Lego Horizon Adventures Review – A Toy Aloy Trifle

Sony’s Horizon franchise has always felt like it had the potential to tap into a younger demographic, what with its plucky youthful protagonist, largely-bloodless robot dino combat, and environmental messaging, but Sony never really pitched the games that hard toward kids – until now. This week sees the release of Lego Horizon Adventures, which reassembles 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn into a plastic-y kid-friendly form.

Will Lego Horizon Adventures attract a whole new audience to Aloy’s exploits? Or does Sony’s arrow fall short of the intended target? Time to break this blocky adventure down…

Lego Horizon Adventures sticks to the broad strokes laid down by Horizon Zero Dawn, in the sense that you play as a redhead named Aloy with a mysterious past who has to save a world overrun by aggresive robo dinos and fanatical cultists. Beyond that, most of the original game’s complex backstory involving competing AIs, cloning, and other sci-fi chicanery has been jettisoned, presumable to keep this game approachable for younger players. Hearing Ashly Burch and other original HZD cast members (minus Lance Reddick sadly) doing poppy kid-friendly version of their characters is interesting, and the plot being boiled all the way down to “you have to stop Helis because he hates trees” is amusing in a way, but so much has been sanded down in this retelling that the story becomes rather uninteresting.

While this version of Horizon Zero Dawn’s story isn’t that compelling, the franchise’s world still looks very impressive done up with Lego. The makers of Lego Horizon Adventures went with a fixed isometric camera, which allows them to pack every inch of the screen with a huge amount of detail and plenty of flashy effects, including ray tracing. The game offers the choice of a 30fps Fidelity mode and 60fps Performance mode on PS5, with both running very consistently, even with tons of stuff flying around on screen.

That said, while the isometric approach allows for lavish visuals, it doesn’t necessarily serve the core gameplay that well. True to the original Horizon games, Aloy largely fights with a bow in Lego Horizon Adventures, but ranged combat has never got along with isometric camera angles very well. This is particularly true in this game, where you’re constantly having to aim at machines’ glowing weak spots. There are varying levels of aim assistance you can turn on, but playing as Aloy and most of her friends never feels as precise or enjoyable as it should.

I say most of her friends, as playable characters Aloy, Varl, and Teersa all use ranged attacks, but Erend, who isn’t unlocked until nearly halfway through the game, wields a big ol’ melee hammer. Playing as Erend feels more impactful and gratifying than any other character, but even he’s not perfect, as it’s pretty clear Lego Horizon Adventures was largely designed around ranged combat with almost every enemy scooting around quickly and spamming long-range attacks. I still preferred taking control of Erend, but there’s no ideal, fully-satisfying character to play as.

Lego Horizon Adventures’ core gameplay not quite stacking up is frustrating, as the game definitely does some things right. A lot is borrowed from the core Horizon games, most notably the series’ large array of enemy machines with unique attack patterns and weaknesses. Add a variety of unique weapons and gadgets, interactive environments, and throwable explosives to the mix and you get combat encounters that are much more complex than your typical Lego game.

Almost too complex for the game’s less-experienced target audience. Lego Horizon Adventures throws a lot at you, and playing on medium difficulty, I actually saw the Game Over screen a decent number of times. There are a variety of difficulties to choose from, but younger kids may find even the lower levels a bit overwhelming. Of course, there is drop-in co-op so parents can lend a hand, and you should prepare to be called in to assist more often than you would with your typical Lego game.

In between combat, Lego Horizon Adventures doesn’t offer all that much. Level design is very linear and repetitive, with players simply following the trail of studs along a narrow path to the next objective. Occasionally, there will be a short branching side path with a cache of studs or something to build at the end of it, but that’s about as complex as things get.

Lego Horizon Adventures just feels a bit… underbuilt. The main campaign can be finished in around 7 hours, and while there are some extras you can pursue, like rebuilding the game’s Mother’s Heart hub and revisiting levels to take down high-level machines, even dedicated players probably won’t spend much more than a dozen hours with the game. A kid’s game being on the short side isn’t the end of the world, but the bigger issue is that I didn’t really want more — by the end of its short campaign I was already feeling ready to return this one to the Lego bin.

This review was based on a PS5 copy of Lego Horizon Adventures provided by publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Lego Horizon Adventures

Lego Horizon Adventures carries over a lot of the things previous Horizon games did well, offering lush visuals, a likable cast, and a wide range of robo dinos to take down. Unfortunately, not everything survived blockification, with an overly-simplified story, sometimes-unsatisfying core gameplay, bland level design, and an overall lack of content resulting in a Lego game that’s a few bricks shy of a load.

Buy for $59.99 from Amazon

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