Lego Horizon Adventures

It is absolutely mad to think that in the almost-eight years since Horizon: Zero Dawn made its arrival on PlayStation 4 consoles, we've had a full sequel, a remaster, plans to produce a television series that have seemingly collapsed, a virtual reality spinoff, and now also a brickified Lego adaptation of that first project. Sony has milked Guerrilla Games' creation for all of its worth, and it's precisely because of this that we're now asking the question about if there's both too much Horizon out in the wild and also if there's any need for Lego Horizon Adventures.

Now, before I get into the intricacies of my thoughts about Lego Horizon Adventures let me also just comment on the fundamental purpose of this game and how despite its charm its existence doesn't really make sense. This isn't Horizon: Zero Dawn back in a Lego format, it's a version of the story that has been simplified and tweaked to make it befit younger audiences. As a concept, there's a lot of sense in that. Except Horizon: Zero Dawn isn't a viciously mature game in the first place, meaning there are likely plenty of younger gamers that have already experienced the mainline instalment (perhaps even with the remaster that debuted a couple of weeks ago...), younger gamers who after just a couple of hours with Lego Horizon Adventures will realise that the tone and structure is even too infantile for them. Yep, this is where my first issue with Lego Horizon Adventures creeps in because this game exists in some strange limbo where it's not as generation-defying as TT Games' Lego titles and yet not as child-friendly as Outright's family offerings. It has very rudimentary game design matched with Cbeebies-like dialogue, jokes, and text, all while offering combat that can be quite fast-paced and while being based on a franchise that kids and youngsters probably either won't recognise or don't care about as much as established titans like SpongeBob SquarePants or Bluey. All of this comes together to make for a game that I still cannot put my finger on the demographic it has been fundamentally designed for.

But anyway, Lego Horizon Adventures takes the core story of the main game and distils it into an approximately five-hour narrative that focuses on key events that happened in the grasslands, snowy mountains, jungles, and the deserts of the American mid-west. You still face Helis and Hades and several key characters meet unfortunate endings, but it's toned down and much less emotional all to make the story as kid-friendly as possible. For example, Rost's death is very different this time than in Zero Dawn and the character never really "leaves you" either. That might seem like heresy to Horizon fans, but since there's no open world element, it's a more seamless transition than you'd think, and in fact my biggest qualms with the narrative structuring and setup is how much they've dumbed down the story and taken any compelling sting out of it, something we usually don't see in other Lego adaptations.

Ashly Burch and the rest of the voice cast return and do a fantastic job continuing to bring to life their respective characters, there's tons of the signature Lego charm and humour that will often leave you with a grin plastered across your face, and the actual visuals and presentation is usually stunning and paints a wonderful brickified version of the already beautiful Horizon world. So, narratively and presentation-wise there's both good and bad, but mostly it's positive and makes for a fun experience.

What hasn't left me as impressed is the gameplay. It's rigid and often so predictable that after an hour or two it feels like you know exactly how this game works and will work until the credits roll. And that impression is accurate too as Lego Horizon Adventures basically never does anything to surprise you. It lays out a foundation in its first minute and sticks with it for the rest of the experience, and that foundation is essentially using Aloy or one of the three other playable characters, to work through a linear level where you defeat cultists and robot creatures in defined arenas and in the meantime partially destroy the environment, open discoverable chests, and build the occasional (and seemingly pointless) structure all to acquire studs to use to improve Aloy and the hub area of Mother's Heart. The adventures and expeditions may be different thanks to procedural generation elements or due to being based in unique biomes, but the actual structure and design philosophy is the same each time and it really does take the magic out of Horizon to have such a rigid and predictable setup.

Mother's Heart also lacks a level of depth and intrigue as it's meant to be a hub where you customise and design the various elements in your own way, but it's all very basic and once again too rigid to the point where you lose interest in adjusting the roofing on a building, what type of plot it's based on, or adding silly flair elements around the village. It doesn't feel as though Mother's Heart expands and develops with the adventure, it just gets bigger and more time-consuming to move around with more un-interactable fluff everywhere.

Then there's the content beyond the core storyline, which is minimal at best. While TT Games' Lego projects have tended to go so extreme with collectibles and additional ways to keep the player engaged that it can feel overwhelming, Lego Horizon Adventures has so little that you really start to wonder if you're missing something. There are Gold Bricks to earn by completing adventures and minor challenges such as defeating enemies using exploding barrels, and this is on top of Red Bricks acquired by overcoming the more boss and combat-centric Apex Hunts. But what do these really give you? Mostly the reward opens avenues to additional outfits for Aloy or more customisable elements in Mother's Heart. There are no minikits or other types of rewards to find throughout levels, there are no hilarious bonuses and cheat code-like extras to fiddle with, and this all means that more and more emphasis and pressure is placed on the gameplay and combat to succeed and impress, something it doesn't have the depth nor range to make possible. While fighting a Thunderjaw is a spectacle, it's so rigid and mechanically-limited that the threat these deadly robots imposed in the original game really isn't translated here in any sense whatsoever.

It's all of these compounding elements that leave me a little unsure with Lego Horizon Adventures. On one hand, it's so simple and easy to pick up and play, with such a wonderful presentation, great cooperative support, and a great degree of charm that it becomes very, very easy to love. But at the same time the gameplay often feels too predictable, the customisation systems disappoint, and even after acquiring every Gold and Red Brick available I still cannot figure out who this game is aimed at. With the recent remaster and even the relative recency of the original PS4 launch, it's hard to point a finger at this game and call it a must-play, especially since compared to pretty much every other Lego game available it lacks in almost every metric.