Lego Horizon Adventures Review

If you’ve played a Horizon game and experienced any one of the myriad of LEGO games over the years, it’s not hard to imagine how a game like LEGO Horizon Adventures might play. And yet, it doesn’t quite work like that. Don’t get me wrong, with their distinctive designs and a focus (excuse the pun) on detachable parts, the machines of Horizon slot perfectly into a world made of easily destructible plastic bricks. Yet, somehow, this new game from Horizon developer Guerilla Games and Studio Gobo suffers from an identity crisis.

The first hurdle to overcome is that this is not a LEGO game in the style of Traveller’s Tales — the developers of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and two decades' worth of LEGO games before that. LEGO Horizon Adventures somehow feels more refined. It’s less “smash everything and collect all the studs” and more “explore this very linear playset and see at how beautifully realistic we can make digital LEGO”. Much like LEGO Bricktales, it attempts to mimic what LEGO would look like moving in real-time, hyper-realistic 4K plastic bricks and all. To add to the confusion: from a structure, storytelling, and content perspective, LEGO Horizon Adventures is aimed at a younger audience. Yet its visuals, precision-based combat, and connection to the Horizon franchise seem tailored to appeal to the more mature crowd.

Defeating enemies by knocking off specific weak points before they smash into tiny pieces? Very Horizon. Building a Ferris Wheel in your home village whilst Aloy is dressed as a hot dog? Very (very) LEGO. You can see my point, right?

Unfortunately, it's a duality that LEGO Horizon Adventures never manages to conquer. The result is a game that is fun in very short bursts but won’t keep either grown-up or child entertained for very long. Utilising a stylised and simplified version of Horizon’s signature combat system, complete with a variety of weapons and gadgets (some Horizon-themed, many wacky and LEGO-themed) there is a surprising amount of joy and depth to be found in pinging an arrow at an individual LEGO part and watching it fly off the back of a Broadhead. Equally, I had a laugh smashing a Sawtooth in the face with an oversized brick separator. There’s that odd-couple pairing shown again in full force. Alas, brick-built machines and detachable parts may be where the game’s best ideas begin and end.

As evidenced by my Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered review (and the LEGO Tallneck displayed proudly in my living room), I’m a big fan of the Horizon series. I was excited to see how a simplified, toyetic, Horizon adventure might play out. What I wasn’t quite expecting was a truncated, shallow, repetitive game that only sort of tells the story of Horizon: Zero Dawn over eight hours. For Horizon fans, there’ll be a lot of head-scratching and saying “that’s not how that happened”, and kids playing are probably not going to care all that much. The characters themselves will at least be engaging. It’s great to hear Aloy voice actor Ashly Burch giving a more excitable, highly animated take on Horizon’s chief heroine. That same joyful energy can be heard from all the returning cast. However, the script tends to go for humour above most other things. Sadly, this means that some characters — especially the principal villains — are played for laughs even when the moment really doesn’t call for it. Honestly, it all kind of falls a bit flat a lot of the time. Very occasionally, it managed to thread the needle and get a chuckle out of me.

Seeing familiar settings and machines from the world of Horizon rendered in LEGO also put a smile on my face. Hardcore LEGO fans will definitely get a kick out of recognising some real-life LEGO sets forming the remnants of Horizon’s Old World too. Alas, all of this is only about a stud deep. The simple exploration and platforming were fun for a few minutes, but barely evolved throughout my time with the game. Cauldrons, Tallnecks, and boss encounters offer something different, but the whole game feels very tightly on rails. Chances to go off the beaten path are frequent but are only minor detours and rarely rewarding. Most levels are over in minutes and follow a startlingly similar structure that soon gets repetitive. The extremely light exploration quickly began to feel like filler between combat arenas. Battling machines is where the game is most fun, frantic, and challenging, especially with lots of human and machine enemies on screen, but even they lost their lustre the longer I played. 

I also got the feeling that LEGO Horizon Adventures would prefer me to be playing with a second player. A co-op partner can jump in and out of the game at will in split-screen and online co-op. Aloy is naturally the lead character, but Varl, Erend, and Teersa are all also playable. Each of them has their own unique weapons and gadgets, but they don’t really evolve the combat scenarios that much. If collecting gold (and red) bricks is your thing, there are a ton of those to get, and playing with a partner might be the best way to see and unlock everything the game has to offer. There are also costumes and customisation pieces to buy with any collected studs. Although, many of these are not even Horizon-related and instead showcase the worlds of LEGO City and Ninjago, so feel hugely out of place. Not that you can really break the immersion of a Nora village made of plastic bricks that has its own DJ booth.

A big part of me wishes LEGO Horizon Adventures had tried to be more faithful to its source material. Simplifying story beats for a younger audience is one thing, but this has been diluted so much that, at several points, it almost feels completely disconnected from the story it was attempting to adapt. However, the more I think about it, the more I feel this game could — or maybe should — have been very different. One that played in the Horizon sandbox, and told new, shorter, sillier, side stories instead of trying to shoehorn Horizon Zero Dawn into a space it doesn’t fully fit. I even think the name LEGO Horizon Adventures fits that concept better. Just saying.

‍LEGO Horizon Adventures is a square brick in a round hole: It doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, or who its core audience is. Too short and simple for the fans who know the series well, whilst likely not doing enough to engage younger players for very long either. There’s quite a bit of fun to be had with the combat. It’s a good, stylised, approximation of the tense machine battles found in the core Horizon games,  especially when you’ve got some gadgets and practice under your belt. Although, I’m concerned it might be too overwhelming for kids. I love the look of the game. Each brick looks individually placed, the lighting reflects beautifully off the shiny plastic surfaces, and I’d like to build them as real playsets. It also perfectly captures Horizon's visual style, with all the characters and machines well represented — I really want an actual LEGO Thunderjaw — and there are some fun LEGO easter eggs scattered throughout the game’s various biomes. 

I really like a lot of things about LEGO Horizon Adventures and I want to like it even more. The concept is solid, but the execution falls apart quicker than a LEGO Watcher with an arrow to the eye.