Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) Let’s ¡Go! Over 37m players.

A few thoughts on the game now ive played some more.

The arcadey driving is still solid and fun when against matched AI.
The online is a big step backwards. its a technical mess - The arcade event just dont work. I dont like the eliminator at all. The playground events are the same stale ones weve had for years.
The map isnt as good as the UK in FH4. The introduction of seasons and weather in FH4 worked quite well - but its almost non existent in seemingly sunny all year round mexico.
The whole game progression is just an extension of FH4 - nothing is different. I find myself playing the game to just regain my cars and tunes from FH4.
The game needs a proper championship mode and progression more akin the FM games. In FH3 there were mini events at each venue which went away in 4, this should have been built upon but was totally discarded.
The 3 or 4 "settlements"/"track venues" on the map only really have one circuit each - they really needed about 5 or 6 variant circuits in each of these town venues. Its a waste. Even Edinburgh in FH4 had about 5 circuits.

The game is nothing more than FH3/FH4 but with new clothes - playground games employed a bunch of artists to draw another country, but forgot to get some technical and creative people on board to make a new game that isnt a buggy mess in places.
Are playground made up of people who made PGR?

twitter.com/guardian/status/1464172375210184704

Ive just bought the hoonigan ford RS200 three times and tuned it to A800, S1 and S2. Best allround car in the game imo.

After 2 weeks of on and off I got the 'drive on all roads' achievement. Now to polish off the boards and I can get on with the actual game.

Just accidentally uninstalled this. I was on auto-pilot and thought I was pressing "close/quit" but pressed"uninstall".

What a melon. Need to get it redownloaded tonight before the boys see :fp:

mcjihge2 wrote:Ive just bought the hoonigan ford RS200 three times and tuned it to A800, S1 and S2. Best allround car in the game imo.

That has been my car of choice as well mainly for how it handles

RichardUK wrote:
mcjihge2 wrote:Ive just bought the hoonigan ford RS200 three times and tuned it to A800, S1 and S2. Best allround car in the game imo.

That has been my car of choice as well mainly for how it handles

I jump around quite a few cars. Lambo sensa elementa FE, koeniseg Aguera for speed, the mitibishi Evo/subaru are good for off road and grip. I even like the mclaren senna. None of the Ferraris feel particularly good in this, all feel a bit tail happy.

mcjihge2 wrote:The game needs a proper championship mode and progression more akin the FM games.

This is the point i've been thinking about, in that the Horizon games have switched away from being racing games to being car games - as in they are now part of the open world game design singularity that you happen to interact with behind the wheel of a car; actually winning races is now secondary to taking part, filling up meters etc, which I suspect is a choice to increase appeal and accessibility on the basis that there can be quite a steep learning curve for those not already versed in how to either drive a car for real or how to do it virtually without crashing everywhere and ending up dead last, which for games which take the "win races to progress" model can be a real progression-killer. There is stuff like rivals mode buried away if you really want to get into the weeds of tuning and pushing for competition, but I doubt that is the main target audience anymore.

But isn't the championship stuff the job of Forza Motorsport?

Rex Kramer wrote:But isn't the championship stuff the job of Forza Motorsport?

Yep, always find it bizarre that people complain about Forza Horizon being 'too arcadey' disregarding the fact that it's a spin off of an actual driving sim. Looks like the next Forza Motorsport will go the Halo Infinite route of being a live service game plus it's next gen only and it'll be on GP for all those who want a 'serious driving' game.

The only design choice that really rankles with me is removing the focus on finishing first. When everything about an event is presented as a race, it’s just stupid not to require the player to win. There are so many assists and accessibility features, it’s not as if anyone would struggle, if they lowered the difficulty enough, so taking away the whole point of a race is dumb.

Thankfully the accolades are there to require wins from completionists.

I wasn't really a fan of the Lego Expansion, but the Accolades are great. There's some in there to get between two points of the map in a certain time, and the ones to use a specific car in certain races are good as it gets me trying cars I might not have touched otherwise.

The accolades system is great, but it does depend on people actually looking at it and engaging with it.

There's an article on Pure Xbox that people in the comments are understandably bashing, but it raises a good point. Everything opens way too quickly in this game compared to the previous games. When I first saw the expeditions page, I'd said how it was similar to the expansion method of 3. But it just isn't. The expedition is complete and every event opens up barring a story and the final marathon race. Thus, there's a disconnect between what is being said and what's happening - especially since it allows the entertaining result of acing a particular type of racing without engaging in anything but that final marathon race.

I'm all for it being an open sandbox, but if you're going that route, treat it like one. Give the basic tutorial of what the event types are, but then open everything and let the player go wild. Or go the Horizon 3 route and make it feel like you're really building up the festival in this new country by having events trickle out on festival upgrades, tying a few expansions to showcases or stories and really drive engagement to all of these events.

Just doing the daily horizon tour - B700 Minis. Some twat with a LUFC tag ran me off a checkpoint. I was the only one in a tuned car so i easily fought back and passed him. WTF is LUFC supposed even mean? Wheres PeterCrisp when you need him?

I, for one, am grateful that there's no pressure to place 1st in every event, because I'm absolute pish at this game and can't control a car properly for toffee. :lol:

Just received my loyalty McLaren P1! That took a while.

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:I wasn't really a fan of the Lego Expansion, but the Accolades are great. There's some in there to get between two points of the map in a certain time, and the ones to use a specific car in certain races are good as it gets me trying cars I might not have touched otherwise.

They remind me of 1000 club in the original. Plenty of longevity.

With regards to the game running out of stuff to do, those players complaining about it have played the whole game like the latest Final Fantasy when everybody knows most racing games should be played in between other games in bitesize chunks.

You ration them so they don't get boring.

I managed to get the arcade done for this week. Drift with 2 other players who were pulling thier weight for a change. All too often ive been by myself or with one other player or maybe 2 or 3 other players who turn up in non drift cars expecting miracles. Once i got in with about 6 other players - all drifting well then the network through me out the session.

My approach to this game is as a completionist, and i hate it when theres something i should be able to get but cant due to things out of my control. - This rollercoaster is tied to my enjoyment of the game.

Cracking game this, get to drive a carnival float of a cliff what's not to love

Drivertar difficulty seems all over the shop mind you, was winning by miles so upper their diff and ended up with driving into me lots or them being uncatchable then in the next event save diff I'm smashing into the floor again.

mcjihge2 wrote:I managed to get the arcade done for this week. Drift with 2 other players who were pulling thier weight for a change. All too often ive been by myself or with one other player or maybe 2 or 3 other players who turn up in non drift cars expecting miracles. Once i got in with about 6 other players - all drifting well then the network through me out the session.

I'm always doing the Drift Arcade when not doing anything else. I just love throwing the Drift Mini around, but people don't seem to realise they need to pull their weight and get scoring. During one of them, it was drift zone time. There I am pulling 80,000+ each time, yet whenever I returned to the western start of it, there someone was just watching. And people also don't still understand you don't need to start the zones from where the GPS is telling you to go. There I am at the second longest drift zone of the game already on my run, when someone comes barrelling past. Near to the end of the run, I see them undergoing a run from where the GPS point said to start.

Can't really get too annoyed when I'm doing them just for fun.

Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) Let’s ¡Go! Over 37m players.

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