Lego Horizon Adventures Review: Missing Pieces

13 November 2024

Slapping ‘Lego’ in front of a video game title is essentially the opposite of putting ‘Rated M for Mature’ on the back of its box. It tells you that the game is safe to play for a younger audience. The ‘M’ label, on the other hand, tells the kids what they actually should be playing. But Lego video games aren’t just for kids, even if they’re a big chunk of the target demographic. Adults, too, can have a good time with these brick-and-benign versions of beloved franchises. I’ve dipped my toes in Lego Harry Potter and Lego Star Wars. 2022’s The Skywalker Saga, in fact, is perhaps too densely packed for humans of the non-adult kind.

Lego Horizon Adventures, while not nearly as packed to the brim with things to do and nowhere close to being as mechanically deep, is likely going to be a fun time for grown-ups, too — specifically the ones who’ve played and liked Horizon video games on PlayStation. Guerrilla Games’ latest Horizon title — the second one in two weeks — is a candy-coloured reinterpretation of Horizon Zero Dawn, which just got a remaster that dialled up the graphical presentation of the 2017 breakout PS4 hit. Lego Horizon Adventures, on the other hand, amps up the silliness.

The condensed, cleaned-up version, however, is not a 1:1 adaptation. Just like other Lego video games, it contracts the source material’s story, puts it through a kid-friendly filter and delivers it with trademark tongue in cheek humour. That might not be everyone’s cup of tea. After all, why play the Kidz Bop version when you have the real thing, especially when Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered looks as pretty as it does? The Lego version of the game is strictly linear, and thus constrained in many ways. But for people looking to play something fun and light with their family during the holiday season, Lego Horizon Adventures more than gets the job done.

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The Lego-themed spinoff is still telling the story of Aloy, the plucky, red-haired, rock-climbing protagonist from Horizon games. But it drains out all the dark stuff and doesn’t care about the pesky details. Baby Aloy is found at the heart of the All-Mother Mountain and entrusted to Rost, who brings her up and trains her outside the tribe. The Lego version skips the harsher realities of the story, where Aloy and Rost are shunned by the Nora tribe and live as outcasts. Here, once Aloy grows up and triumphs at the proving, she’s accepted into the Nora village, Mother’s Heart, with open arms.

The more serious themes are either diluted or left on the cutting room floor, but the outlines of the environmental disaster story are still present, albeit packaged in a relentlessly positive, feel-good wrapper. Mysterious cultists attack the proving, Rost dies (but in a more ‘Rated E for Everyone’ way), and Aloy is left to figure out secrets of the old world and take on a new threat. She has the hologram of Dr. Elisabet Sobeck to guide her and the friends she makes along the way to aide her in her quest to defeat the cultists’ leader, Helis, and restore peace and balance to the lands.

Lego Horizon Adventures reinterprets an environmental disaster story for a younger audience
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Lego Horizon Adventures only concerns itself with the broad strokes of Zero Dawn’s story. So, it’s a strictly linear affair with straightforward levels instead of an expansive open world, that can be rushed through in about six or seven hours. And to its credit, the game handles the trimming quite well. It manages to maintain the essence of the narrative and shed the more nitty-gritty parts that would have dragged it down. The tone is that of a Lego movie — silly, self-referential, and sweet. But just like a Lego movie, you’re also often wondering “Did I really order this?”. There are some positives to this approach though. Lego Horizon Adventures is having way more fun and taking itself a lot less seriously than Horizon Zero Dawn. And that ends up adding a bit flavour to what was, despite an interesting premise, a terminally bland story. Playing the remastered version recently reminded me just how humourless and lifeless the characters were in the original game. Here, they have the energy of a high schooler on seven cups of coffee.

Lego Aloy ditches the brooding for banter. In Horizon games, she talks in a burdened tone and exhausted sighs; here, she’s upbeat and quippy. Returning voice actor Ashley Burch is unshackled and playful, injecting Aloy with infectious optimism. Other characters are extrapolated to sillier extremes. Varl, for instance, was a loyal and stoic friend to Aloy in Zero Dawn. Here, he’s still loyal, but he’s also an idiot. He can’t walk two steps without tripping over and falling. And the Lego version of Erend, who was a hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside ally in the original game, is a donut addict. The villains and their motivations are silly, too. Helis, for example, is more adorable than intimidating. He just wants more sun, so his nefarious scheme is to eradicate all trees (and consequently all shade).

Lego version of Aloy and her friends are sillier
Photo Credit: Sony/ Guerrilla Games

The story is also framed by a narrator, who dishes out meta commentary on what a good job he’s doing, aside from contextualising the invisible details of the plot and describing the unfolding events. It’s cute and clever but can become a little grating at times. And that holds true for the game’s overall tone, too. But it’s perhaps best to know that not all jokes will land and accept that that’s okay. It is, after all, a Lego game, and its humour, whether it works for you or not, is familiar territory.

And at the end of the day, Lego Horizon Adventures is not targeting the grizzled PlayStation 5 user who just wrapped up Silent Hill 2 and is looking for their next game. There’s a reason why Sony is simultaneously releasing Lego Horizon on PC and, more notably, Nintendo Switch. There are over one hundred forty-six million units of the Switch around the world — a lot of them belong to kids or are used as a family console. It might be harder to ask adult gamers to part with their hard-earned money for Lego Horizon Adventures, but it’s a much more sensible sell to parents looking for a game for their kids.

Lego Horizon Adventures follows kid-friendly rules
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

The kid-friendly rules apply to the gameplay, too. Exploration and combat from Horizon Zero Dawn have been stripped down, part by part, and rebuilt in Lego bricks with simplicity at its core. Lego Horizon Adventures features a handful of linear levels that each come with about half a dozen missions, all of which feed into a wondrous central hub world — the Mother’s Heart village that serves as both your base of operations and your Lego wonderland of shiny things. And while the game strives to simplify almost every gameplay aspect from its inspiration, it does add cooperative play to the mix. Lego Horizon Adventures can be played solo, or in two-player couch or online co-op. I went through it by myself, and I’m positive it would have been more fun with a friend.

When you start a mission, you have the option to choose from four playable characters in the starting area of the level. While playing solo, the other three are left behind on the screen as you move out to complete your objectives. I’d have liked if the game allowed AI companions, so that your friends could accompany you on your adventures. They could have proved handy on the battlefield and their presence would have helped establish chemistry between the characters. Though they don’t accompany you, Varl, Erend, Teersa and Sylens are always in your ear via the Focus, dropping pep talk and puns.

Lego Horizon Adventures supports couch and online co-op
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

The combat is, in a way, equivalent to you picking up two GI-Joes as a kid and mashing them together. You get a permanent weapon (a bow for Aloy, a spear for Varl, a hammer for Erend, and bombs for Teersa) and a rare weapon with limited ammo reserves that you acquire as pickups across levels. You hit the square button on the DualSense controller for a quick attack or hold it down to bring up a firing trajectory for more precise targeting. You also get a gadget, bound to the circle button, that serves a distinct combat function. Some of these are familiar, like the Tripcaster from the original game, that sets up electrified traps to trip up both crazed machines and cultists. Others are completely new and Lego-based; like the aptly named the Brick Separator, an L-shaped Lego piece that hammers down on your enemies with toy-breaking force.

Each level features cascading sections of platforming and enemy encounters. You jump over gaps, climb around ledges, explore half-heartedly hidden areas for more Studs and dive deep into the odd Cauldron where the machines are made, before you’re funnelled into an open combat arena littered with Horizon’s trademark robot dinosaurs. Just as the original game, the machines are the standout here. The dino designs lend themselves perfectly to Lego pieces as their building blocks. Every machine feels detailed, crisp and alive, and it’s quite satisfying to identify their weak points and break them apart brick-by-brick. Some of the larger machines, like the Tallneck and the Thunderjaw, look simply incredible and serve as standout set pieces in the game.

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Lego Tallnecks are just as majestic as ever
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

The combat itself isn’t tough by any means, even at the hardest difficulty level, but late-game encounters can get quite chaotic. Running around in the arena, managing robots, cultists, environmental hazards, and weapon and gadget pickups can often feel like you’re juggling standing one-legged on top of a wobbly stool. Combat encounters are heavily focussed on elemental damage; you can freeze, light up or shock your enemies with the help of rare weapons, or throw a barrel at an oncoming machine to stop it in its track.

Aside from the main story missions, you can also go on Apex machine hunts after you complete the first of game’s four major regions. These are slightly more challenging encounters that shine a light on what has always been Horizon’s headline premise — shoot arrows at robot dinosaurs. Machine hunts, however, don’t introduce new complexities to the combat, which remains threadbare but mildly fun throughout. There aren’t many ways to interact with the game’s combat systems, especially if you compare it to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which was overflowing with gameplay variety. But that game was massive, required dozens of hours to go through the stories of nine Star Wars films. Lego Horizon Adventures, on the other hand, is lean for its own good and rolls the credits before repetitiveness can creep in.

Lego Horizon’s combat is simplified and shallow
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

The best parts of Lego Horizon Adventures, however, have less to do with Horizon and more to do with Lego. The game’s central hub, Mother’s Heart, is a literal playground. Here, you are the Lego god, crafting the village and its different areas, colouring its streets and sundries, and decorating just about every inch with Lego trinkets and assets. You explore the levels outside and collect Studs that you then spend back home on a never-ending renovation project. Completing missions and challenges grants you gold bricks that you can use to bring up buildings across the village. Every single item, from small-scale decor to large establishments, is deeply customisable, handing you the freedom to build a monolithic Lego set digitally.

Customisation options range from themes, colours, artefacts and trinkets from the world of Horizon, as well as other Lego properties like Lego City, Lego Ninjago and Lego Amusement Park. You can go completely crazy and adorn your village to your liking with the most random decor you can think of. In a game that lacks side-content, customisation becomes its own quest. Once you finish the story, you can continue your adventure by going on Apex hunts and ticking off challenges on the notice board to get more bricks to pimp out your village. By the end of the game, my home base was an anachronistic mishmash of clashing aesthetics and conjoined styles. These options exist for character customisations, too. You can, for instance, play the game looking like the blocky Lego version of Aloy, with her outfits borrowed from the world of Horizon games. Or you can go through it dressed like a hotdog. We all know which sounds more fun.

You can play Lego Horizon Adventures dressed as a hotdog
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

This is also the best a Lego game has ever looked. Every physical object in the game is made from Lego bricks and the finer details of the world come alive like a toy in your hand. Machines are, of course, the highlight, but environments look incredibly rich and vibrant. The world of Lego Horizon Adventures is also just as diverse as Zero Dawn. Lush forests, white-capped peaks and sundried deserts, all rendered in pristine bricks and blocks, are colourful and evocative, even when they’re cartoonish. And the warm lighting lends a sliver of realism to the toylike fantasy of the game.

The environments of Lego Horizon are blocky but beautiful
Photo Credit: Sony/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

For all its innocent wonder, though, Lego Horizon Adventures is also not quite wondrous as some other Lego video games. Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana jones aren’t just beloved franchises; they’re unforgettable pieces of nostalgia for generations of people all over the world. We grew up with those films and books, and consequently, a Lego-themed video game based on them holds a certain appeal. For adults, Lego games are a nostalgia trip, a way to dive back into that cherished world with childlike enthusiasm. And while Horizon titles on PlayStation are good games, they’re not indelible pieces of media memorabilia.

Which begs the question, who is Lego Horizon Adventures for, especially at its full $60 price tag? It’s obviously tailored for younger players and for devoted fans of the Horizon franchise. Heck, I own the Lego version of a Tallneck from the games, too, but I wouldn’t count myself among the core audience for this one. Lego video games tend to parody the mythos of their parent franchises, even if it’s done in tame ways. They play as both a love letter and a limerick to the source material. But Lego Horizon Adventures feels like it only exists as an embellishment.

Pros