Taking one of PlayStation’s biggest properties and giving it a LEGO version wasn’t surprising in a world where most of the biggest IPs in the world get a LEGO treatment — it just doesn’t happen much in video games because… well, the console wars, I guess? But with Aloy now in LEGO physically that you can buy and display in your home, which is definitely targeted at the core audience of the games, this beautiful digital LEGO game has its eyes set on younger gamers, which can summarise the story of Horizon Zero Dawn in a distilled format, but in a just as gorgeously crafted world.
In the lead-up to this release, I wondered how a LEGO game could distil the Horizon: The Forbidden West story into a more child-friendly format. All that violence and trauma surely can’t translate well. It kind of can when you use LEGO rules, which is what I wasn’t considering. Which is what I’ll call taking the core narrative of Horizon as being ‘Aloy wants to know who her mother is, and there’s a bad group of cultists out there,’ and not worrying about anything else. That is to say, this game has a lot of fun with the Horizon cast of characters and the narrative, and I’m glad to see that Guerilla Games and Sony haven’t gotten ultra-protective about how Aloy and their friends were used in this game. It’s as silly as a regular LEGO game would be and features all manner of ridiculous moments that properly break any of the more serious stories beat down as just set-ups for another joke. HADES becomes a joke, Helis, the leader of the ‘cult,’ becomes a guy just obsessed with getting a tan, and Sylens is now a DJ. Aloy is still looking to learn more about her mother, and the adventure and core character beats are kept intact here, but any signs of the trauma inflicted upon Aloy are removed. A big death from the first game is still here, but even that becomes a moment of ‘he died, but he’s still part of this game because we want him to be’ moment.
Being a LEGO game I thought I’d have basic understanding of how LEGO Horizon Adventures would play and be structured, but in this insance it appears developer Studio Gobo has made the choice to strip back the game to being super-simple, to the point it loses a lot of what makes the LEGO games succcsful.
Accustomed to hitting everything in the world to collect bricks, I was shocked to find this feature removed from this game. Overall, the levels don’t give you any reason to explore, and there are no secrets to be found. Instead, each level is structured with a couple of areas involving some light platforming with, maybe, a puzzle before you enter an area and face off against some machines.
Combat is a big part of the core Horizon franchise, and fighting machines, from the smaller ones to the huge Thunderjaws, are huge moments that involve strategy, and LEGO Horizon Adventures wants to keep some of that same feeling. Each machine still has weak spots on its body, and you can use Aloy’s focus to scan and highlight them in battle. However, their weaknesses and strengths have been removed. You’ll still get access to different weapons randomly, like electric and fire bows, but your preference for one or another will only need completing challenges to earn Gold Bricks that you can look at back at Mother’s Heart. In the ‘Apex Challenges,’ which see Aloy taking on stronger Apex Machines, you’ll need to stay on your toes a bit more and pick up as many different weapon drops as they come to make sure you’re doing as much damage as possible, and using traps as well can help you, but there’s no real strategy to it outside of moving so you don’t get hit.
Mother’s Heart is the centralised town you’ll return to between missions. Here, you can talk to other characters, help rebuild the town itself, and change Aloy and different playable characters’ costumes. You can also use bricks to upgrade Aloy and the other playable characters here, but I didn’t feel like the difference between any of the upgrades I bought was felt at all. From when I started playing the game, it felt the same.
This is a gorgeous world with plenty of detail within levels that feels quite hollow and lacks both the excitement of exploring Horizon Zero Dawn and destroying the world, which is usually pieced together in a LEGO game.
