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A Horizon game for everyone

As a Horizon -series fan I feel little bit spoiled recently, because we just got Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for PS5 and PC. For my surprise LEGO Horizon Adventures was revealed some months ago and releases on November 14, 2024. I played it through and I’m super excited to dive into this review.

Plot

Join hunter Aloy as she swings into action to save Earth from an ancient digital demon and a gang of sun worshippers who think living in a world without shade is a brilliant idea, all while ignoring the fact that everything is gonna basically burn. Aloy also has her own questions: where she came from? Who are her parents? Why they abandoned her?

Yes, the plot in LEGO Horizon Adventures is little bit different to the original games. There are lots of same key elements in the story but they are written in different way. What remains the same is the main characters such as Varl, Teersa and Erend that do the same kinds of things in the game as in the original series.

What I think about the modified story? I liked it and it was obvious this game was made for kids first and foremost. Not excluding any adults as I think anyone can play and enjoy LEGO Horizon Adventures.

Gameplay, controls, audio and visuals

The gameplay in LEGO Horizon Adventures is very likeable. It’s rather easy to understand as a whole as it is not as fully fledged as in the original games. The main gameplay consist of going on missions and coming back to the main hub area Mother’s Heart where you can upgrade weapons or just chill. You’ll gain XP-points from killing machines that will eventually level you up. The plot goes on as you find new areas and go on new missions. The game is very linear compared to the open-world version of the original game. If I must say right now and here, after playing about 4 hours it felt kinda repetitive. What kept the missions alive was the story and new enemies as you progress. There are various of other things I could do, such as side missions and other extra missions. What I liked was the fact how I could transform the hub area to my liking. There are many various objects that can be used in the hub area from other LEGO category such as Ninjago and LEGO City.

You can go on the missions all by yourself or with other players that can be local or online co-op. I played this through all by myself and I realised that the game would be nice to play with another player as it sometimes might feel a little bit too hard. It was sometimes overwhelming how many enemies can attack you at once. But do not fret; difficulty level can be changed at any time.

Talking about difficulty, LEGO Horizon Adventures does offer rather large scale of difficulty settings. There are all together five to choose from: Story, Scout, Adventurer, Machine Hunter and Hero. I played this through on Adventurer which I thought to work as “Normal” difficulty.

Controlling characters is very simple. You’ve got basic moves like jump and moving around. Then comes the bow and arrow, that is what Aloy is known from, and player can keep two different kind of bows with them. For example one shoots basic arrows and other could be that shoots fire arrows. With them player can also have one extra weapon that varies from throwables to shields to a hotdog stand that throws exploding hotdogs at enemies. Lastly comes the health that was the biggest hiccup in my opinion as player can only heal themselves by running into bushes that has berries in them. There are certain amounts of healing berries on every area. I really wanted to have healing items on me all the time so I could’ve heal myself faster.

Player can choose which character they go on the missions. All the characters have they own weapons which I found out to be difficult to suddenly use after so long with Aloy and her bows, so that’s why I played with her the most.

Defeating the enemy robots was very well-designed. It wasn’t just shooting them with arrows as much as you possibly can. The robots must be first scanned using Focus to know their weak points and then trying to shoot at those parts. You can shoot the enemies other parts but they take much less damage. The battles are usually intensive and there are lots of different sorts of enemies to be deal with at the same time.

The game was fully voice acted and I liked how mostly the characters had the same original voice actors. Even the robots had the same kind of noises they keep in the original games. I could appreciate how the game was voice acted in various languages, even in Finnish.

LEGO Horizon Adventures looks beautiful and detailed. The game offers two graphical options which one favoring Fidelity and other Performance. Meaning the Fidelity has higher graphics but lower frame rate, as Performance has lower graphics and higher frame rate. I tried both of the settings and I could see difference in them; one had noticebly sharper image when other had noticeably higer frame rate. I played this through in Fidelity mode.

Even though everything in LEGO Horizon Adventures looked beautiful and lifelike, it kinda felt busy to the eye. What I mean by this is that it felt like there were too many things crammed into the enviroment and it was as my eye couldn’t focus on the main things. But in the end I think I got used to it.

The last brick

LEGO Horizon Adventures was very nice experience overall and I enjoyed it. Everything in the game works like a charm and it felt very much like a miniature and simplified—and kid-friendly—version of the original games. I played the main story through in about 7 hours. If you are fan of Horizon series this is a nice little game to add to your collection, or if you want to play Aloy’s story in a shrunken version, well, now you can. I do recommend LEGO Horizon Adventures to everyone.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is available on PS5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch and Windows.

(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher)

SCORE:

5/5

“You can go on the missions all by yourself or with other player that can be local or online co-op”

RELEASE DATE: November 14, 2024
GENRE: Action
DEVELOPER: Studio Gobo / Guerrilla Games
PUBLISHER: Sony
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed)
Nintendo Switch
Windows

 

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