LEGO Horizon Adventures

Just to get the obvious out of the way — I loved Veilguard and wanted to spend more time with the game. But… ROBOT DINOSAURS.

Sometimes I pre-order games way in advance. And I forget exactly which game I pre-ordered, so then the doubt sets in and when a new game is about to be released, I have to wonder if I pre-ordered it; is it about to arrive in the mail? I can’t pre-order these games because I’m not sure if I already have.

Veilguard was one of those games. LEGO Horizon Adventures is another. (I believe the game I pre-ordered is “FANTASIAN Neo Dimension”, but I can’t figure out where it would be coming from).

Anyway. Robot dinosaurs. After I was sure LEGO Horizons wasn’t going to show up in the mailbox, I ordered it.

LEGO games have a pattern. They take a popular franchise — Star Wars, Batman, Saw, whatever — make it super bubbly and friendly, add in every possible character and rush through the high points of the stories.

Make it fun!

Horizon Zero Dawn is a game set a thousand years in the future, in an Earth that was stripped of all life and then rebooted, with robot caretakers to help things along. Then the robots went insane. Horizon is the story of Aloy, a Nora tribeswoman, shunned by her tribe over her mysterious birth. When a coming of age ritual is disrupted by a deadly attack, she finds herself forced to find the story behind Earth’s death and rebirth and save the world from something that wants to destroy everything… again.

That’s a lot for a kid’s game. And LEGO games are kid games.

LEGO Horizon Adventures turns Aloy into a bubbly, friendly kid who has just been invited back into the tribe after her mysterious birth and her upbringing with exiled hermit, Rost.

In this game, Helis, a Sun Carja leader, has vowed to cut down all the trees in the world so that everyone is forced to tan and sunbathe all the time. He is being controlled by a mysterious red ball of swirling energy, which resembles the possible antagonist of the third game, so I was really surprised to see that show up.

While the plot is typical LEGO stuff — someone gathers their friends, one of whom can be controlled co-op with a second controller — and they go exploring and cracking jokes.

Aloy’s crew consists of herself — master of the bow, her best friend Varl who fights with the spear, tribe wise woman Teersa, who throws chicken bombs (roll with it), and best boy Erend, who fights with a hammer. Each adventure starts out with the basic weapons, and players pick up upgrades along the way. (You can buy upgrades that will let you start each adventure with some limited use better gear to get you started). I believe all the characters are voiced by the same actors who voiced them in the original games, even though their personalities… are a little bit different. Lance Reddick’s Sylens also joins as a non-playable character, who strategizes and spins sick beats back at the village, and woman-from-the-past Elisabet dispenses holographic wisdom and guidance to Aloy in her quest.

The robots in LEGO Horizons are beautifully modeled. Want to see what an official Thunderjaw model would look like? They have it here, as well as most of the other favorites from the first game, including the huggable Watchers.

Cauldrons — the birthplace of the machines — have the same sort of environmental-heavy puzzles as the actual games along with suitably epic (for a kid’s game) boss battles. The Thunderjaw battle is above. I was still trying to figure out the trick at the start.

You can also see in the video the people from other tribes, here used as cannon fodder. Though the Oseram and Carja are mentioned by implication (given Erend and Helis exist), largely other tribesfolk are there to let Aloy kill something other than machines.

LEGO Horizon’s plot doesn’t actually have much to do with the game. It’s like the Horizons version of Star Trek’s “Lower Decks” — a fun romp with constant callouts to the main games.

The heart of the game are the battles, and those are first rate. All the best machines show up; you can use your focus to target weak spots, and the action keeps you on your toes. It’s good stuff.

So that’s my take on LEGO Horizon Adventures. It’s far from essential; it takes vast liberties with the plot; the stakes never seem high, but you’re going to love the machine battles and the Apex machine hunting grounds.