LEGO Horizon Adventures review

I’m not entirely sure what Sony and Guerilla saw in the Lego Horizon Adventures crossover potential. The post-apocalyptic dinosaur hunting series from Lego and PlayStation doesn’t seem like it opposedexactly, but before I sat down to play it, I didn’t see any Big Brand multiplicative power in putting them together – especially compared to the Lego Harry Potter or Star Wars games.

Now that I’ve finished playing it, I see even less reason to justify the concept of Lego Horizon Adventures. I honestly don’t know why this game exists, and honestly, I’m not even sure the people behind it know either.

Building

Lego Horizon Adventures is a very loose adaptation of the plot of the 2017 game Horizon Zero Dawn (emphasis on loose). The plot follows much of hunter Aloy’s journey, including her battle with the cult leader, the villain Helis, and her attempt to understand the mysterious tales of the “old world.” A lot of the nuances of Zero Dawn’s story get lost in the gravy here. Aloy’s status as an outcast in her tribe and the believable and meaningful struggle for acceptance that I felt would fit well into this family-friendly story is a throwaway joke. Perhaps this should have been my first warning sign, as Lego Horizon Adventures will continue to escape the depths at every opportunity beyond this point.

Many of the jokes didn’t make sense to me, but I’ll give it a rest because I couldn’t make a 30-year-old laugh. However, the script never moves beyond the tired structure you’ve seen countless times in Dreamworks animated films. Haters “they’re right behind me, aren’t they?” Marvel-style humor are going through complex times. I think even the target audience will tire of the indolent writing by the time the campaign is over – which is almost impressive considering how incredibly compact this game is.

Mental block

Unlike other Lego games where characters act more like skins than characters, all playable characters in Horizon Adventures have their own unique attacks and gadgets. For example, Aloy focuses on distance with her bow, while her companion Erend closes in with his great hammer.

The problem is that the levels themselves are not different at all. Almost every five-minute mission simply involves killing a bunch of enemies and traversing remarkably similar maps, which makes all the levels feel exactly the same just a few hours after starting.

It became so repetitive that at times I was convinced that I had somehow decided to repeat the mission. There are some clever ways the game tries to disguise this glaringly compact loop, as the tasks you’re given and the settings in which you complete the missions change – but these tasks only result in different cutscenes, and the locations only differ visually.

Combat is the video game equivalent of putting together 10,000 of the same basic 2×2 Lego bricks: you’ll just spend most of your time spamming the attack button and dodging the odd projectile. The gadgets you can find add a diminutive and short-lived thrill of variety, allowing you to throw enormous area-of-effect attacks or freeze enemies in place, but even so, combat will still feel repetitive at first.

The enemy variety continues to improve, introducing fresh types of dinosaur robots in every few missions. Fighting them forces you to change your attack, as you’ll have to attack some from behind or learn fresh dodge patterns. Ultimately, they can’t sustain the interest of the overly simplistic combat throughout the entire Lego Horizon Adventures campaign, which is ridiculous considering its length.

Expand your horizons

In an age of 100+ hours of RPGs and endless live action games, a game that is compact but sweet can certainly have its appeal. I’d rather have a focused, compact adventure than an average odyssey any day. Unfortunately, I think Lego Horizon Adventures is the worst of both worlds in this respect. It’s repetitive, doesn’t even try to do anything innovative with the Lego game formula, and you can comfortably complete it in a day. I usually don’t care how long a game is in relation to its price, but this one costs $60 and won’t hold a child’s attention for even more than an afternoon.

Despite my occasional fondness for the Horizon series, I started to get bored after two hours. So who exactly can I recommend this game to – 12-year-olds who love both Lego and Horizon? Adult Horizon fans who want to play co-op with their kids?

Maybe just people who really love seeing virtual Legos instead of real ones. Honestly, the game looks amazing on PC: I’m sure it’s a benefit of the stop-motion effect that mimics Lego Horizon Adventures, but the character animations are incredibly sleek and the flashy particle effects easily make this the best…looking Lego game I’ve ever seen. The bar may be low, but the game comfortably clears it.

Performance on PC was mostly okay, too. I had all settings set to maximum at 4K resolution, with unlimited frames per second, and apart from a few stutters, the game ran flawlessly. These stutters seem to be directly related to enemy death and only occurred when I defeated multiple machines in one attack, most likely due to the resulting Lego shards that fly when the enemy dies.

But aside from an obsession with the blind Horizon and an infatuation with digital bricks, there’s not much to appreciate about Lego Horizon – and even then, I don’t think fans of either will come away particularly satisfied. Moderately entertaining for an evening at best.