Review: LEGO Horizon Adventures (PS5)
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Video games featuring LEGO have taken some interesting turns over the years. Where early, fondly-remembered examples embraced the creative, constructive aspect of plastic bricks, the rise of themed sets in stores and the breakout success of TT Games’ LEGO Star Wars saw LEGO games shift largely toward recreating iconic franchises in video game form, starring minifigures and plastic bricks galore.
Enter LEGO Horizon Adventures, a game that combines the general design blueprint of the TT Games LEGO titles with the authentic brickwork and convincingly-rendered pieces seen in the likes of Builder’s Journey. This one’s a PlayStation Studios joint though, developed by Studio Gobo in close collaboration with the original game’s developer, Guerrilla Games, and of course with LEGO.
This is a guest review by gaming correspondent Kieron Verbrugge. Check out his other gaming reviews and guides below:
- Review: LEGO 71438 Super Mario World: Mario & Yoshi
- Launch Buying Guide: LEGO Horizon Adventures (2024)
- Review: LEGO 21265 Minecraft The Crafting Table
Special thanks to Playstation ANZ for the opportunity to review this game.
Like its spiritual predecessors, LEGO Horizon Adventures presents an abridged, family-friendly and tongue-in-cheek version of the events from its source material, in this case 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn. Rather than go beat-for-beat with Horizon’s plot and recreate iconic moments as in other examples though, here we get a sort of “remix” of events with brand-new dialogue and some drastically different character interactions that serve as an excuse for its lead, Aloy, to go on her adventure with more company than before.
What this means is that if you’re already familiar with the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, this new take offers up some fresh ideas with plenty of in-jokes and amusing, humorous reinterpretations of established characters and events. Armed with the requisite knowledge, you’ll also be able to fill in any blanks yourself as LEGO Horizon Adventures tears through the original game’s timeline in a tight, 6-7 hour campaign.
By that same token, if you’re completely new to this story you probably won’t gain a complete understanding of it from this game. That’s certainly not out of the ordinary for a LEGO tie-in title, but it’s a touch more of a problem with something like Horizon where setting out to enjoy the original material isn’t as simple as watching a few Disney movies and instead involves playing a massive, open-world action title aimed squarely at older players. It’s definitely an odd prospect – a game designed to be enjoyed by younger players with a tone and humour to match, but with a narrative that’ll mean very little to the majority of that audience.
Thankfully, that humour is absolutely on point for those who find joy in The LEGO Movie and its ilk, combining aggravatingly bad puns, genuinely hilarious fourth-wall-breaking bits and an abundance of slapstick to ensure anyone will get a good giggle out of it.
The LEGO Movie’s influence also extends to LEGO Horizon Adventures’ visual identity. The game goes a very long way to give the impression that this is a world built brick-by-brick from actual LEGO pieces and to present it in an almost stop-motion animated style, particularly when it comes to how the minifigure-based characters move about. Whether in gameplay, basic dialogue sequences or proper cutscenes, there’s a whole lot of energy and goofiness to how the cast of characters move and interact that adds a lot of charm to the package.
The real stars of the show though, are the LEGO renditions of Horizon’s lush environments and fearsome machine creatures. This is by far the best-looking virtual LEGO game I’ve seen in something of this scale, not only are the pieces themselves rendered in almost photorealistic detail right down to the reflective surfaces and imperfections, it’s all been constructed to be completely representative of something a skilled LEGO builder could actually replicate if they wanted to. It really comes together to make it feel like you’re peering down into a real LEGO Horizon diorama to frequently breathtaking effect.
The machines, as well, are really thoughtfully-designed and stand up really well against their Horizon Zero Dawn counterparts. I will absolutely be forking out for any Horizon sets LEGO might decide to do in the future, if the machine designs are anywhere near this good. There are even some cool easter eggs for fans of other LEGO sets, like some recognisable modular buildings (Jazz Club, anyone?) standing in for the ruined structures of the old world.
A special shout has to go to the game’s audio treatment too, with a soundtrack helmed by Homay Schmitz that dips into themes from Zero Dawn with incredibly catchy new treatments, along with plenty of other contributors including mxmtoon. The voice cast is comprised of the original actors from Zero Dawn (minus the late Lance Reddick), who do a fantastic job with the more light-hearted material and direction.
LEGO Horizon Adventures is at its best when you’re going toe-to-toe with these machines, too. Like the original Horizon Zero Dawn you’ll need to think on your feet and always aim for each machine’s distinct weak points to do maximum damage. And like the original you’ll gradually get access to a growing number of tools to fight increasingly-complex machines, even occasionally turning their own weapons against them if you can manage to knock one off. The environmental and elemental effects also play a key role, so you can light long grass on fire, freeze enemies or electrify pools of water to create new opportunities.
Even better, once you add in another player for some local or online co-op, managing big fights with lots of machines (and sometimes human cultists) can be a thrill and the synergy between the four playable characters and their unique main weapons adds a ton to combat. Because the controls are simple, and the action contained to one screen, it’s the perfect game to play along with a younger or less experienced player and give them a taste of what Horizon is about. Those prone to friendly fire will also be glad to know that while you can annoy your partner by shooting them in the butt every few seconds, they won’t lose any health over it.
As exciting as the game can be in its best moments, the bits of exploration in-between combat encounters aren’t quite as successful. Levels are incredibly linear save for the odd chest of studs tucked away on forked paths or some very specific moments of choice, and there’s almost nothing in the way of puzzle solving or challenging platforming other than in the few Cauldrons you’ll visit. There’s not a heap of gameplay variation between the five or six levels in each of the biome-specific chapters either, so you’ll feel like you’re repeating yourself as you work towards the next area.
Probably the biggest misstep when it comes to level design is the lack of LEGO building elements. The other LEGO games in this style obviously never really let you loose to build whatever you want from bricks, but the moments in levels where you’d have to hold down a button and watch your character frantically build something were usually meaningful and had gameplay implications. With the exception of a zipline or two, the only other buildable bits here are random decorations that spit out a small amount of studs as a reward.
One major departure from the Horizon Zero Dawn blueprint is the fact that you’ll be spending a heap of time in the Nora tribe’s home of Mother’s Heart, and thankfully there’s a bit more creativity involved here. Serving as a kind of hub between levels, you’ll contribute to its rebuilding over time with facilities for things like character upgrades and bonus objectives, as well as new areas unlocking throughout the adventure. It’s also ripe for customisation, giving you the opportunity to spend your hard-earned studs on putting buildings down across a few predetermined plots and picking from a range of roof designs, colour schemes and extra embellishments.
What’s fun about all of this is you aren’t limited to making Mother’s Heart look like something from a Horizon game, you’ll quickly gain access to entirely different themes including LEGO City and Ninjago, and while a lot of the buildings you put up don’t actually serve a purpose beyond generating some passive stud income, a heap of the decorative objects you can buy for them contain amusing, hidden interactions.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be a LEGO video game without a whole heap of minifigures to unlock and play as. Presented as a “cosplay” style situation, donning the look of another Horizon character or, again, a favourite from the likes of LEGO City, Ninjago and more, changing into something new won’t actually alter anything about your chosen hero aside from their plastic visage. Dressing Aloy up as Ninjago’s Kai, for example, will see him pop-up in her place in gameplay and even cutscenes, but you’ll still use all of Aloy’s moves and hear Ashly Burch’s familiar voice emerging from him during cutscenes, which is absolutely more funny that it is jarring.
But while being able to splash studs on new buildings, character upgrades, costumes and more adds some great flavour to the experience, the awkward rub is that you’ll finish LEGO Horizon Adventures’ core campaign long before you unlock most of it, and there’s limited reason to keep playing and actually enjoy what you’ve unlocked.
After you finish up with a particular chapter you’ll get access to some “Apex Machine Hunts” which put you in tougher combat situations, and then once you’re done with those you get the option to run through an area from A to B as many times as you want, but the actual story content and bespoke stages are completely unavailable unless you start a whole new save file. It makes for a pretty dissatisfying endgame where all you’re left to do is play through the same handful of short runs over and over to grind studs for new cosmetics and upgrades, with little practical reason to.
At the end of the day, there’s a lot here to satisfy the cross-section of Horizon Zero Dawn and LEGO fans, and it’s evident that everyone involved at Studio Gobo, Guerrilla Games and LEGO poured a ton of passion into those elements. There isn’t another LEGO game that looks this authentic, or is this sharply written, so while it’s missing a little of the sauce, I can only hope it serves as a base for a potential LEGO Horizon Forbidden West to build and expand on in the future.
What I liked:
- Stunning presentation that looks and feels authentically LEGO
- Seamless co-op makes it a great family game
- Great sense of humor
- Enjoyable LEGO take on Horizon’s machine combat
- Tons to unlock and play with
What I didn’t like:
- Uninteresting level designs
- Rushes through the Horizon Zero Dawn story
- Limited options for replay
Final Thoughts:
LEGO Horizon gets a lot of things right, from nailing the humour and aesthetic of The LEGO Movie and presenting it in stunning detail, to translating Horizon Zero Dawn’s compelling machine combat into an approachable and family-friendly form. Unfortunately the final product also feels a smidge too incomplete, with a short campaign that doesn’t work as a standalone story, bland level design and little replayability.
Final Score
LEGO Horizon Adventures will be released on PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch on 14 November 2024. You can pre-order the game on the PlayStation Store, Steam, Epic Game Store, and the Nintendo eShop, or grab a physical copy from Amazon.com or Amazon Australia.
Make sure to check out our launch buying guide here.
If you’re planning on purchasing or pre-ordering LEGO Horizon Adventuress please consider using the affiliate links in this post. I may earn a small commission with each purchase that helps support the work I do on the blog!
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