From mechanical engineering to hot dog carts: Lego Horizon Adventures combines adventure and charming slapstick. How good is the game? This is what the short test shows.
A post-apocalyptic world, dangerous machine creatures and a young heroine who is looking for her past: the action adventure “Horizon Zero Dawn” was an absolute hit on the Playstation in 2020. Players loved the imaginative world and action-packed combat. A sequel continued with the adventures of Aloy, the savior of the world.
Meanwhile, Lego released a set featuring her and a Longneck, a particularly large dinosaur-shaped machine creature. It quickly became clear how good the world looks in Lego blocks. So good that smart people have decided to transfer this to gaming – and lo and behold, Aloy cuts a really good figure in the Lego adventure.
“Lego Horizon Adventures”: A family game
In the cute building block world, the developers retrace the well-known story, but rely more on a loose, fluffy narrative style than on the spectacularly staged story of the original. We know something like that from other Lego games like “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars”. The humor is nice, but it also relies heavily on slapstick, which isn't for everyone. The goal is clear: “Lego Horizon Adventures” wants to be a family game. And so the families gathered in front of the television and had fun together with Aloy and her friends.
In terms of play, the game relies on a bird's eye view that is close enough to be able to discover the many loving details, but is also far enough away that two players in couch co-op can act sensibly at the same time and see each other. The gameplay is a mixture of discovery – we always find hidden boxes with small knobs that we can use to unlock new costumes, for example – and fighting.
A special feature from the original game can also be found in “Lego Horizon Adventures”: Aloy and her friends can attack weak points of the machine creatures, causing them to do a lot of damage. We light up these attack points at the push of a button and then attack them specifically.
In addition to the standard weapon, all four playable characters have the ability to pick up special weapons or special effects such as a bomb-throwing hot dog cart. This continuously expands the gameplay, but to a manageable extent. A stealth mechanic has also been adopted, but this hardly plays a role.
“Lego Horizon Adventures”: To the village to level up
Between the linear missions that take us through the locations of Horizon, we always come back to the headquarters, a village. There we can adapt houses and make minor improvements. And not just in the Lego Horizon style, but also with modules from other Lego universes such as Lego City. While this is more of a gimmick that has no impact on the rest of the game, we can also unlock skills in the village that will help us in battle.
Basically, “Lego Horizon Adventures” is one thing above all: a pick-me-up, a dose of good mood. In contrast to the Sony game “Astro Bot”, which impresses with its diverse gameplay mechanics, Lego-Aloy primarily relies on a fluffy narrative and easy accessibility. If you're happy with it, you're welcome to play it that way. However, we felt a certain fatigue after a few hours of play. The question arises as to whether it is an advantage that the game is rather short at just over ten hours of play.
We played the game on the Playstation 5 Pro (for testing) – here we benefited from a smooth display, but could not perceive any real graphics improvement compared to the standard Playstation. “Lego Horizon Adventures” has been in stores since November 14th.
