PS5 LEGO Horizon Adventures Review

LEGO and Horizon have joined forces to create something truly special in the gaming world. This unexpected crossover brings together the charm of LEGO's brick-building universe with the thrilling adventure of the Horizon series. The result? A fresh take on both franchises that promises fun for the whole family. Whether you're a long-time Horizon fan or simply looking for your next family game night centerpiece, this mashup delivers something new. Let's explore how this unique collaboration stacks up, from its family-friendly features to its technical performance, and see if it deserves a spot in your gaming collection.


Transforming a complex post-apocalyptic narrative into family entertainment is no small feat, yet LEGO Horizon Adventures succeeds brilliantly in this regard. This reimagining brings the rich world of Horizon to a broader audience while maintaining its core appeal.

Age-Appropriate Content Analysis

With an "Everyone 10 and up" rating, LEGO Horizon Adventures carefully balances engaging gameplay with age-appropriate content. The game cleverly transforms the original's mature themes into digestible concepts through the signature LEGO lens. Fantasy violence and mild language are present but handled with the characteristic LEGO charm, making complex themes more approachable for younger players.

Learning Curve Assessment

The game shines in its approach to player accessibility, offering a robust range of difficulty options:

• Story Mode: Perfect for newcomers and young players
• Scout: Balanced casual experience
• Adventurer: Standard challenge level
• Machine Hunter: Enhanced difficulty
• Hero: Maximum challenge for experienced players

What's particularly impressive is the ability to adjust these settings at any time during gameplay. The combat system features three aim assist options (Precise, Assisted, and Auto), ensuring players of all skill levels can enjoy the machine-hunting experience.

Parental Guidance Requirements

Parents will appreciate the thoughtful implementation of family-friendly features. The couch co-op functionality allows for shared gaming experiences, making it an excellent choice for parent-child gaming sessions. The game includes comprehensive accessibility options that parents can configure:

• Color blindness modes (Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanopia)
• Adjustable subtitle sizes and background opacity
• Customizable audio mixing with Midnight sound mode
• Focus scan highlighting for interactive objects

The hub world, Mother's Heart, provides a safe space for creative expression through building and customization. Parents can rest assured that while the game maintains the spirit of the Horizon series, it presents its story and themes in a way that's both entertaining and appropriate for younger audiences.

The combination of adjustable difficulty settings and extensive accessibility options means parents can tailor the experience to their child's specific needs and abilities. Whether playing together or supervising solo play, the game provides all the tools necessary for a positive family gaming experience.



The heart of LEGO Horizon Adventures lies in its carefully crafted gameplay systems, which strike a balance between accessibility and engagement. While simplified from the original Horizon series, these mechanics create an entertaining experience that's both fresh and familiar.

Combat System Breakdown

At the core of the combat experience is a refined targeting system that pays homage to the original series. Players can target specific weak points on machines using Aloy's Focus ability, creating strategic opportunities during battles. The combat arsenal includes:

• Standard weapons like Aloy's iconic bow and Erend's hammer
• Special gadgets including the quirky hot dog truck that launches explosives
• Elemental damage modifiers that add tactical depth
• Rare weapons with limited uses that provide powerful advantages

The combat difficulty scales across five distinct levels, making battles accessible while maintaining challenge for experienced players. The targeting system automatically aims at weak points, streamlining the experience without sacrificing the satisfaction of dismantling machines piece by piece.

Exploration Features

The game adopts a 2.5D semi-isometric perspective, guiding players through linear but visually striking environments. Each zone offers distinct visual themes, from the lush Sacred Lands to the scorching Sunfall Desert. While the paths are predetermined, they're dotted with discoverable elements that reward thorough investigation. Hidden chests containing studs and power-ups encourage exploration, though they rarely stray far from the main path.

Mission Structure Analysis

The campaign unfolds across four distinct chapters, each featuring unique biomes and challenges. Mission variety comes through different objectives:

Story missions form the backbone of the adventure, introducing new machines and story elements. Community Challenges add variety through specific tasks, from elemental takedowns to specialized machine hunts. The introduction of Cauldron levels provides welcome changes of pace, focusing on platforming and environmental puzzles using shock weapons to power mechanisms.

Alpha Machine Hunts become available after completing chapters, offering increased challenge even on medium difficulty settings. These encounters test players' mastery of the combat system and provide meaningful progression through rewards like Red Bricks, which unlock various customization options.

The gameplay loop maintains its entertainment value through the 10-12 hour campaign, though the structured approach means less emphasis on free exploration compared to traditional LEGO games. This focused design decision helps maintain a consistent pace while ensuring players always have clear objectives.



Personalization takes center stage in LEGO Horizon Adventures, offering players an impressive array of customization options that extend far beyond simple cosmetic changes. From character wardrobes to village modifications, the game delivers a robust system that encourages creative expression.

Character Customization Options

The game features an extensive wardrobe system for both Aloy and Varl, with over 100 unique cosmetic options to unlock. Players can access different themed collections, including the signature "Horizon Adventures" set for Aloy and the "Trends" collection for Varl. These range from practical adventure gear to whimsical options like hot dog suits and chicken costumes, becoming available after completing "Into the Woods" in Chapter 1.

Hub World Building Features

Mother's Heart serves as more than just a hub—it's a canvas for creative expression. After completing "Cult Following" in Chapter 1, players gain access to an extensive range of building customization options:

• Structural additions like ferris wheels and roller coasters
• Decorative elements including hot dog carts and dragon rooftops
• Theme-specific building kits from LEGO City and Ninjago universes

The village transformation options strike a perfect balance between maintaining the game's charm while allowing players to express their creativity through unconventional additions like disco floors and themed decorations.

Progression System Overview

The progression mechanics in LEGO Horizon Adventures combine traditional leveling with innovative upgrade paths. Characters can advance up to Level 20, with experience gained only through active play. The All-Mother Tree serves as the central point for unlocking crucial upgrades:

Core Progression Features:

• General skill tree benefiting the entire team
• Character-specific advancement paths
• Unique bonuses for health and weapon damage
• Experience multipliers through specialized upgrades

The system includes strategic choices through upgrades like "Weak Sauce" for targeting enemy weak points, "Environmental Warrior" for terrain-based combat bonuses, and "Gadgeteer" for enhanced gadget effectiveness. Each upgrade path offers multiple tiers, with silver and gold levels providing increasingly significant benefits.

These customization systems work together to create a personalized adventure that grows more engaging as players progress through the story, unlocking new options and possibilities with each achievement.



Cooperative play brings a fresh dimension to the Horizon game universe, marking the first time players can team up to tackle machine threats together. This innovative addition transforms the solo adventure into a shared experience, perfect for friends and family alike.

Multiplayer Features

The cooperative system employs an intuitive drop-in/drop-out mechanism, allowing seamless transitions between solo and multiplayer modes. Players can join forces either locally through couch co-op or online, though both options are strictly limited to two players. For online play, platform-specific requirements apply:

• PlayStation 5: Active PlayStation Plus subscription required
• Nintendo Switch: Nintendo Online membership needed
• PC: No additional subscriptions necessary

The shared screen approach keeps both players in view at all times, though this comes with certain restrictions. A proximity system ensures players stay within reasonable range of each other, with automatic teleportation occurring if the distance becomes too great.

Team Dynamics

The cooperative experience shines through its character-switching mechanics, allowing players to alternate between four distinct heroes: Aloy, Varl, Erend, and Teersa. Each character brings unique weapons and gadgets to the table, encouraging strategic teamwork during encounters. This diversity adds depth to combat scenarios, as players can coordinate their abilities to tackle challenging machine encounters more effectively.

The shared screen mechanic, while potentially limiting, actually enhances team coordination. Players must work together to navigate environments and engage enemies, creating natural opportunities for strategic planning. During larger-scale battles, maintaining proper positioning becomes crucial, as the system's automatic teleportation can occasionally interrupt combat flow.

Shared Progression

The cooperative mode maintains a balanced approach to progression, though with some limitations. While both players contribute to mission completion and resource gathering, certain aspects of progression remain tied to the host player. This design choice ensures consistent story progression while still rewarding both participants for their efforts.

Combat encounters in co-op mode adapt to accommodate two players, offering enhanced opportunities for tactical coordination. Players can combine their unique abilities and gadgets to create effective combat strategies, though success still requires careful communication and coordination. The system particularly shines during complex machine encounters, where coordinated attacks can target multiple weak points simultaneously.

One notable limitation is that cooperative partners cannot unlock trophies during their session, a restriction carried over from previous LEGO titles. However, this doesn't diminish the shared enjoyment of exploring and building together in Mother's Heart, where both players can contribute to the hub world's development and participate in community challenges.

The absence of crossplay support means players must share the same platform to enjoy cooperative play, whether through local or online connections. While this might disappoint some, it ensures a consistent experience across all supported platforms, maintaining stable performance during cooperative sessions.



Visual excellence meets technical challenges in LEGO Horizon Adventures, showcasing both the capabilities and limitations of modern gaming hardware. The game pushes boundaries in visual fidelity while managing the complexities of cross-platform development.

Graphics and Animation

The visual presentation stands as a testament to how far LEGO games have evolved. The attention to detail is remarkable, with authentic LEGO esthetics that include:

• Realistic plastic textures with visible scratches and smudges
• Movie-quality stop-motion style animations
• Dynamic lighting effects across diverse environments
• Detailed character models with precise facial expressions

Players can choose between two distinct graphics modes:


The pre-rendered cutscenes deserve special mention, delivering spectacular cinematics that rival the quality of LEGO animated films. Environmental diversity shines through multiple biomes, each crafted with distinct visual characteristics that prevent visual fatigue during extended play sessions.

Loading Times and Stability

While the game impresses visually, it faces some technical hurdles that impact the overall experience. Loading screens appear frequently, even between relatively small areas, which can interrupt the gameplay flow. This becomes particularly noticeable during cooperative play, where the system must manage additional resources.

The performance mode, while targeting 60 frames per second, occasionally experiences frame rate dips and texture pop-in issues. These technical limitations become more apparent in areas with complex lighting or numerous moving objects. The stability trade-offs are most evident in split-screen cooperative play, where the game implements strict player proximity limits to maintain performance.

Platform Comparisons

The game demonstrates notable differences across its supported platforms. The PlayStation 5 version showcases the most impressive visual fidelity, though it still struggles to maintain consistent performance even in Performance mode. The Nintendo Switch version, while making expected visual compromises, delivers a surprisingly competent experience, particularly in handheld mode.

Switch-specific optimizations include:

• Better performance in handheld versus docked mode
• Adjusted draw distances to maintain stability
• Simplified lighting effects without sacrificing core visual appeal

The PS5 version benefits from enhanced features like faster loading times and improved texture quality, though the base experience remains consistent across platforms. Cross-platform considerations have clearly influenced the game's technical architecture, with certain limitations like one-on-one character conversations during cutscenes appearing across all versions.

The technical implementation reflects careful balancing between visual ambition and performance stability. While the game pushes impressive visuals that capture the essence of both LEGO and Horizon franchises, it occasionally stumbles under the weight of its technical aspirations, particularly in areas where hardware limitations meet ambitious design goals.



LEGO Horizon Adventures stands as a remarkable achievement in family gaming, successfully bridging the gap between the complex world of Horizon and LEGO's playful charm. The game's strength lies in its adaptability, offering multiple difficulty levels and extensive accessibility options that make it approachable for players of all ages and skill levels.

Despite occasional technical hiccups and loading time issues, the game delivers an engaging experience through its robust customization systems and cooperative play options. The visual presentation impresses, particularly on newer hardware, though performance varies notably across different platforms.

The $59.99 price point feels justified considering the 10-12 hours of main campaign content, extensive customization options, and replayability through cooperative play. Players seeking a family-friendly adventure with depth will find significant value here, though technical perfectionists might notice the performance compromises made to accommodate cross-platform play.

This LEGO adaptation proves that complex gaming universes can be successfully reimagined for broader audiences without losing their core appeal. While it may not match the original Horizon series in complexity, it creates its own identity as an entertaining family experience that both parents and children can enjoy together.