LEGO Horizon Adventures Hands-on Preview – A new Dawn

The Horizon series has gone from strength to strength since Horizon Zero Dawn launched back in 2017. With new titles in the works (including a potential MMO), we were intrigued to see Aloy going on a journey of a different kind when LEGO Horizon Adventures was announced back in June.

While the LEGO IP cut its teeth on taking iconic movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and more, and turning them into family-friendly LEGO-smashing fun, this is notable as the first stand-alone LEGO video game using an existing video game franchise as its reference material. After spending a couple of hours with the first several levels of LEGO Horizon Adventures, I’m optimistic that this retelling of Aloy’s first adventure has more than enough unique twists and adorable charm to make it really pop.

LEGO Horizon Adventures follows the story of Horizon Zero Dawn, as Aloy embarks on a personal journey to figure out who she really is. What is instantly neat about Horizon Adventures is that the game is fully voiced, unlike past LEGO titles that relied on mime to get the point across. That might have been fine for Star Wars, enduring for more than 30 years worth of pop culture references and fans, but here it’s essential to have voiced characters interacting with one another to tell the story.

In fact, LEGO Horizon Adventures seems like a fantastic entry point for anybody who has liked the idea of Horizon Zero Dawn (or Forbidden West), but felt daunted by the prospect of its gigantic, sprawling open-world and relatively complex combat systems. In true LEGO fashion, they’ve captured the essence of what makes Horizon tick but made it extremely accessible to newcomers or more casual audiences – with lots of nods, prods and genuinely giggle-worthy moments sprinkled throughout.

Serious moments are handled with a similar levity you’d expect; this is a LEGO game, after all. A key moment of sadness in Horizon Zero Dawn is still given a moment to breathe before quickly shuffling along, not forcing you to dwell on it for too long. Characters in LEGO Horizon Adventures are all seemingly given some new family-friendly traits. Vaal, for example, is incredibly clumsy… for no particular reason. It made me laugh every time he did something stupid and the other characters looked on in confusion. I can’t wait to see what other campy character quirks have been added in as the game rolls on.

If you’ve played a LEGO game before, there are similarities here, but with Guerilla Games at the helm of development, differences are subtle but still noticeable. Given it’s primarily a story-driven experience, you won’t have piles of characters to switch between in order to solve puzzles and find secrets. There are certainly collectibles to be discovered and hidden secrets to encounter, but LEGO Horizon Adventures’ mission structure seems more linear in its execution so that you move through the story beats. It’s a lot of fun, and very comfortable, but don’t worry as there are still things to build and studs to collect from destroying every object in sight, for those who need their fix. In true Horizon fashion, though, Aloy’s main weapon is her bow and arrow, and robots have those satisfying weak point canisters that glow at the press of a button when you activate your Focus. Combat felt slick and satisfying, and a bit more challenging than the destructible villains you’d come across in other LEGO titles.

In my relatively short playtime, I received several new abilities that came into play at different points to switch things up. Rocket boots allow you to shoot upward quickly, the fire beneath you raining down on enemies to cause damage. A multi-shot does what it says on the tin, allowing you to spray arrows. A Hot Dog stand can be placed as a sort of turret, attacking foes that come within its vicinity with flying buns of meat. Yes, things get a bit weird, but it all adds to the light and breezy vibe, and I appreciated seeing a series that has always been somewhat serious in tone let loose with the chaos.

Mother’s Heart, your home base, also expands and changes as you progress through the experience. It’s relatively customisable, with studs used as a currency to pimp out your home and its surroundings. Similarly, you can change your outfit, and even in the early stages of what I saw there were a lot of different outfits referencing Horizon’s key story moments and characters, and we know there will be some irreverent PlayStation-history costumes to come. This kind of customisation feels essential in a co-op experience like this, and my co-op partner and I had fun switching outfits, exploring, shooting each other with arrows, picking up townspeople and throwing them off the bridge… you know, all that goofy stuff.

With its presentation being a perfectly LEGO-fied version of Horizon Zero Dawn, time flew as we moved glacially through the available story missions in the preview. So far, it scratches all the right itches, with lots of enjoyable collectibles and customisations and goofy twists based entirely around one of my favourite IPs. If it can maintain the same level of quality and commitment to silly throughout, I think we’ll have a pretty brilliant LEGO game to look forward to when it releases next month.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is available on PS5 and Nintendo Switch on November 14th, and on PC on November 15th.

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Thanks to our mates at PlayStation Australia for inviting us to this hands-on preview. Travel for this opportunity was self-funded.