Exploring Horizon Lego Adventures on Switch
- Two-player co-op
- Designed for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC
- Playable with one joystick
- Single projectile attack and limited-use power-up abilities
- 60fps performance mode on PS5
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Hands-On with Horizon Lego Adventures: A Perfect Fit for Nintendo Switch
The first thing to know about the recently announced Horizon Lego Adventures is that it's a Lego game first and an adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn second.
It's not attempting to be a one-to-one brick-by-brick recreation of the expansive open-world RPG or even an abridged version.
Think of it more as a Shakespeare for Kids spin on the sci-fi adventure, except instead of translating the Bard's iambic pentameter into contemporary English, it's taking the familiar bones of a Lego adventure game and putting a prehistoric robot-smashing twist on it.
It was a bit of a shock when Sony revealed that it's bringing Horizon Lego Adventures to Switch as well as PlayStation 5 and PC.
Playing it for roughly half an hour at Summer Game Fest, it quickly becomes clear that it's the perfect fit for Nintendo's handheld hybrid.
Out this holiday, the game features two-player co-op and was designed to be playable with just one joystick so that multiplayer would be an option right out of the box with players using an individual Joy-Con each.
Key Features
- Two-player co-op
- Designed for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC
- Playable with one joystick
- Single projectile attack and limited-use power-up abilities
Tim Symons, franchise development lead producer at Guerrilla Games, seemed thrilled to be making a childhood dream come true.
He joined the Dutch PlayStation studio five years ago after more than a decade at Nintendo.
He also loved playing with Lego as a kid and confided that his favorite set he never actually got to have was the giant pirate ship called the Skull's Eye Schooner.
For us, it's super exciting to make a Nintendo game for the first time, Symons told me.
Rather than make the game for PS5 and scale it down, both versions were made simultaneously.
We do it all at the same time in parallel so we have a dedicated team of engineers optimizing all this for Switch, but it will be exactly the same.
Instead of two-player split-screen, both heroes share the same game space and follow one another around through verdant post-apocalyptic forests, villages, and caves.
Players have a single projectile attack—a bow and arrow in Aloy's case and a spear in Varl's—with the option to pick up additional limited-use power-up abilities during the course of exploring each level.
Machines you encounter still have weak points like their counterparts in the original PlayStation 4 game, but there's no pausing to target specific pieces or using Aloy's abilities to override and control them.
She does still have her Focus, which can be used to highlight interactive objects and other useful info on each level.
You can still deploy makeshift traps by lighting things on fire, blowing up ice barrels, and taking advantage of other elemental effects.
The traditional build mechanics of a Lego game are not put to much use, with much of the exploration and combat feeling more like a stripped-down version of Horizon.
This narrower focus can make Horizon Lego Adventures feel simplistic but still compelling.
Movement and action control well, and the crunchy tactile feel of Lego is everywhere from stop-motion animations to the fact that everything in the game was designed out of real pieces first—a requirement by the Lego company.
Even the Horizon story has been retuned to introduce the goofy irreverent humor the other Lego games and movies are known for.
Ashly Burch returns to voice Aloy, and you can tell she is having a lot of fun reinterpreting the character and her story through comedic moments that vary from slapstick to knowing parody.
Additional Features
- 60fps performance mode on PS5
- Light settlement-building mechanics
- Costumes from other Lego franchises and themed sets
- Post-story content and other unlockables
The main campaign runs about eight hours, and Symons promised post-story content and other unlockables would keep players busy beyond that.
It's clear that Horizon Lego Adventures is a carefully selected touchpoint to get the Horizon brand into more people's hands, especially kids.
Thanks in part to an abridged story that tones down some of the dark parts of the source material.
Based on playing the opening stages, it seems like an obvious recommendation for any parent who loves Horizon and has kids who want to play games with them.
In that way, it feels similar to the purpose Minecraft Dungeons served for parents who love Diablo-inspired dungeon crawling.
Whether Horizon Lego Adventures will manage to justify itself as a game that stands alone on its own two feet remains to be seen.
Minecraft Dungeons certainly did that. I hope Horizon Lego Adventures can too.
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