LEGO Horizon Adventures – Review

LEGO games, much like the toy’s various bits and pieces, come in many shapes and sizes, usually featuring crossovers with huge, well-established intellectual properties (IP) from toys and movies, such as 2013’s LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, 2008’s LEGO Batman: The Videogame and 2007’s LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. All that is about to change, however, as the humble bricks are making their first proper foray into the world of video game properties with LEGO Horizon Adventures.

Developed by Guerilla Games and Studio Gobo, LEGO Horizon Adventures is based on Sony Interactive Entertainment’s well-established Horizon series, third-person role-playing games that revolve around combatting massive mechanical beasts with primitive weaponry. Yeah, few things about the concept screams LEGO-fication into a fun, self-referential romp that appeals more to a mass audience, but with a shift to an all-new genre, style and target audience, can this spin-off possess the same building blocks of what made the originals so beloved, or would it all come crashing down into a pile of jumbled bricks?

Roughly following the same storyline as 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn, players once again step into the fur-laced boots of Aloy, bow extraordinaire and outcast of the Nora tribe, a society of isolationist hunter-gatherers with a strong taboo against the technology of the ancient world. 

To provide context for those who are unfamiliar with the original game, humanity as we know it ended in the year 2062, wiped out by the same mechanical creations meant to defend us. Roughly 200 years later, mankind re-emerges, albeit in a primitive state, and humans have to co-exist with mysterious mechanical beasts that roam the land.

LEGO Horizon Adventures kicks off very much like how the original did, with Aloy travelling to the Nora village of Mother’s Heart to figure out the truth behind her birth and why she was made an outcast as a baby. Although the game follows the same general plotlines as Zero Dawn, such as Aloy’s ultimate goal to prevent a rogue AI from destroying the world again, it does take a considerable number of liberties with the original narrative to fit its new family-friendly persona.

Many of the original plotlines have been truncated or removed outright to fit the game’s brisk pace. Some narrative changes are small, like Aloy’s acquisition of her Focus (a device that grants the user knowledge of the old world and can scan objects in the environment), which in the main game she discovers after falling into an ancient ruin as a child. But here, her guardian, Rost, simply gives it to her as she is about to head to Mother’s Heart. Even the circumstances of her “birth”, which was a key mystery and plot point in the early hours of the original, is straight up told to players right at the start, further cementing the game’s more lighthearted and carefree tone.

It is regarding Aloy’s overarching goal that the game deviates most from the source material because while the original title saw her travelling across the lands in pursuit of the rogue AI HADES, all while navigating intricate tribe politics along with learning more about the ancient world and the mysterious “Project Zero Dawn” which created the roaming machines, here the story is pretty straightforward – find 3 metal flowers spread across each of the game’s different regions to build an ultimate weapon that can defeat HADES. 

While this dumbed-down story is perfectly serviceable for a game clearly targeted at a younger audience, fans of the series hoping to relive Aloy’s tale from a brand-new perspective are sure to find what’s on offer rather lacking. But this is a LEGO game, and all previous adaptations to this form have been rather generous in how they want to approach the original IPs.

The game’s shift in tonality is also prevalent in terms of its vocal performances, and fortunately, this transition fairs a lot better. The game adopts the same signature style of comedy from past LEGO titles, from characters remarking about their inability to count (as LEGO figurines have no fingers), to tons of fourth-wall-breaking and characters being well aware that they are in a video game.

Where this adaptation leads over the rest is the return of the strong vocal cast from the original, with Ashley Burch reprising her role as Aloy, along with JB Blanc as Rost, who doubles up as the game’s narrator, and John Macmillan as Varl. The voices may sound the same, but the way characters are portrayed is vastly different, owing to its more lighthearted tone. Burch’s performance here echoes more towards the chaotic nature of her other well-known role, Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series, compared to her original sombre delivery. As a whole, the game’s cheery nature does present a refreshing take over the originals, which can feel overly serious at times.

The transition to LEGO form also brings about a change in the game’s perspective, as the title now plays out from an almost top-down view, similar to LEGO games of old such as 2008’s Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. The title is spread over various bite-sized missions across 3 unique biomes, with levels taking around 10 to 15 minutes each to complete. General gameplay is split into two portions, exploration and arena-based combat, with the game presenting a largely linear path interspersed with light platforming and simple optional areas to discover for additional loot. 

Combat in the game is presented through set encounters within a small arena and ranges from facing simple human cultist enemies to the series’ iconic mechanical beasts, which Aloy must dispatch using her trusty bow. The main combat mechanic from the original Horizon games makes a remarkably effective transition to LEGO form, with Aloy needing to first scan enemies with her focus to uncover weak points, then use her bow to damage and remove certain parts of each machine for maximum damage.

Like the original titles, removing machine parts is not only the most effective way to deal damage but also offers unique advantages to Aloy. For example, breaking off the antlers of a Grazer, a mechanical deer, causes them to drop on the ground and become a weapon that Aloy can launch back at, dealing massive damage. Destroying key enemy components also disables certain functionalities, such as removing the ostrich-like Longleg’s ranged attack by destroying its concussive sacs.

With combat being simplified, Aloy no longer needs to craft her arrows like she did before, instead having an unlimited supply of basic shots. This also means that she is unable to craft elemental arrows on the fly, instead needing to shoot through elemental sources in the environment, such as fireplaces, to imbue her arrows with special properties, or pick up limited-use elemental bows through chests or enemy drops. Combat is also supplemented by gadgets, pick-ups that provide special attacks ranging from a simple shield to the more amusing hot dog stand, which when deployed hurls explosives at foes and functions like a turret.

Sadly, the basic level format does start to stagnate rather quickly, although the game tries to freshen things up by offering a steady supply of new features as levels progress, from a decent variety of enemy machines, each with their own weak points and attack patterns, to new gadgets and weapon types. There’s even the ability to play as different characters with their own unique weapons like Varl or High Matriach Teersa, who hilariously throws explosive chickens.

Despite all its efforts to keep gameplay engaging, LEGO Horizon Adventures’ most egregious shortcoming is that it fails to capture what makes LEGO games so charming to begin with, that being the joys of building. Undoubtedly the best part of any LEGO title is the ability to build creative objects out of loose bricks in the environment to solve puzzles, and here, this feature is non-existent. 

There are virtually no puzzle-solving elements in the title, apart from simple elemental-based destructible objects that hide optional chests, with levels presented simply as a straight path from start to end with 2 or 3 combat arenas in between. Building objects within levels is strictly limited to optional structures that provide extra currency, and traversal elements like zip lines or bridges that are mostly required to progress. As a result, the game ends up feeling more like a Horizon game than a LEGO one, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, it does feel like a missed opportunity to capitalise on its unique premise.

At least the title maintains a staple feature of LEGO games, co-op play, allowing players to bring a friend along for the ride, each taking control of one of the game’s unlockable characters, with both online and local couch co-op. While having someone tag along certainly makes things more interesting and chaotic, the core gameplay loop remains unchanged with no avenues for cooperative interactions throughout both combat and exploration, presenting the same shortcomings as that of solo play.

In between levels, the game places players into its hub level, Mother’s Heart, the Nora tribe’s main village, and here is where most of the title’s customisation options come into play. Players make use of LEGO studs found throughout stages, along with Gold Bricks earned after each level to rebuild the village to their heart’s content, building and customising various structures on specified plots of land scattered around the large hub area, which are unlocked following a certain collection threshold.

One staple of LEGO games is a wide variety of outfits for players to cosplay as, and here you have Horizon-specific ones like a cultist uniform, to characters from other LEGO properties including LEGO City and LEGO Ninjago. Players can also mix and match elements from different outfits, swapping between 6 different body categories to create their own unique look, albeit with certain compatibility limitations when it comes to the various design elements.

To help players earn more Gold Bricks and unlock more customisation options, the game features a community board, a checklist of gameplay-related challenges that players can complete, such as playing a level with a certain outfit or destroying enemies with gadgets, among others. This feature, although basic, does encourage players to make full use of the suite of customisation options on offer with the allure of unlocking more goodies.

Fortunately, despite its shortcomings regarding gameplay, the game’s transition to the LEGO style really stands out in terms of its visual presentation, presenting a beautiful recreation of the Horizon world in brick form. From environmental objects like raging waterfalls and the hulking carcasses of ancient machines that litter the backgrounds of levels to the intricate designs of the various machine foes and the characters themselves, everything is faithfully recreated to not only mirror the aesthetics of the main titles but also look as though they were realistically built from scratch out of LEGO pieces.

Further complementing this is the title’s outstanding animation quality, which takes cues from the excellent The Lego Movie and offers an almost stop-motion-esque quality to character movements, offering the feeling of controlling an actual LEGO minifigure instead of simply an animated character. This realism is further supported by the little details put into the figurines themselves, from the glue lines present on actual real-life minifigures to even light scratches on surfaces of the plastic to simulate wear-and-tear, this is by far the best-looking LEGO game to date.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is a charming little title with ambitious goals, marking the first true adaptation of a much-beloved video game series with a family-friendly twist. To this end, the title mostly excels in its transition, presenting not only a lighthearted retelling of Horizon that’s chock-full of LEGO-brand humour but also providing an amazing showcase of visual fidelity which perfectly encapsulates the charm of playing with the iconic toys. For players looking for an engaging and complex gameplay system, however, you might be better off sticking to the originals.

Kevin Low

Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.