‘Lego Horizon Adventures’ Is a Clever Self-Parody of Sony’s Sci-Fi Game Series

6 days ago 4

With solid core gameplay and a tongue-in-cheek tone, it's a loving tribute to Lego and the PlayStation IP

There are two types of people who play with Legos: those are boundlessly creative, building by imagination unrestrained by how a machination is supposed to look, and others who strive for perfection, painstakingly ensuring that their design matches the instructions or their own personal design.

Lego Horizon Adventures (out Nov. 14) feels like a game made by the latter. A “Lego-fied” adaptation of the hit PlayStation game Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), its story is a kid-friendly send-up of the original game’s bleak sci-fi setting, but visually and mechanically, it’s a game designed with a serious focus on the details. And while it may not feel as liberating to play as an actual Lego set, understanding that there’s an art to its precision helps make it a highly enjoyable experience for those inclined.

A post-post apocalyptic dance party

For anyone who’s played the Horizon series, there might be some head scratching about how exactly a relatively bleak sci-fi adventure in a thousand years after humanity’s downfall to the machines would make for a light-hearted children’s game. Guerilla Games, the studio behind the series and co-developers of Adventures, is keenly aware of that dissonance and set the game up as a direct parody of their own overwrought plots and take every opportunity to mock the many tropes of popular storytelling epics.

The game is a very loose retelling of the events of the first entry in the series, Zero Dawn, which follows a warrior named Aloy in a strange, technorganic future where humanity lives as luddites, alongside animal-like machines whose origins are a mystery. Aloy has access to a high-tech earpiece called a Focus, which grants her knowledge beyond anyone else’s understanding, making her an outcast. She, of course, has a larger destiny.

From its first moments, Adventures is quick to take the air out of the overall premise, with a narration delivered by her mentor Rost, poking holes in the setup along with direct jabs at some of the obvious tropes and storytelling shortcuts (“Since orphans in stories always bring trouble”) that routinely used in pop culture. Aloy herself is a motor-mouthed firebrand, a far cry from her more stoic, “burdened by destiny” demeanor in the mainline games. Although once again voiced by actor Ashly Burch, her abrasively loud take on Aloy in Adventures more closely resembles her role as Tiny Tina from the Borderlands series, a character who quickly becomes grating in those games.

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For some the rapid-fire onslaught of jokes will vary in mileage, but there’s an undercurrent of cleverness that elevates the writing beyond what’s normally seen in other slapstick heavy Lego games. There’s obviously many, many pratfalls and running gags about donuts and dance parties, but like any good piece of family-friendly media there’s some stranger, deeper cuts that will only land with adults. There’s one recurring bit in particular about the villains, a sun-worshipping cult who downright hate trees, that keeps being funny well after it should.

Overall, the reframing of the original game is surprisingly effective, downplaying the post-apocalyptic aspect in lieu of a more pro-environment story that emphasizes family. The mainline games are heavy-handed on how people’s hubris and selfishness destroyed the world once and will do it again, but Adventures pivots more to more universal themes like “trees are good” and “friends and family are important,” while still taking aim at the loftier themes as a lark.

Unlike games like Lego Marvel’s Avengers (2016) and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022), who closely follow their already kid-friendly source material is inherently kid-with a bit of slapstick thrown in, Horizon Adventures has a tougher job paring down its headier elements while retaining the spirit of the original series. There, it works remarkably well.

A highly curated experience

Another aspect that differentiates Horizon Adventures from other Lego-licensed games is that it’s the first one to adapt another video game. Where Avengers and Star Wars have the benefit of a built-in audience or can lean on well-known aspects to draw players in, they can ultimately play however they need to within the stock Lego game framework. Usually, they’re very simple adventure games, where multiple players can walk, jump, and beat up baddies with extreme ease. They’re mostly mindless experiences. Horizon Adventures has more to it than that.

Adapting a lesser-known IP has pros and cons, but the benefit of translating an existing video game into the Lego world means there’s more to chew on mechanically. Combat in Horizon Adventures is infinitely simpler than in the big kid versions but sticks to the same core principles. Aloy still has a bow and arrow and must use her Focus to scan for enemy weak points to strike. There are environmental hazards to both avoid or use to her advantage, elemental damage to inflict different statuses, and some very light stealth moves. It’s essentially the entire gameplay premise of Horizon distilled into its simplest form.

The action can be harrowing, too, even on normal difficulty. Human enemies often swarm the player, and bigger machines behave with a surprising level of intelligence in how they time their attacks and take advantage of the environment against Aloy herself. On higher difficulties, it’s a solid challenge for adults, but lower ones may still be tough for kids.

The game’s combat prowess makes sense, given that Adventures is co-developed by the actual studio behind the game, rather than being handed off to outsiders. While most Lego games are fine enough, they primarily stick to the extremes of child accessibility, with very little to do moment-to-moment that requires much effort. While Adventures is nowhere near as deep as its inspiration, there are overlapping progression systems to track and choose upgrades for, and the action has meat to its strategy. It feels like the work of a AAA studio making a children’s game, rather than something phoned in.

That level of craftsmanship also makes its way into the game’s audiovisual design. Speaking with Rolling Stone earlier this year at Summer Game Fest, the developers said that the game is heavily inspired by 2014’s The Lego Movie in its look and feel, and it shares the film’s level of detail. Everything in the game world is seemingly built from actual Lego bricks, down to the particle effects of fire and splashing water. Emulating the stop-motion visuals of the movie, the game’s effects are intricate — when a brush fire begins from a player’s arrow or bomb, each individual plant brick flickers in and out, replaced by the fire brick (the one we all know), before leaving behind the empty holes in their wake.

The game’s world is stunning and brimming with minutiae like this. Dynamic lighting effects on the PlayStation 5 paint the bricks with shadow and heavy reflection, but the attention to detail goes even further. For the most part (giant robots aside) characters stick closely to the physical build of Lego mini-figs, meaning that their arms and legs are bound closely to their bodies, and they bounce in a high-kick as they walk, again like The Lego Movie. This is a stark contrast to games like Marvel’s Avengers or The Skywalker Saga, whose character models move fluidly and bend like gummies.

There’s also a difference in the textures, which can be seen in cinematic cut scenes or the costume selection screen. Each figure closely resembles actual Lego minis, down to the reflective plastic sheen under direct light, weathered and peeling stickers on their clothing, and the cloth knitting of their capes. Adventures is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of visual fidelity and detail than any other Lego game, and it’s fun to get lost in the craft of it all.

Not quite reaching the Horizon

Despite its commitment to exhaustive detail, there are places where Adventures falls short of the Horizon name. While combat is a solidly streamlined facsimile of the main games, Adventures is sorely lacking in the exploration department. The Horizon series is known for its massive open world and RPG elements, where players can travel the wild expanse of the natural world of post-technology North America. Going on foot or riding a tamed machine, exploring the map and stumbling across villages, encampments, and secrets is a cornerstone of the experience, one that Adventures omits entirely.

Unlike The Skywalker Saga, which moved the Lego series to a tighter, over-the-shoulder perspective for a more cinematic feel, Adventures sticks to a top-down isometric view that evokes the feeling of looking at one of the pre-made Lego dioramas. There are four worlds, broken into smaller chunks to complete, but they’re relatively brief, following a simple formula of walking in a linear fashion from point A to B, stopping to fight some enemies, and doing it again before the end.

While each level looks like it was literally built by hand using real bricks, its level of detail can be distracting in detrimental ways, with clear paths obscured and areas that seem like they should be accessible ending up being off limits. For adult players whose brains are hardwired to explore every nook and cranny, the levels often feel empty — devoid of meaningful collectibles other than coin bricks to satiate the Pavlovian response of finding a secret. Later levels offer very rudimentary branching paths, but it’s barely a nod to Horizon’s exploratory roots, and often lead to dead ends or quick routes back that offered nothing in reward for the jaunt.

Herein lies the dilemma: Horizon is a series that’s known for many things, but mainly its combat and exploration. By cutting out half of that to downsize for simplicity, does it really feel like Horizon?

Yes and no, but the key factor here is the one that all grown up fans struggle with when trying to judge a piece of media intended for children — it doesn’t really matter to kids. For children playing Horizon Adventures, it’s a very colorful and pretty game that’s funny, although it can be a little hard to play at times. They will likely not (and probably shouldn’t have) experienced the original game yet, and what’s delivered here in something enjoyable tailored specifically for them.

For the reasonable adults, it could be considered a mixed bag, but the reality if that Horizon Adventures delivers on a pretty accurate, streamlined take on a fan-favorite series that is satisfying to play in many ways, and bumps up against its own guardrails in others. The level design is bland and repetitive over time, but the fine-tuned combat brings variety in its enemies and tactics, and the consistently funny antics make up for the diluted story.

Like Astro Bot, this year’s other big PlayStation game made for all ages, Lego Horizon Adventures does well to translate the appeal of more mature, blockbuster franchises into a cutesy, engaging aesthetic. While Astro Bot also succeeds at being a top-tier experience and is one of 2024’s best games, Adventures is more modest. It’s an equally well-crafted tribute to a beloved franchise, and plays well, but its one-dimensional exploration may leave many wanting more.