I’ve always found the Lego games rather endearing, with their slapstick humour, often eclectic array of blocky setpieces and those wonderfully destructible environments. I challenge you to find me someone who doesn’t delight in destroying a once perfectly arranged pile of bricks in the guise of a cannon, tree or anything else really, just for the sheer joy of watching those objects burst into a wave of collectable studs. I bet you can’t.
Question is, can Lego’s comical playfulness still come through when it’s building on more serious and ‘grown-up’ source material like Horizon Zero Dawn? After all, the Horizon series was intended for more mature audiences from the off – its PEGI 16 age rating a far cry from the U and PG scenes of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, for example, that the Lego games made their name on. There are also themes such as exclusion and isolation tucked into Horizon as well, and let’s not forget the small plot point that is the downfall of humanity. Yes, it is fair to say Horizon Zero Dawn is not exactly the video game equivalent of a cosy bedtime story you read to your children while snuggled up under a blanket drinking cocoa.
But despite seemingly being at odds with each other in many ways, developers Guerrilla Games and Studio Gobo have managed to marry the two together rather well, as I discovered during an hour long hands-on preview of Lego Horizon Adventures last week.
The upcoming, PlayStation-published release will mark quite a change for the Horizon series. Not only is Lego Horizon Adventures arriving with an easy breezy, friendly-to-all approach compared to its more cinematic counterpart, it’s also freeing Aloy from her PlayStation-first shackles. On Lego Horizon Adventures’ release this November, she will make her debut on the family favourite Nintendo Switch, as well as PC and PS5, simultaneously.
And, you know something, it is really refreshing to see Aloy embrace her more joyful side, which her Lego setting allows for. Lego Aloy is actually a bit of a goofball, making silly jokes and quips about things like sandwiches here and there. She has finally been given the chance to relax and revel in her role as a protector and hero – something I am reliably informed that Aloy actress Ashly Burch also enjoyed during the game’s development, as she is once again reprising her role to voice Aloy’s new bricky persona.
So, how does Lego Horizon Adventures pull it off? Well, this being a Lego game, the thrust of Horizon’s combat certainly leans into the more child-friendly approach these blocky adaptations are known for, but it also has daft and humourous twists that make it feel all its own. For example, while Aloy will still take on cultists and a number of animal-like machines with her trusty bow, she can now also make the most of some rather more unexpected, but very Lego, attacks to help her get out of a pickle.
During the opening section I played, Aloy was able to deploy a hot dog stand (yes, you read that correctly) in the middle of the battlefield. This may not sound like a very good defence system at first glance, but trust me, it works, as the stand owner will periodically launch hot dogs into the fray, which then explode on impact, giving a whole new meaning to the word ‘banger’. And let me tell you, these volatile projectiles were incredibly useful when I was trying to dispatch a herd of Grazers that were doing their utmost to headbutt me into oblivion.
Meanwhile, campfires and electrical pits dotted about were also on hand to give my arrows a little bit of extra oomph (and are a lot more fun than Horizon’s original crafting systems). Freshly blazing arrows weren’t just useful for inflicting more damage upon my enemies, for instance, as they could also be used for clearing shrubbery to reveal extra hidden treasure chests full of additional studs.
You do have to be careful with the fire, though, so please learn from my mistakes. At one point, I managed to not only burn away all the long grass which was meant to serve as a useful cover – I also set myself on fire when I thought (for some foolish reason even I don’t fully understand) it would be a good idea to try and sneak into the now ablaze shrubbery. Needless to say, Aloy took some damage here, and I had to plunge our leading lady into a pool of water to extinguish her. Sorry about that, Aloy!
| Image credit: Guerrilla
Another thing I particularly enjoyed during my short time with Lego Horizon Adventures was its different difficulty options. While previous Lego games have tended to take a one-size-fits-all approach, with no real fail state (even when you lose all your hearts and studs, your player character can still rejoin whatever chaos was going on around them, be it running from Jurassic Park dinosaurs or fighting a Kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean), this is not always the case in Lego Horizon Adventures.
I decided to play the final section of my preview on the game’s most challenging option. In this mode, Horizon’s restorative, heart-filling berries were less readily available, and combat was noticeably harder, although never to the point I felt it was beyond reasonable for younger players to also have a good time with it. What I especially appreciated about this harder-than-average mode, though, was that if Aloy and her co-op wingman of the moment did take one too many blows, they would be met with what is essentially a game over screen, upping the stakes to bring just a little bit of peril to the mix, but without being overly cruel in the process.
Allow me to explain further. When my hearts dropped to zero, I turned into a little ghostly figure which I could not move. My co-op partner then had the opportunity to revive me, although this of course had to be done while they, too, were also trying to spare themselves from the wrath of the machines – bringing it more in line with co-op games of today where teamwork and bailing out your partner is essential. Once revived, my little ghost was replaced with Aloy once more, but not an Aloy with a full stash of hearts. Rather, she had to get by with just a smidgen of her full health potential, and when my hearts dropped down to zero again, that little ghost did not come back. Two strikes, and I was out. When my co-op partner also succumbed to the raging machines, we were made to restart the scene from the last checkpoint – and therefore begin the battle – once again.
This adds a welcome layer of challenge for grown up players, who are perhaps going to dive into Lego Horizon Adventures with their children, but don’t want to just coast through a video game where there are no real threats. The option is still there to dial the difficulty back down, however, should these modes prove to be too much. This is still a Lego game, after all, and I never once felt locked into one difficulty mode with a ‘you made your bed and now you must lie in it’ kind of attitude.
In similar Lego fashion, Horizon Adventures also simplifies the game’s plot so it doesn’t dwell too much on the original’s gore and violence. As mentioned earlier, Zero Dawn has that mature age rating because of scenes where, for example, Aloy gets her throat sliced early on by the cruel Shadow Carja Helis. He’s still around in Lego Horizon Adventures, but his introduction is a tad different. Rather than heading up a massacre during the Proving Ceremony like we see in Zero Dawn, Horizon Adventures has him firsting popping up as a hologram who thinks he is having some kind of reception problem (“I’m not on mute, am I?” he asks Aloy, reminding me of many a Zoom call).
His intentions still aren’t good, and he is clearly one of the baddies. But Horizon Adventures conveys this in the way it knows best, using the series’ classic ‘Lego villains are all kind of buffoons’ sense of humour to play him for laughs. At one point, he accidentally set his own hand on fire and proceeded to run about in an over the top fashion before engaging in a childish slap fight with Aloy’s father figure, Rost.
Then, rather than slaughtering members of the Nora tribe in a hail of arrows and fire like in Zero Dawn, he simply kidnapped some of Mother’s Heart’s residents and popped them in cages. I agree, that still isn’t exactly nice, but it’s definitely a more family-friendly version of Zero Dawn’s events, and as a mother to a nine and 11 year old, I am glad of this approach.
Meanwhile, several members from the rest of Zero Dawn’s cast also return in nicely detailed brick form here. Characters such as Teb serve as a fashion-forward tailor in Horizon Adventures, while Zero Dawn’s tradesman Karst also pops up as a Lego ‘handyman’. Each character engages in a certain amount of banter with Aloy, again adding further levity to this freshly-brick world.
Speaking of the brick world, from what I have seen so far, there are, alas, no mini kits available to collect, such as those in Lego Star Wars and the like (perhaps due to the fact Horizon Adventures is coming from a different developer). There was still plenty of fun to be had while out and about, and within Horizon Adventure’s main hub of Mother’s Heart, though. This included places to change up Aloy’s outfits, customise her house and little ‘side-quest’ like extras such as building a table for a feast.
All in all, if you enjoyed previous Lego games made by Traveller’s Tales, I have no doubt you’ll also get a kick out of Horizon Adventures, regardless of if you have played Zero Dawn before or not. Yes, it’s still a ‘kids game’ at its heart, but as a Horizon fan, it’s one I can feel much better about when it comes to introducing my own children to Aloy’s world… which now also includes hot dogs.