I have never played Horizon but some of my friends are huge fans for the game. One of them even has the Tall Neck on his desk and not to mention the ones that came later after the actual LEGO Horizon Adventures game came out.
One of my friends and I were desperately looking for an online game to play as we were separated by the Tasman Sea so local coop is not an option. We did our usual Resident Evil online Coop but felt that we had already burned out those games. Upon research we stumbled upon LEGO Horizon Adventures (we were looking at LEGO Jurassic Park initially, but it turned out it doesn’t have online coop). My friend loves the first Horizon game which this game was based on, and we thought it would be good to just switch up and play some other genres (Note that we played the first LEGO Star Wars and the first trilogy to death when they came out on PS2 and GameCube, but we haven’t visited one since). Also, the fact that we got it for free on our PSN Plus account made even more palatable as a try out game.
We started the game without much expectation as it was supposed to be a time killer game. However, apart from some signature LEGO humour, the game was actually very well put together and with just sufficient references and homage to the original game, which makes new players like me be able to enjoy it too. It might start out as a fan service game, but it turned out, at least for us, it was a lot more enjoyable with just sufficient amount of challenge to keep us going. We both ended up Platinuming the game with much satisfaction and got some footage we recorded that we watched back and laughed together.
Without going on much about the story to avoid spoiler of this and the original game, you started off as a green adventurer with all the cliché of typical role player games, but as you levelled up and progressed through the main campaign, you unlock more abilities, stats improvements, gadgets and contents that made the replay value of the game not being cheap and tagged on. Each character you obtained through out your adventure not only uses different weapons, but they displayed different playstyle that you cannot just smash the button and ramp through. The strategy became more intriguing as you develop your preference for specific characters, specific weapons and weapon types and gadgets to deploy to turn the tides of battles. Failing a boss fight or being wiped out in an ambush was sad but you felt you learned something, not just about the enemies but the combination of the skills and gadgets you deployed for different situations. And for me, that was the ingenious part of the game – you felt like you are always improving in different ways. And even after hours of playing cooperatively, whenever we played solo, we both discovered new knowledge that we didn’t know and shared with each other, and that makes it a very satisfying coop experience.
The environment was very well put together and extremely pretty. The hazards were there but just enough to avoid you falling asleep or getting distracted, and the detours were not just going off to a platform but required you to think about how to reach those platforms. Puzzles were basic enough to get you thinking without overthinking, so you won’t just give up because of the puzzles being too hard.
LEGO Horizon Adventures is not without its flaws though. Despite the pretty environment they built I still found the paths are quite linear apart from some obvious choices with some areas. Sometimes you saw something quite nice in a corner, and you tried to get there to only found out they are static ledges that were either not reachable or just simply plunge your character to death (lucky you don’t game over with that as we had a lot of that). I wish they built a bigger sandbox for us to play with and that will make a satisfying experience a great one. The other aspects I wished they would have done better with the environment is there are sometimes too many hazards within one battle area and considering that whenever enemies appeared or use their move you could be pushed back, you could lose a lot of health simply because of this. And healing items hidden behind these hazards are not helpful at all, as you could game over because you were trying to heal yourself. Another issue I had with the game is the stacks of gadgets you get. They were not evenly distributed so some have more stacks and some have less, which made battle planning a lot more complicated as they were given to you by random, and some are more useful in certain situations than the other. That added quite a bit of random factor to battle strategy itself. And what’s that about providing weapons and gadgets that are useful for that battle after you have just finished it? What is the point of getting them when you no longer need them? Lastly, I hope the village building part can have more options, more items and much larger areas to play with, with more freedom. After all, this is a LEGO game, right?
All in all, LEGO Horizon Adventures was a surprise hit for both my friend and I. If you are looking for a game to just kill some time and have a good laugh in the process, I highly recommend it, whether you have played the original or not.
