Lego Horizon Adventures review: A gorgeous, family-friendly adventure that lacks depth

Who doesn’t love Lego? From intense building challenges to comedic film and game adaptations, what began as simple clicky bricks has expanded well beyond ABS plastic and into a media genre of its own. Joining the ranks of other block-based game adaptations like Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman, Lego Horizon Adventures adapts the events of Guerrilla’s post-apocalyptic robo-animal kingdom adventure Horizon Zero Dawn for a younger audience, turning its cast of survivors into a handful of quippy Minifigures. Yet despite all the witty exchanges and endearing left-field gags, Lego Horizon Adventures stumbles in the gameplay department, presenting players with a monotonous combat system and a series of repetitive levels lacking the depth and intrigue to help maintain interest beyond its affable opening hours.

Lego Horizon Adventures begins with a young Aloy being cast out from the superstitious Nora Tribe to be raised by her Golden Retriever of an adoptive father, Rost. Players assume control as Aloy enters young adulthood and journeys towards the village of Mother’s Heart to search for answers about their past. Conveniently, this trip doubles as a speedy tutorial that acquaints you with the approachable movement and combat systems you’ll master throughout the campaign. Alongside basic platforming challenges and quirky power-ups, you’ll get to grips with aiming, charging, and shooting arrows in the direction of the meddling machines that block your way.

For toppling the tutorial, Rost also rewards you with Aloy’s trusty Focus, which you can use to highlight weak spots on enemy machines and deal extra damage. It’s a manageable set of verbs that manages to evoke the gameplay of Horizon Zero Dawn without deviating too far from the kid-friendly Lego setting. Plus, if the process begins to feel a little too easy, you can conveniently switch to a more challenging difficulty at any time from the menu.

Soon enough, Aloy arrives at a ravaged Mother’s Heart, which becomes the central hub where much of the game revolves. From here, you’ll access missions that propel the story forward, earning studs and gold bricks to revive the surrounding area between levels, decorating it with all manner of new plots and yards, complete with alternate color schemes and theming from Lego brands like Ninjago and Lego City. The additional decor and costumes earned with studs and bricks also act as collectibles here, as there aren’t any hidden across the levels.

Later, you unlock the ability to purchase upgrades that provide classic XP, defense, and damage boosts for the quartet of playable protagonists — Aloy, Erend, Varl, and Teersa. A Community Jobs Board also rewards you with bonus progression-gating bricks for completing specific tasks. The cosmetic changes you can make to Mother’s Heart result in a pretty play space but one that also feels empty. You can build a rocket ship that blasts a minifig into space, but these little sidecars are one-and-done experiences that might’ve worked better in a different part of the game, perhaps peppered through the levels to freshen up the formula.