Horizon Zero Dawn It’s one of my favorite games of all time. Having recently played its remastered version —read my review here— reminded me of all the reasons I love it, especially its story and characters. This rebirth of my fascination with Aloy’s adventures had me quite curious about Lego Horizon Adventures and the way in which he was going to adapt that intriguing post-post-apocalyptic universe to the Lego aesthetic. After seeing the credits I can say that it was not what I expected, but I didn’t have a bad time.
The first thing that has to be clear is that Lego Horizon Adventures It is a game for girls and boys. That means that has a low difficulty level by default, the gameplay mechanics are greatly simplified and the drama of the original story has been replaced by very basic humor. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the saga’s traditional audience may be sorely disappointed.
When they announced this game I thought it was going to follow a similar structure to the excellent LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Sagawith small, highly explorable open worlds full of collectibles to find. But this is a very different title. The levels are linear and although there are small detours – always indicated by silver tokens – these only lead to chests and buildings that give us more of the tokens that serve as coins to buy costumes and decorations.
Once we have passed the prologue, we arrive at Corazón de Madre – the Nora village that serves as the central ‘hub’ – and from there we can access the different ‘worlds’ with such traditional themes as ‘snow’, ‘jungle’ and ‘ desert’. Each of these worlds is divided into levels very similar to each other in which we have to jump between some platforms and defeat enemies in arenas.
The combat system Lego Horizon Adventures It’s fun, but it’s nothing like the Guerrilla Games games on which it is inspired, although it retains elements such as the weak points of the machines. The levels have a static camera that makes positioning the key element of the confrontations. Initially we can only attack using Aloy’s bow and arrows, but as we progress we get more characters with new weapons: Varl throws fast piercing spears, Teersa throws explosives, Erend uses a hammer for melee attacks and… is that all?
That’s how it is. We only have four controllable characters — five if we count Rost, who is only temporarily available. That’s a disappointing number for a LEGO game based on a popular franchise, as these usually have hundreds of characters available. However, What we do have are dozens of costumes. Aloy and her friends can wear the costumes of other characters from Horizon, Ninjago and popular Lego sets. If they want, they can go through the levels as a police officer, astronaut, crocodile, ninja or even wearing a hot dog suit. Still, it’s a shame that beloved characters like Petra, Talanah, Vanasha and Nil don’t make a real appearance.
The story of Lego Horizon Adventures It is an extremely simplified version of that of Zero Dawn. Aloy continues searching for who her mother is and must stop Helis who… wants a world of eternal sunshine? The characters are extremely caricatured and any mention of the demise of the ancient world is treated very superficially.. Everything else is replaced by jokes, most of them very bad.
I understand that this is a game for children, but this is quite disappointing because it assumes that little ones are incapable of handling a little bit of complexity in their games. In fact, my view of this game is quite cynical. It seems to me nothing more than an attempt to present the franchise to a younger audience to position it with more products. There are better ways to do that without taking away so many elements of your personality.
As an Aloy fan that I am, I do want Horizon becomes even more popular and I’m not at all bothered by the idea of a version for children – I don’t want to be like those DC Comics fans who are bothered by the existence of Teen Titans GOfor example—but I think there are better ways to do it without making it so simple on a narrative level.
I previously said that this is an easy game, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who want something more difficult can’t find an interesting challenge in it. If we increase the level of difficulty, the fights against cultists and machines can become an absolute nightmare that will require a lot of skill and reflexes.. In these modes, positioning, character selection and special abilities become of paramount importance and the largest machines become terrifying.
Another challenge that can be interesting is to get all the gold and red blocks. The former ask us to complete tasks such as finishing levels with certain costumes, characters and under different circumstances, while the red ones pit us against alpha machines, more powerful versions of others we already face.
Lego Horizon Adventures It’s a pretty short game. It can be completed in six or seven hours—a time that can be doubled if we play on a higher difficulty level and try to get all the blocks— and I can’t deny that I had fun. It’s true that the levels are repetitive and the humor isn’t the best, but it still offered some exciting battles, a handful of jokes that did make me laugh, and it was nice to see new versions of characters that I love as much as Aloy. , Varl and Erend in a setting as beautiful as this.
Maybe not the perfect LEGO set for a current LEGO fan. Horizon, but it probably is for the sons and daughters of those fans who are fascinated to see mechanical dinosaurs on screen but are still too young to Zero Dawn y Forbidden West.
Review made with a digital copy of LEGO Horizon Adventures for PS5 provided by PlayStation Latin America. This game is also available for Nintendo Switch and for PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
