Early LEGO Horizon Adventures reviews are a mixed bag
Early reviews of LEGO Horizon Adventures praise its visuals, story and charming approach to Guerrilla Games’ universe, but criticise its level design and platforming.
LEGO Horizon Adventures drops on PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC tomorrow (November 14), and the embargo on early reviews has just lifted. Aggregator OpenCritic has counted 61 reviews in total so far, with an average score of 72/100 and a recommendation rate of 53%. But numbers alone can’t paint a full picture of what it’s like to play this first brick-built spin on Aloy’s adventures, so what do the reviews actually say?
Well, they’re really a mixed bag. Most agree that the game’s visuals are a thing to behold, not least because this is one of the only LEGO games where absolutely everything – from the characters and enemies to the weapons and every piece of the environment – is constructed from individual elements. “The commitment to this aesthetic is admirable; realistically rendered materials and a tilt-shift effect on the camera mean the game looks remarkable throughout,” Stephen Talby wrote for Push Square.
There’s high praise too for the way LEGO Horizon Adventures retells the story of Horizon Zero Dawn, sidestepping doubts around the game’s intentions in the same way The LEGO Movie managed back in 2014. See Polygon’s review: “The world and its story feel less like LEGO people jammed into an unrelated world as a cynical cash grab and more like it’s just telling the (mostly) same story through a different medium.”
Kotaku likewise highlights how LEGO Horizon Adventures pokes fun at the original game’s story, pointing out ‘how silly it all sounds’ when you try to describe the post-apocalyptic setting to newcomers. That’s pretty much what you’d expect from a LEGO game at this stage, even if this title is somewhat removed from TT Games’ parodies of mega franchises (in Horizon, for example, you return to a previous checkpoint on death rather than losing the studs you’ve collected).
That difference in approach to TT Games’ library has drawn criticism from some corners though, including over at Eurogamer, where Katharine Castle laments LEGO Horizon Adventures’ lack of destructible environments and visual gags. “If the Traveller’s Tales LEGO games were about bulldozing recognisable film sets with a maniacal grin on your face, LEGO Horizon Adventures is more like playing with perfectly glued down figure sets at a friend’s house that you’re almost too scared to touch in case they might break.”
Castle also calls out the game’s ‘plodding and lethargic’ platforming, ‘hodgepodge’ of ideas (its customisable Mother’s Heart, new costumes for characters) and ‘repetitive mission structure’, but does lift up the combat as perhaps more involved than you’d first expect – and possibly too involved for younger gamers. Game Rant and Push Square are among the reviewers similarly criticising LEGO Horizon Adventures’ ‘vacant and repetitive’ level design, which may fail to engage older gamers.
The core of the Horizon series is arguably its machine fights though, and it’s here where many reviewers praise the translation to LEGO-friendly gameplay. LEGO Aloy gets a Focus to highlight the robo-dinos’ weak points, just like regular Aloy, and Polygon says it makes for a ‘satisfying upgrade’ to the simple combat of previous LEGO games. But if you’re expecting the puzzles abundant in TT Games’ LEGO titles, you may be disappointed – IGN says all there is to do here is ‘platform and fight’.
Click through to OpenCritic for links to more LEGO Horizon Adventures reviews. You’ll be able to try out the game for yourself on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC from November 14.
Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO using our affiliate links.
