Adventure Corner ~ LEGO Horizon Adventures

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column we take a look at LEGO Horizon Adventures on PlayStation 5.

LEGO Horizon Adventures

Did anyone have LEGO and Horizon crossover on their bingo cards? I sure didn’t when I saw the announcement and I certainly jumped for joy because I love the Horizon series and was surprised when LEGO Horizon Adventures was announced. Horizon never seemed like a kid-friendly property to me, but with the toyetic monster designs, it’s not surprising that LEGO has made actual Horizon LEGO kits, such as the Sawtooth, Shellwalker, and even the Tallneck. Truthfully, who doesn’t love LEGO? There’s a reason why this toy line is so iconic, and merging it with Horizon is definitely an interesting choice.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is a Coles Notes version of Horizon: Zero Dawn, offering a simplified version of the events in the first game. The version sees Aloy traveling around areas near the town of Mother’s Heart, fighting off LEGO-robo-dinos and attempting to stop a sun cult from accelerating global warming onto a planet that is already environmentally in rough shape. Since the target audience is children, the game tends to take a much more humourous and corny approach to some of the original game’s more serious matters, such as a comedic twist to tragedy or turning the main villain into a moustache-twirling caricature.

Pew! Pew! Pew!

The story is also helped by the fact that a lot of the story is told through a narrator. Having a certain spoiler character be the narrator and allowing them to interject during key story moments adds a lot of personality to the game and its story. The dialogue thoroughly understands the audience it’s geared towards, and it helps that the majority of the voice cast is reprising their characters for this kid-friendly installment. The cast had a lot of fun recording the dialogue, and with the simplification of Horizon‘s story, there is a good balance of seriousness and playfulness. One of the main changes of course is Tim Russ taking on the role of Sylens due to Lance Riddick’s death in 2023. Tim Russ does a fantastic job of jumping into the role, playing up the more fuddy-duddy elements of Sylen’s stoic character. The portrayal of the cast is fun, silly, and surprisingly accessible for adults and children alike.

The appeal of the LEGO games comes from their simplicity. In Horizon Adventures, players will work through five different and distinctive zones, each with one large goal to complete, such as rescuing villagers, and smaller goals such as straddling a Tallneck. Regardless of the area, Aloy and her companions will fight LEGO-fied versions of Zero Dawn‘s enemies. To deal the most damage, Aloy and her companions must hit foes in specific weak spots, which can be located by using a character’s Focus, a device that scans the enemy’s type. There are also special gadgets that can be collected during each level, some specific to whichever character is in use, such as a spreader bow for Aloy, and some that everyone can use, such as the brick separator that is super overpowered. Gadgets can absolutely turn the tide in a tough battle, and sometimes it’s just fun to summon a hot dog man who throws bombs. As levels are completed, the player is rewarded with a Gold Brick, which allows them all kinds of unique boons.

Party down with DJ Sylens!

While the combat does its best attempt at being a kid-friendly version of Zero Dawn‘s systems, it’s a bit too simplified, and given the game’s target audience, the game isn’t very hard either. LEGO Horizon Adventures does offer multiple difficulty levels for those who want to adjust to the challenge, but even on Normal, the game is still very easy. The game is truly at its best when played with a friend, either through local or online co-op, as having the characters be able to banter back and forth, adds to the overall experience and makes encounters much more enjoyable. Every level has a decent amount of secrets and items to build in the backgrounds, and earning studs, the game’s currency, is plentiful.

One of the main draws in Horizon Adventures is players are tasked with rebuilding Mother’s Heart. As levels are completed or players acquire enough studs, they can rebuild areas, as well as buy new clothing and decorations to make Mother’s Heart their own. In a playthrough with a friend, everything was decorated in Mother’s Heart to be hot dog-themed, simply because it was funny. There is also a community bulletin board where Aloy and friends can take on different tasks to earn more Gold Bricks, which can unlock new plots of land that can be built on. Some of the tasks are simply combat requests, such as defeating a certain number of enemies, and others could be something silly such as building a rocket ship and launching a random LEGO NPC into space. It’s dumb fun at its finest.

Amaz-bricks!

LEGO Horizon Adventures is not a long game, with a complete playthrough clocking in around ten hours, and there are additional Apex Missions that can be completed after a zone is cleared. These Apex Missions are for those who want more of a challenge, and for the most part, they live up to their difficulty compared to the base game. Visually, the game is gorgeous looking, and it’s amazing to see Horizon rendered into a LEGO-fied world, brick by brick. There’s a lot more colour in this version of the world, making it visually appealing to the eye. The downside is that the areas are a bit on the small side, and there are parts in each of the levels where it is easy to get caught in the environments, and some of the platforming is rough.

At the end of the day, Studio Gobo and Guerrilla Games took an interesting risk in making Horizon: Zero Dawn accessible to a younger audience. The game is cute and charming, and seeing this wonderful property in all its LEGO glory makes for a fun experience. It’s a great co-op game, and it has the perfect runtime without outstaying its welcome. Even with some of its faults, I loved and enjoyed my time with LEGO Horizon Adventures, because it was fun to revisit this world and see it in a completely different way. While it’s not a perfect or even challenging experience, the game succeeds at crafting a building block of fun for both adults and kids alike.