Horizon Zero Dawn earned favorable reviews across the board upon its initial February 2017 launch. In those original reviews, many critics praised Horizon Zero Dawn's world-building, performances, presentation, story, and its surprisingly strategic gameplay, with combat requiring players to target specific weakpoints on the robotic dinosaurs they were hunting. Horizon Zero Dawn's foundations were strong enough to warrant an expansion a few months later, an eventual sequel and its own expansion, and now even a LEGO spinoff in LEGO Horizon Adventures.
Announced back in June, LEGO Horizon Adventures is set to release on November 14 for PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo Switch. According to its pre-release marketing and previews, LEGO Horizon Adventures will retell the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, albeit with plenty of added trademark LEGO humor and charm. Surprisingly, there's one particularly charming addition to LEGO Horizon Adventures that actually fixes a longtime criticism of Zero Dawn.
How LEGO Horizon Adventures Avoids a Common Zero Dawn Criticism
Horizon Zero Dawn's Facial Animations Were a Major Point of Criticism
While Horizon Zero Dawn's visuals were heavily praised upon its 2017 debut, there was one element of the game's presentation that quickly drew criticism from fans online. Generally speaking, Horizon Zero Dawn's facial animations were subpar. Many of the game's character models featured very stiff facial movements when talking, and the game's lip-syncing was noticeably poor, giving some of the game's cutscenes an uncanny look and feel.
These facial animation issues were ironically made much worse due to the rest of Horizon Zero Dawn's stellar presentation. The environments looked incredibly detailed and vibrant, the state-of-the-art lighting systems gave the game a natural, realistic tone, and the game's character models were generally intricate and varied. Among all that, Horizon Zero Dawn's facial animations stood out like a sore thumb.
Thankfully, developer Guerrilla Games took this criticism on board and learned from it. Horizon Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion featured much improved facial animations for its characters, and naturally, Horizon Forbidden West's facial animations were a vast improvement over those, with the 2022 game making great use of the PS5's hardware. The recently released Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered has finally fixed the original 2017 game's infamous animation issues, bringing a wealth of technical upgrades to the table.
LEGO Horizon Adventures Will Avoid This Criticism By Embracing It
The upcoming LEGO Horizon Adventures has its own funny way of circumventing Horizon Zero Dawn's facial animation issues. Rather than aim for realistic facial movements, LEGO Horizon Adventures is embracing deliberately stiff animations that imitate the stop-motion style of The LEGO Movie. In doing this, LEGO Horizon Adventures ironically avoids the original game's animation issues, instead deciding to make its stiff animations an overt part of the game's art style.
In fact, LEGO Horizon Adventures' facial animations don't just ensure that the game avoids Zero Dawn's criticisms, they actively contribute to the LEGO game's charm. Along with evoking The LEGO Movie vibes, LEGO Horizon Adventures' facial animations still manage to convey plenty of emotion, all while remaining authentic to the construction toy and its physical limitations. LEGO Horizon Adventures is fully embracing its LEGO aesthetic, and it's great to see that accidentally fix one of Zero Dawn's most criticized elements.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 71 /100 Critics Rec: 54%
- Released
- November 14, 2024
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ // Fantasy Violence, Language
- Developer(s)
- Guerrilla Games, Studio Gobo
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
WHERE TO PLAY
In a far future, where giant mechanized beasts roam a landscape reclaimed by nature and humans live in primitive tribes, an ancient evil seeks to destroy the world…
Join hunter Aloy as she leads a colourful crew of heroes on a quest to save the meadows, forests, and mountains of Earth from a man called Helis, who leads a gang of sunworshippers that follow an Ancient Evil shrouded in mystery.
Dive into a thrilling adventure alone, or with friends with couch co-op or online play, customize your home in true LEGO style, and uncover stunning secrets from Aloy’s mysterious past along the way.
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
- Local Co-Op, Online Co-Op
- PC Release Date
- November 14, 2024
- PS5 Release Date
- November 14, 2024
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- November 14, 2024
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
