After weeks of internet rumours, Sony’s unusual new game was finally made official at Summer Game Fest 2024: LEGO Horizon Adventures. Built brick-by-brick by main Horizon developer Guerilla in collaboration with Studio Gobo, it looks to be exactly what you’d expect from a LEGO tie-in: bright, charming, goofy, and full of things to smash and studs to collect. That’s been a recipe for success multiple times over for LEGO, but this time around I’m not so sure. Who exactly is LEGO Horizon Adventures for?

This isn’t LEGO’s first foray into the Horizon universe. The Danish toy company’s fantastic Tallneck kit, based on Horizon’s giraffe-like walking towers, is an almost 14-inch tall behemoth made of 1,222 pieces. If the brick count didn’t give it away, the recommended age for this model is 18+. In the physical world, LEGO Horizon has been aimed at adults because it’s adults who play the video game series. But one look at LEGO Horizon Adventures and it’s clear this isn’t anywhere close to the type of experience we’ve had with the two mainline Horizon games so far. For existing fans who are already chomping at the brick for a new game, this likely isn’t what they were hoping for.

While I didn’t expect LEGO Horizon Adventures to simply be a full-fat Horizon game with a LEGO aesthetic, I am surprised that the trailer shows very little of what I’d consider to be the series’ core DNA. Horizon is all about tactically tearing apart robot dinosaurs and animals. Thunderjaw wrecking your day? Blast off its missile launchers. Struggling with a Snapmaw? Snipe its freeze sac. Each machine is built of components that can be broken and shattered, an idea that would surely translate beautifully into snapping and scattering Lego pieces. And yet the trailer suggests that combat in LEGO Horizon Adventures will be similar to prior LEGO games of the Star Wars and Marvel varieties – give something a good, simple boop on the head and they’ll break apart. I’m not sure how satisfying this is going to be for long-term fans.

And so the answer is obvious, isn’t it? LEGO Horizon Adventures is for children. This is a PlayStation Studios game being released for Nintendo Switch, afterall. But I’m not sure it’s that easy. LEGO games have been so successful with children because they’ve historically adapted licences that kids already love. As a pre-teen during the prequel era of Star Wars I loved the tie-in LEGO kits, and so the subsequent LEGO Star Wars video games were a no-brainer. But Horizon isn’t already beloved by kids in its original or LEGO form. And while my six-year-old nephew is as dinosaur obsessed as any kid his age, I don’t think an armour-plated t-rex is going to be a guaranteed magnet. He’d go wild for a new LEGO Jurassic World game, though, not least because there’s already age-appropriate LEGO kits he can play with.

So who is LEGO Horizon Adventures for? I think it’s for gamer families. It’s for parents who spend dozens and dozens of hours playing Horizon on PS5 after they’ve put their kids to bed, and who now want to introduce that world to their sons and daughters. The ingredients are all there: as detailed by the PlayStation Blog, LEGO Horizon Adventures is a light-hearted retelling of Aloy’s original story, playable completely in co-op. It’s a way for an older gamer to share something they love with a kid who’s not quite ready for something as intense and complex as the full-scale Horizon games.

That’s what I imagine the boardroom pitch was, anyway. And while I hope that LEGO Horizon Adventures finds its place, I think that place is going to be a much narrower niche than would be ideal for Sony. For the parent or older sibling in the co-op pairing, I wonder if LEGO Horizon Adventures will be able to translate all the things they love about the original games. Will the combat – the beating heart of Horizon – be good enough? Will turning the complex Aloy, with all her doubts and troubles and inner-fight, into a cartoon character be satisfying? And for the child with the other controller, will this bright new world of machines, hot dogs, and (presumably) a message of environmental protection prove alluring enough to pull them away from more established characters and the likes of Roblox? I fear that the sweet spot for both players will be slim.

Historically, the LEGO pipeline has taken movies families love, turned them into physical LEGO kits they can build together, and then reimagined those kits as worlds that can be explored through video games. LEGO Horizon Adventures disrupts that pipeline by being a family game inspired by a LEGO kit for adults that was adapted from a video game for more advanced players. And so while I really do hope it’s a co-op delight, I can’t help but wonder if LEGO Horizon Adventures is built on shaky foundations.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

Right from the start, Wuthering Waves’ odd mix of swords, guns, and spirits caught my eye, somehow combining disparate ideas into a combat spectacle. This story-driven gacha RPG will have you twirling like a ballerina to dodge attacks before passing the baton to a teammate that then slams the enemy with a fish-like dragon. Unfortunately, while those flashy, fast-paced fights and the exciting parkour-like movement quickly endeared Wuthering Waves to me, it also failed to impress in a few other key areas – including a lackluster story that sometimes tempted me to use the skip button.

Wuthering Waves is all about action. Every character has an element and weapon type associated with them, as well as individual skills that you can level up. However, how you use those characters isn’t quite a copy-paste of similar action-RPGs like Genshin Impact. That’s thanks in part to the intro and outro skills that can be used when you swap between each character in your three-person team, which activate cool special attacks like triggering a fire-infused shootout. You also charge up a separate skill gauge by dishing out damage or successfully dodging and parrying enemy attacks, and these systems add an appreciated layer of strategy to how you build your party and when exactly to change teammates.

Characters also have unique combos you can activate during combat, all of which you can practice in dedicated tutorials for each one. To use them, you might need to press the same button four times, press and hold a button after performing a different attack, or jump in the air for an aerial attack before activating an alternate combo. It can take a bit to memorize those inputs, but doing so for your favorite fighters makes using them even more satisfying. It’s nice that Wuthering Waves encourages you to try them all out at least once, too, even offering some small rewards for your trouble.

All that nuance makes combat a lot of fun, though it stumbles a bit with its element system, which doesn’t feel like it contributes anything significant. None of the six elemental types inflict status effects like you might expect – fire doesn’t deal damage over time and ice doesn’t immobilize enemies, for example – so it doesn’t really matter if your character is Fusion (Fire) or Glacio (Ice). It’s the variation in their actual movesets that matter, and their different elements are essentially just color-coding. Those movesets still differ enough that experimenting with team comps feels fun, but it’s a little disappointing that a character could be any element and they would play essentially exactly the same way.

They could hit just as hard as well, assuming you can equip them with the right gear to raise their damage. Rather than using traditional equipment like helmets and gloves, you strengthen your characters with Echoes: animal-like companions that increase your attack, elemental damage, and so on. The strength of those buffs depend on how many of the same type you equip at once, and each Echo takes up some of the limited space in your equipment slots. These restrictions encouraged me to strategize about how I could squeeze the most benefit out of the space I had, even if that meant temporarily using Echoes with suboptimal stats. Tuning, the process of unlocking additional stats for Echoes, unlocks those stats at random. This makes optimizing Echoes more difficult to achieve, but I didn’t feel like it hindered things too much – it was more of a bonus rather than a necessity.

The best part about Echoes is how they tie into the environment. As you fight enemies and bosses, they will sometimes leave behind ghost-like shells of themselves for you to absorb and convert into Echoes. I felt more compelled to explore because finding different types of monsters could mean getting access to Echoes with new effects. Not only does this system reward you with interesting gear for your characters, it encourages you to fill out your map as you go. Capturing Echoes even gets you points in a collection tracking guidebook, as well as a battle pass full of rewards, so there are reasons to hunt them beyond just upping your stats. Gotta catch ‘em all!

The hunt for Echoes also motivated me to keep fighting enemies in the overworld, even if I could blow through them with a high-level team. Clearing out smaller enemies like this was especially satisfying when every part of the map was shiny and new. However, after playing over 30 hours of Wuthering Waves, bulldozing through the same enemies over and over does start to feel repetitive, even as I continue to discover new parts of the map. On the bright side, at least you can farm for Echoes as often as you want – that’s much nicer than Genshin Impact’s artifact system, which is locked behind a daily currency.

Even when I am happily farming, one part of Wuthering Waves that totally falls flat is its story. Developer Kuro Games has openly spoken about how it had to revamp the entire story ahead of launch, and it pains me to say it that the version we ultimately got still falls short, with uneven pacing and too much exposition. The beginning is full of unnatural, lengthy conversations that use cryptic terminology you need to look up in encyclopedias and loading screens to actually understand, and it doesn’t get any more compelling once you do.

Your main character follows the classic trope of an amnesiac protagonist that seemingly appears out of nowhere, with a generic story that revolves around the secret of their past. That can work if done right, but this setup feels confusing and undeserved because of all the history and jargon thrown at you without any explanation as to how all of it connects. Things start to clear up in the later acts of the first chapter, only for it to introduce more characters that divide your attention before you can get to know them. It doesn’t help that the voice acting sounds borderline monotone across the board, even during intense cutscenes. When comparing it to contemporaries like Honkai: Star Rail, which flaunts expressive voice acting even in its side quests, it’s difficult to stay entertained throughout.

Most side quests I’ve seen haven’t done much to connect me to the other characters or the setting, either. You can witness the dangers of this apocalyptic environment, like dying NPCs and comrades that melodramatically tell you to go on without them, but there’s nothing that truly makes you think anyone important will get hurt. Small things, like the very few moments when your hero suddenly speaks despite otherwise being largely silent, are also jarring. At some points, I even preferred to mash buttons to quickly skip through a tedious conversation or leave a scene on autoplay so I could just listen without reading all that text.

Kuro Games occasionally attempts more meaningful side quests, like one about a monster mourning its mate and a researcher who similarly lost their partner, but not enough of them stand out. These memorable quests are more of a rarity than the norm. I still have a handful of big side quests waiting to be completed, but I’m already dreading the text blocks I’ve come to expect from them. At this point, I’m more compelled to play through these missions for their rewards alone rather than out of curiosity to see if they will somehow change my mind. Either way, I’m not perched on the edge of my seat, expecting some big surprise.

It took me about 20 hours to complete the main story that’s currently available, and I’ve played around 10 more in the endgame past that. Many free-to-play RPGs tend to slow down towards the end, leaving you to raise your level through farming the materials needed to level up characters and weapons or hunting down new Echoes. At level 32, I’ve reached a point where I spend most of my time either experimenting with team composition and finding new ways to earn rewards. Waveplates, the currency used to claim rewards like character-building materials from challenges, generate at a rate of 10 for every hour. It isn’t sinfully slow, but when the most satisfying parts of Wuthering Waves are its combat rewards and progression, it feels like a waiting game for new Waveplates.

That said, the rewards for climbing the ranks are tantalizing enough that they’ve also encouraged me to dig deeper on their own. Gacha games have fail-safes called “pity systems” to make sure players eventually get a high-quality reward for their banner pulls (the fairly standard system where you trade in-game currency for random characters and weapons). For what it’s worth, Wuthering Waves has been more generous with its pity system than many other games in this genre, only taking 80 gacha pulls to get to a guaranteed 5-star character or item versus the 90+ pulls I’m used to seeing. It also offers tons of resources during the initial honeymoon phase, handing out dozens of pulls whenever you climb 10 or so ranks, along with other systems that make them particularly easy to earn at the beginning.

You’re guaranteed to get at least one random 5-star character from the beginner’s banner, plus another banner that gives you a 5-star character of choice after 80 pulls. And on top of that, Wuthering Waves handed out a free pass (that will be available until next year) for another 5-star character, which means you could have at least two top-tier fighters in your party within the first few hours of playing and a third if you stick around for a couple more. You’re still at the luck of the draw beyond that, but it feels generous out of the gate, especially for any gacha game fans burnt out on bad pulls elsewhere.

Some of the characters I’ve seen do feel underpowered compared to others, which is sort of inevitable in games where the cast grows over time like this. However, Wuthering Waves does its best to offer “future-proof” free-to-play characters that make it easier to build optimized rotations without having to constantly keep up with new releases. You unlock six 4-star characters for free through the story and challenges that can charge your party’s energy, strengthen their attacks, and heal as needed. It’s great that this foundation plus the 5-stars mentioned earlier make it so that beginners can start building strong team comps that feel satisfying right away.

Kuro Games also offered heaps of rewards as an apology for bugs that were reported around the initial launch, though I didn’t see anything nearly as bad as some others did. I used Wuthering Waves’ cross-progression to try it on three different devices: a high-end gaming laptop, a Legion Go handheld PC, and an iPhone 12 Pro. Apparently some bugs have made Wuthering Waves essentially unplayable on certain devices for many people, but I haven’t experienced anything significant enough to make me stop playing. I’ve suffered from occasional lag when fighting bosses or after playing long amounts of time, but only small blips that were quickly forgotten across dozens of hours. That said, it was still nice that the apology rewards made the slower endgame progression move a little bit quicker.

Happy Volvy’s birthday, I guess? Devolver Digital just wrapped its annual Devolver Direct which, among plenty of weirdness, included a number of big game announcements. We got two new game reveals, including one from the devs of Hyper Light Drifter, new DLC for games like Cult of the Lamb, and release dates for The Crush House and Anger Foot.

A time was certainly had by all, but if you missed the show and don’t want to go back and watch a 30-minute video of a lonely man trying to prepare for a birthday party, here’s a quick recap of the announcements:

Tenjutsu

The first of two brand new games announced during the event, Tenjutsu comes from Dead Cells designer Sébastien Benard. It’s a “rogue-jutsu” game set in a crumbling city, where you play as a renegade yakuza taking down her former colleagues. Tenjutsu looks to be something like a combination of Dead Cells, Streets of Rage, and Sifu — your goal is to take down four crime syndicates, which you can tackle in any order as you slowly improve your skills at a complex brawler fighting system. You can also use resources you collect to build up the city with shops and restaurants, but spending too much time preparing will result in stronger enemies. Tenjutsu is coming to PC and consoles, but no release date just yet.

Possessor(s)

In Devolver’s second game announcement of the evening, we took a look at Possessor(s). Art style look familiar? Yup, this is from Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash developer Heart Machine. It’s a side-scroller action game with sci-fi horror elements where you play as Luca and her counterpart Rehm. The two explore a city wrecked by an interdimensional catastrophe. Possessor(s) has an open-ended world structure with multiple possible paths available at any given time, and focuses on tight combat, challenging bosses, and exploration. Possessor(s) is coming to PC and console in 2025.

The Crush House

I’ve been obsessed with The Crush House since it was first revealed earlier this year. It’s a novel premise for a game: you’re a producer on the titular reality TV show set at a Malibu mansion. Every week, you select a four-person cast from 12 total actors and let them loose in The Crush House, filming spicy moments over several days to satisfy your drama-loving audience. When you’re not filming, you’ll likely spend your time obsessing over details like decorations, props, or other ways you can capture different audience segments…though you’ll also quickly realize there’s a deeper mystery going on beneath the brightly color veneer of the house. During today’s Devolver Direct, we saw a new trailer for The Crush House capped with a release date: it’s coming out on August 9 on PC, with a Steam demo available now.

Anger Foot

Free Lives, developers of Broforce, Gorn, and Terra Nil, were also at the Devolver Direct with their upcoming game, Anger Foot. We actually went hands-on with Anger Foot not long ago, and really enjoyed its compelling take on the stylings of Hotline Miami, but with a lot more kicking. It’s a first-person…shooter? More like kicker. You kick your way through a place literally called Shit City, bringing down enemies, replaying levels with different types of kickers, and upgrading your weapons and sneakers as you go. Anger Foot is coming soon — it’ll be out on PC on July 11.

The Talos Principle 2 – Road to Elysium

The Talos Principle 2 came out late last year, and we praised its simultaneous exploration of both puzzling and philosophy in our 8/10 review. But Croteam showed up to the Devolver Direct to expand on what it established in the base game with the Road to Elysium DLC, now with a release date of June 14. Road to Elysium takes place after the events of The Talos Principle 2, bringing back familiar characters and expanding on certain major moments from the game. It takes place over three distinct chapters, each with a different vibe and a different character perspective.

Cult of the Lamb – Unholy Alliance

Finally, Cult of the Lamb stopped into the birthday party to share some news about an upcoming free update, Unholy Alliance. Unholy Alliance brings a new playable character, the Goat, to the game for the addition of local co-op. Local co-op brings with it certain new challenges, such as twists on existing minigames, the ability to swap weapons between the two characters, deal extra damage if fighting back to back, and plenty more. There are also new rewards being added to the game for solo players, so don’t worry if you don’t have a Goat buddy. Unholy Alliance will release on August 12 for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.

That’s it for Volvy’s Birthday the Devolver Direct! You can catch up on everything from Summer Game Fest and Day of the Devs earlier today with our round-ups here and here, and stick with IGN for everything else Summer of Gaming all month long.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.