Currently HZD on Amazon:
#1 Physical regular version
#24 digital regular version
#32 digital deluxe edition

Also PS4 has moved up to #7. Think it was at an avg of 12-14 most of the month iirc.

I wish there were a thread where we could post our individual opinions of Horizon because I know this thread is essentially about the reviews from professional critics. (I don't have enough posts yet to create threads or I would create one for this purpose.) Oh well, I'm going to post my initial thoughts anyway:

I'm several hours into the game now and so far my opinion is a bit mixed, but basically positive. It may be worth qualifying that by pointing out that I'm not really the biggest fan of massive sandbox adventures generally. My favorite genre I would say is graphic adventures, which has become sort of an umbrella term for story and/or atmosphere-driven games of all sorts. So I guess just understand that I do approach Horizon with a certain play structure bias that tends to favor thematic innovation more than other things and adjust your reading of my brief commentary accordingly.

What I like the most about Horizon so far is its long-range combat system, and especially the ability to dive out of way of enemy projectiles before launching into an attack. That's NEVER going to get old, I don't think! It just feels awesome! And fortunately, this strength, combat (mainly with machines), is the dominant aspect of the game so far. Horizon is also a very technically sound game: the graphics are perhaps the most lush and detailed I've ever seen in a video game before, the soundtrack is highly atmospheric and really draws you into the world, the controls are highly responsive and aesthetic (except in close-quarters combat, which fortunately I haven't actually been obliged to participate in thus far), and I haven't noticed any significant glitches or frame rate issues yet. Especially for a game of its scale, Horizon is highly polished!

These things said, personally I'm finding the storyline so far to be typical Saturday morning action cartoon type stuff rife with false drama and cliched characters, the writing and the voice acting generally to be poor (mostly overly dramatic), and the side missions to broadly be predictable, standard-issue fetch quests. Most of the usual genre tropes are there too, from detective vision to skill trees and radio towers. The fact that all these boxes are checked betrays the life that the lush graphics promise and makes the experience feel superficial, "like a game", if you will. The result is that I haven't been felt truly immersed in this world yet, just entertained. All that said, most of the professional reviews say that the story gets better and more poignant in the second half of the game, so I may have to post an update on this thought when I get that far in. (I certainly hope it does, in fact, eventually steer away from the cheesy "tribal politics" that it's revolving around so far.)

Finally, I hope people won't lynch me for bringing up the gender politics of this game because honestly the lead character has been really been the main appeal of this game for me. I mean, at its heart, Horizon is a fairly typical sandbox action-adventure, but I've found it really refreshing that at least this type of adventure is being told from a female perspective for a change because that's quite rare. Let's face it, most video games that have female leads (especially in the "AAA" category) are made in bad faith, i.e. obviously targeting a predominantly male player base with heavy sexualization and often infantilization (typical examples of these types of games and franchises: Lollipop Chainsaw, Heavenly Sword, Bayonetta, Nights of Azure, ...Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball...) and the exceptions broadly either cover the female leads from head to toe most or all of the time (e.g. Metroid) or take place in the first-person perspective so that they're hidden off-screen (e.g. Perfect Dark, Portal, Mirror's Edge, etc.). Horizon is among the only 3D exceptions to this rule. Seriously, the only other 3D examples I can think of are Bound and the most recent couple of Tomb Raider games and Bound went virtually unpromoted. If for no other reason than this, Horizon is an important game! It may or may not objectively be THE BEST game of the year, but it's certainly of particular importance when it comes to its potential to influence the representation of women in video games more broadly. If it succeeds commercially, that is (which I think it will).

Okay, gender politics rap over! Bottom line: I'm having fun so far, but at the same time, am not truly immersed as yet. Hope to update you as I progress!

Sorry guys, the road to 89 just got that much harder and unlikely: Game Critics just gave HZD a 65.

Are they still active on Metacritic though? All of their reviews are quite old games http://www.metacritic.com/publication/game-critics

I think this is their page: http://www.metacritic.com/publication/gamecritics?filter=games

Their score was added earlier today.

Well it's in their list of scores. And it brought HZD down to #648 on the top scores of all time list, where the lowest 89 is #612 (lowest 88 is #795). Last I heard someone say, HZD was just a few positions from #612 (prior to game critics review). 

Is that maybe due to the number of reviews? I'm guessing by just the style of game that Nioh is, that it receives probably half the reviews of say a FF15 or Zelda will. Thus an extra 10/10 or 6/10 affects it much more than one woudl for a game with more reviews, thus it was able to climb a whole 3 points up.

It's baffled me why Nier Automata and Horizon havnt been compared to each other and have been set into a sales/review war, (sort of like LoZ and horizon have) because theyre quite similar- Both are classed as Action/RPGs one is open world while the other is semi open world, they both have female leads and both have the same setting- a post apocalyptic earth where machines have took over.

If they make Nioh 2 it should wow everyone graphically, like the jump from Demons/Dark Souls to Bloodborne. Hope they take their sweet time and not rush it.

dat GameCritics quote....

Approximately 18 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed.

seriously?