one worthy of all that buzz.

IGN - 9.3/10

Across a vast and beautiful open world, Horizon: Zero Dawn juggles many moving parts with polish and finesse. Its main activity - combat - is extremely satisfying thanks to the varied design and behaviors of machine-creatures that roam its lands, each of which needs to be taken down with careful consideration. Though side questing could have been more imaginative, its missions are compelling thanks to a central mystery that led me down a deep rabbit hole to a genuinely surprising - and moving - conclusion.

Push Square - 9/10

Debuts don't get much stronger than Horizon: Zero Dawn. Guerrilla Games' latest borrows liberally from a variety of different sources, and yet it leverages these fundamentals to forge an experience that's daringly unique. The main quest tires a little towards the end, and the writing never hits the same highs as The Witcher 3 – but the tactical action stands leagues ahead of what we've come to expect from the genre, and the presentation is quite simply unmatched.

Eurogamer - No Score

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a work of considerable finesse and technical bravado, but it falls into the trap of past Guerrilla games in being all too forgettable. For all its skin-deep dynamism it lacks spark; somewhat like the robotic dinosaurs that stalk its arrestingly beautiful open world, this is a mimic that's all dazzle, steel and neon yet can feel like it's operating without a heart of its own.

USgamer - 2.5/5

Horizon Zero Dawn is disappointing. It has a story that I struggled to care about (complete with massive expository dumps—yay), a bland protagonist, and overtly repetitive and constraining missions that worked against its open world sensibilities. When Horizon Zero Dawn hit its rare strides—from its gloomy Cauldrons to travelling across its sprawling vistas—it only made me wish the rest of the game were as worthwhile.

Have the glowing reviews convinced you to pick up Horizon: Zero Dawn when it releases next week? Do you have any lingering concerns about the quality of the game? Form a tribe in the comments section below.