LEGO Horizon Adventures - Co-op Review
Jess: The release of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered a couple of weeks ago was just the taster for the real Horizon event of the year. LEGO Horizon Adventures – the brick-based take on Aloy and the world of Horizon – is out on November 14th, and Paul and I have been checking it out. After enjoying the first hour or so of the game at a preview event last month, I was excited to jump right in. The lego sense of humour and more simplistic storytelling make such an interesting pairing with the often dark themes of Horizon, resulting in an interesting genre mix. Paul, what do you think of Aloy’s transformation into a minifigure?
Paul: I suppose we had something of a taste of the look and feel with the LEGO Tallneck that was released into retail a couple of years ago, and as we’ve come to learn, that was something of a trigger for LEGO to request a collab on a game. Even with the physical LEGO you could feel a combination of some liberties being taken, but also a tonne of respect for the source material, and I feel like that has again been struck with LEGO Horizon Adventures. It’s very respectful to the Horizon IP, but still changes things up in a way that I enjoyed… its brevity for one. How about you, and what did you make of the tone of both Aloy and the broader world of Horizon through the LEGO lens?
Jess: I’m a big fan of this version of Aloy – she’s filled with enthusiasm and prone to doing adorable little bounces when she learns something new, like what a ‘cultist’ is or how to take down a new kind of machine. You’re right, it’s a pared back version of the story that gets rid of a few key details, I suspect both for the sake of brevity and also in the interest of making the game a little more accessible for younger audiences. Even during moments that made me cry in the original game – like the death of major characters – there’s a lightness here. Everything feels big and exciting, and like a grand adventure – which very much feels like the general LEGO influence coming in strong. There’s just enough of the lore here to make the game feel distinctly like a Horizon game in the Horizon world, but despite the overlap (and elements of crossover like the presence of the Focus), I wouldn’t say the gameplay feels overly Horizon-y… yet it doesn’t quite feel like a LEGO game either?
Paul: My feeling is that Studio Gobo have struggled to find the identity of the game somewhat, unsure how far they need to lean into Horizon, and how far they need to remain a traditional game, and have unfortunately found themselves stuck somewhere in the middle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun to play, and as you would attest from our own co-op experiences, when paired up with someone, its quite fun to play the game that way as well; it’s just that numerous things you’d come to expect from a LEGO game, like random collectibles from any given level that contribute to mini-kits or the typically breakable nature of most objects in the world are missing from LEGO Horizon and that hurts on the family accessibility level, while the levelling system feels kinda irrelevant, the game is very short, and then the tonal changes don’t leave it feeling totally Horizon either (despite being fun nonetheless). It’s a tricky spot the game has found itself in, would you agree?
Jess: I would, and it also makes it a tricky one to talk about. Because you’re right – it’s a lot of fun to play, particularly with a co-op partner, but it feels somewhat shallow in a lot of ways too. There’s a customisation system that allows you to change the look of what is essentially your hub world – Mother’s Heart – which is fun to mess around with and allows you to design your own village, but which is also ultimately limited in terms of function. Along the way you’ll unlock different designs for the buildings, all of which are based on various LEGO properties like LEGO City or Ninjago, and all of which are fun, but also somewhat basic. Some of the town’s community requests – the game’s version of side quests – will require you to interact with some specific design, or to ensure you have a number of different building types or colours scattered throughout the village, so you’re forced to spend some time with these design mechanics. They’re fun for a while, but I’m not sure they make up for all the things that feel like they’re missing – like, as you said, mini-kit collection or breakable objects. Another thing to note, is that though the game offers different weapons and abilities to be used by different characters (who you’ll unlock along the way), it also makes it oddly difficult to swap between those characters – something that often makes up a large part of a LEGO game. Building out the roster is usually half the fun. Did you find yourself spending much time playing as anyone other than Aloy?
Paul: So no, I didn’t feel overly compelled to play as anyone other than Aloy. She’s the star, Ashly Burch does a wonderful job reworking the character of Aloy to be less dire and more family-friendly, and so I didn’t really want to see what Varl, Teersa, and Erend had to offer for the most part. You still get the injection of their personalities through the story, and through multiplayer I got to dabble, but generally, I wasn’t overly excited by the prospect of changing up my playable character, nor did I feel enthusiastic about changing their look through customisation. That latter part is more of a me thing, because I generally don’t customise the looks of my characters much in any game, but the limited range in LEGO Horizon Adventures didn’t do much to sway me another way. Its nice that the different playable four characters have different play styles, but Aloy has been so well entrenched as the star of the show, and I’ve really come to love her character through the core titles, not to mention her skillset, that I wasn’t feeling enticed to try the others. Speaking of Aloy’s skillset, and the combat experience, how did you feel about the moment-to-moment playing experience? I for one enjoyed it. It’s not especially deep, and it is far more linear than a typical LEGO experience, but LEGO Horizon Adventures does a good job of translating Aloy’s bow, the perks of different weapon or arrow types, and the machines and their respective strengths and weaknesses into the smaller, simpler, and more contained environment. Would you agree?
Jess: I would mostly agree, but there were definitely times when it was a little fiddly. Being able to use the Focus to identify weak points on the enemies is a big part of Horizon gameplay, and while that’s also implemented here, it never really felt like using my Focus on enemies showed me anything that just aiming my bow at an enemy didn’t also provide. You can’t aim up or down, so it’s still very ‘point and shoot’, and when enemies are often doing environmental attacks that see them hurtling into the ground and rendering half their body inaccessible for hits, it feels like it takes away a lot of the strategy. I still had a great time with it, it’s still high on that pure ‘fun’ value, but it was just another area that felt like it was a little simpler than I wanted it to be. I also really, really wanted the Focus to be more useful – but maybe this has a lot to do with how I specifically play Horizon. Personally, I’m used to treating it as a stealth game in many ways, picking off enemies silently from the grass where I can and taking down machines before their buddies notice. Here, you can’t really do that – one hit on one enemy, and you can no longer hide. That send, even though it doesn’t serve much purpose (other than to make me accidentally set myself on fire a lot after using a flame bow) the grass is one of my favourite parts of the game. There’s something very funny to me about the fact that when Aloy goes into stealth mode in the grass, she literally just turns into a moving piece of grass with her spear poking out.
I hear you on the customisation side of things, too – I am someone who tends to spend hours in character creation screens, but it does feel wrong to change the look of a character whose look is already so iconic. Other LEGO games have included this kind of customisation too, but it’s one I generally steer clear from for similar reasons – why customise a character when you have such beloved preset characters to choose from? Maybe younger players will enjoy this aspect a little more though – I think by making it a simpler game than both Horizon and LEGO titles have historically been, they’ve made it very accessible to a younger audience, despite it perhaps feeling a little too simplistic for older players. Would you agree?
Paul: They have, and so before anyone can accuse us of being old and shaking our fists at clouds, let me note on both of our behalves that we’re well and truly aware of who the target audience is, something that is further highlighted by the game launching on Switch as well as PlayStation. It’s overly simplistic for anyone with some gaming experience let alone a fan of the Horizon IP, but also kids and adults alike love the idea of big mechanical dinosaurs and so this opens up the franchise to countless new possible players. While this isn’t the best LEGO game I’ve seen, and it’s certainly the weakest Horizon game too, it’s still quite fun to play, and I think all parties may have struck gold in terms of engagement with a community. That all remains to be seen though, for now, I had a great time with the game, and hope that many others will too.
Jess: Likewise – it’s not the best LEGO game, nor is it the best Horizon game, but there’s definitely a charm to the combination of the two. Even when they’re not at their best, these are two IPs that shine, and I’d happily jump into some co-op for this game any day.
Player 2 reviewed LEGO Horizon Adventures on PlayStation 5, using a code kindly provided by PlayStation.
