Announced on a random Thursday with little fanfare, Horizon Hunters Gathering is a new co-op game from the Guerilla team set in the Horizon universe, and will launch on PS5 and PC.

The idea is that you and three other people will team up to tackle replayable hunts across several different game modes like Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent. Both will be playable in an upcoming closed beta due at the end of February which you can sign up for here.

To Guerilla’s credit, they announced the game with a 8+ minute video that provides a pretty decent look at what Horizon Hunters Gathering is going to be. Personally, though, it didn’t leave a great first impression.

That initial disappointment stems from the game’s visual style. Instead of keeping the franchise’s existing look and feel, they’ve gone for stylised and cartoony, a style that immediately screams live-service, Fortnite etc. Hell, there’s even a giant purple sky beam in a game mode where a circle gradually closes in on the players. From the word go, it makes Horizon Hunters seem generic.

The good news is that the gameplay appears fun at a glance. There’s a lot of talk about it being tough and demanding, which isn’t really shown in the gameplay. Where’s the leading robots into traps like Horizon? But the action still looks kind of fun and snappy, although again lacking anything that screams Horizon to me.

“In Horizon Hunters Gathering, you choose from a roster of uniquely skilled Hunters – each with distinct melee or ranged playstyles and weapons – and select Hunter roles further embedded with a rogue-lite perk system to craft the build that best suits your style and your team,” says the official PlayStation Blog.

The characters on display don’t do it for me, either. Nothing about them seems distinctive or interesting at a glance, and a few of them were downright unappealing. Hopefully, the full game can make them interesting.

There’s mention of a proper narrative campaign in the official blog post as well. Whether that can be played solo is not yet known. Nor is it clear if you can tackle the game with AI taking over for the other players.

At no point is it indicated that this is going to be a live-service title, but I am getting that vibe from it. I’m hoping I’m wrong and it’ll be a standalone co-op title, with maybe a few expansions down the road of it does well enough. But I do think there’s an important clue to be found in the fact that it’s going to launch on PC alongside PS5, a strategy Sony itself previously confirmed for its live-service games.

While I admit that this hasn’t grabbed me, I’m also not the best judge of this stuff. I have been out of the multiplayer stuff for a long time, and perhaps there’s a chunk of the Horizon fanbase that will be very excited to check this out. Despite people’s main complaints, companies like Sony do have to at least attempt to compete for the multiplayer and live-service space. To ignore it is insanity. But there’s also no denying that it’s a crowded, competitive space, all vying for a player’s very limited time. Horizon Hunters Gathering hasn’t shown anything yet that makes it stand out in the market, unless, of course, it isn’t actually aiming for the live-service crowd.

On a funnier note, though, Aloy showed more emotion in brief appearence in that trailer than she has done in the entirety of the mainline games. I mean, she actually smiled. Madness.