LEGO Horizon Adventures is a delightful and rather comedic rendition of the Horizon series filled with action and a simple narrative.
It is surprising but endearing to find the world of Horizon further enhanced by LEGO Horizon Adventures. A LEGO interpretation of the popular series is not far-fetched at all in this 2024 action-adventure game published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and produced by Guerrilla Games, Studio Gobo, and The LEGO Group.
Horizon is an innovative video game brand with a profound sci-fi narrative, serious disposition, and intricate systems, which makes using LEGO adaptation a bit out of place. Still, LEGO Horizon Adventures incorporates a higher degree of Yorkshire humor that compresses the radius of Aloy’s world into a simpler and more enjoyable story. The usual LEGO style is amusingly irritating in a good way, but it portends some shocking transformations.
At first, I was doubtful about how this light-hearted angle would work in such a vast and detailed world. However, after playing LEGO Horizon Adventures for a longer period, I began to understand why this is so and why it is fun. So, let’s dive into the review and find out if LEGO Horizon Adventures holds up.
For those unfamiliar with the original Horizon Zero Dawn, Studio Gobo and Guerrilla have essentially adapted their story into a “LEGO-fied” version. While it doesn’t delve as deeply as the original, it provides enough background for newcomers to follow along. The core cast is present, including Aloy, Rost, Tera, and Sylens, with several voice actors from the main series reprising their roles. LEGO Horizon Adventures’s brighter tone is a refreshing shift for a franchise often criticized for taking itself too seriously.
LEGO Horizon Adventures features four playable characters: Aloy, Varl, Tia, and Erend, each with their own distinct weapon. Aloy uses her iconic bow and arrows, Varl throws spears, Tia tosses bombs, and Erend wields a hammer. Each character’s playstyle differs slightly due to their unique weapons, and there are special versions of these weapons to discover. While the roster of just four characters may seem small compared to other LEGO games, their unique weapons, along with the ability to dress them up in a wide variety of outfits—from Horizon and other franchises like Ninjago and LEGO City—ensures a good amount of variety.
Ashley Burch, in particular, seems to revel in portraying a more lighthearted Aloy. While the tonal shift might feel like an overcorrection at times, it fits well with a world where hunting robot dinosaurs is the norm.
LEGO Horizon Adventures is structured around a central hub called Mother’s Heart, where you embark on short adventures. As you progress, you unlock customization options to decorate buildings and structures. The hub also features areas to upgrade Aloy’s abilities, switch costumes—including fun options from LEGO Ninjago and LEGO City—and complete short objectives for rewards. While charming at first, Mother’s Heart can become tiresome to revisit after every level, especially once you’ve explored its offerings and are left repeating the same routine.
As is typical for a LEGO game, the combat is simplified compared to the main Horizon titles, but the developers have made it work quite well. Four playable characters unlock throughout the story, and both couch and online co-op allow for different combinations. Each character has their own unique weapon, and new weapon variations can be acquired along the way, along with elemental powers like fire and ice.
Temporary abilities, such as gravity bombs and boost boots, can be used alongside your main weapon. When facing machine enemies, you’re encouraged to target their weak spots, which can be highlighted by scanning, though the bright yellow weak points are often easy to spot. Combat generally involves managing several enemies at once, dodging their attacks while launching your own.
While the gameplay is relatively shallow and repetitive—fitting for a game aimed at a younger audience—it remains satisfying, especially when you manage to hit multiple targets in one shot with a well-placed gravity bomb.
The combat leads to a few exciting boss fights, with levels often concluding in fun cutscenes. However, these moments can’t be revisited since there’s no level selection or way to replay stages. Once you collect the gold brick and finish a level, it’s locked in, and the only way to experience it again is by starting a new save. While most levels may not be compelling enough to replay, it’s a bit disappointing that you can’t revisit memorable fights or story moments.
To soften this, after completing a chapter’s levels, you unlock Apex Hunts, which presents tougher combat challenges. Completing these unlocks Free Mode, where you can revisit the environments as many times as you like to tackle optional objectives and gather more studs. A particularly interesting feature is the randomized level layout each time, which hints at a modular structure and may explain why the main stages sometimes feel a bit sparse.
What’s particularly disappointing, however, is the lack of effective stealth gameplay. Stealth is a key mechanic in the main Horizon games, but it’s underwhelming here. While you can hide in tall grass, which is amusing as your character transforms into a patch of it, your cover is quickly blown once you shoot an arrow at an enemy. You can break their line of sight and hide again, but LEGO Horizon Adventures clearly prefers you to approach encounters directly rather than relying on stealth.
The level design feels a bit lackluster. After completing a few missions, you’ll notice a pattern: each level features the same environments, with a linear path interrupted by treasure chests, zip lines, climbable ledges, and buildable structures before culminating in an open area where you face waves of human enemies and machine dinosaurs. And that’s pretty much the entire structure.
Although the enjoyable combat mechanics help make the experience more engaging, LEGO Horizon Adventures becomes repetitive fairly quickly. It looks great, but the interactive environments feel surprisingly limited. Fine for a kids’ game, I suppose?
I’m not particularly fond of how dying in this game sends you back to a previous checkpoint with a loading screen. You have to replay any dialogue and cutscenes, which becomes frustrating if you die several times. To make matters worse, all the studs you collected in the area have to be gathered again. I much prefer the instant respawn system found in other LEGO games, where you drop the studs you’re holding and can immediately jump back into the action.
LEGO Horizon Adventures looks fantastic, especially when compared to previous LEGO titles like LEGO Harry Potter and LEGO Star Wars. LEGO Horizon is a significant visual upgrade over those. I played for around eight hours on my base PS5 and didn’t encounter a single bug, which is great.
While I can’t speak to how it performs on Switch or PC, it’s worth noting that as an Unreal Engine 5 game, it is quite demanding on PC. In fact, the recommended specs for LEGO Horizon are even higher than those for Forbidden West, and the new Zero Dawn remaster, highlighting just how impressive Guerrilla’s Decima Engine is, which powers the main Horizon games. The music is excellent, too. While it’s much lighter and more playful than the main games, it still maintains a high level of quality.
LEGO Horizon Adventures is a delightful and rather comedic rendition of the Horizon series filled with action and a simple narrative. However, the level design is somewhat monotonous, and other gameplay aspects are missing. Nonetheless, because of the impressive graphics and nice quality sounds, it is bearable. It’s a great option for kids and for those who like Horizon but want something more lighthearted based in the Horizon universe.
