Time for a little 360 review 
1, Graphics. It differs. Some of the places are quite beautiful, others aren’t that good. The towns are way better then they were in Horizon 1. Some of the places are just empty places. Graphics are not consistant. I do believe Sumo did a good job, but not a consistant one. It’s close to Horizon 1, some places look better, a lot look the same quality, but a good number are worse as well.
2. Cars. They look very nice, better then Horizon 1 and some have more details. Cockpit views are well done, as are the exterior views.
3. Handling. About the same, I’d say slighlty better. I always had some trouble with getting the handbrake drifts right in Horizon 1, that is much better to do in Horizon 2. I haven’t bought many cars, but drove a few of the showcase and bucket list cars and they all drove well. The muscle cars are in my opinion better then in Horizon 1. They’s still muscle cars, but are not sliding and getting out of control as much anymore.
4. Physics are good and you can do some craze rolls, jumps and so on. Someone mention there weren’t enough destoyable objects, I’ve found plenty.
5. Map & world. It sure isn’t bigger then the Horizon 1 map, it’s actually slightly smaller. Opening it up has been nice though and gives more space to drive, but a lot of it is quite useless. On the other hadn there are some very interesting areas that are closed. The world has some collision issues, sometimes you hit invisible objects, mainly at the side of the road, while there’s nothing there. There are couple of places you fall through the map. Which is cool since that gives you suddenly a top speed to 500 km/h
6. Events. There good, tracks are nice, show cases are cool, bucket list is fun. Barn finds are more challenging.
7. AI. It’s cheating big time. So far, they’ve stuck to road nicely, but they achieve amazing speeds and do amazing turns. Rubber banding is very obvious. Even when you use short cuts, they manage to catch up in no time, even if you go top speed all. They’re a challenge and that’s nice. I had one race, where I restarted and the AI did not move at all. I could pass all of them while they were standing still. When I was well over 2 km ahead of them, they started moving and caught up with me in seconds… while I was driving top speed on a straight road. At any rate they are a bit more challenging then the were in Horizon 1 and they’re a bit more agressive as well… I like that
8. The skills, perks and xp are done well. Credits build up nicely when playing as well.
9. I like the roads in the game. Some really winding ones, some nice off road sections and some good highways. The tunnels are nice and long and some of the mountain roads are lovely.
10. It runs smooth (installed on the hard drive) and even the draw distance is better then I expected.
What I didn’t like…
- Obviously empty spaces, too many not needed barriers and inconsistant quality in the game world.
- The 500 events is a bit of a joke. You basically do each champignonship with 10 different classes. That gives little variety and will get boring.
- Perks are way to easy to get. I’ve played only 3 hours and already have half of them. I’ve been racing most of the time, been goofing around for about 20 minutes of that time.
- Too many similar cars and too little new one. If you played Horizon 1 and completed it and done a lot of the 1000 club challenges with various cars, there’s not enough new ones. There are some great additions, but there is some repetition also. Overall the list is nice, but a little too similar.
- The map is still too small.
- Road trips. While the idea is nice, it’s forcing you to do the game in a certain order. Good thing about it is that all the races are closer to each other now, the flip side of the coin is that you have less freedom to go where you like to go. You also seem to drive alone to in this road trip. It’s not like the beginning where you drive with a number of cars to a certain destination.
- Way too little showcases.
- The skill system has flaws and doesn’t register everything your doing well. It has some issues with registering things like near misses.
- In spite of 500 events it’s still a short game. I doubt it will take much longer then Horizon did without the 1000 club. I’ve played 3 hours and I’m on 18% now. Taking in account that some of the cases will be longer, I’d say I’ll be done in 25 hours or so. Unless… they don’t count each class champignonship in the progress.
Multiplayer is lacking in this review, sorry.
Horizon 2 is fun, but due to repetive races may get boring soon. Don’t expect it too last very long either. The world is nice, better then expected, but not as consistant good looking as Horizon 1. The map has some interesting and fun places, but even with a good number of the barriers removed, it still is rather small. Races are good, but AI cheating and rubberbanding is too obvious. As far as the solo part of the game goes, it’s a worthy successor of Horizon 1. If there will be DLC and something like the 1000 club challenges are brought back, this game could last a lot longer. Also a map extension would really do the game well, I would gladly pay for that. If the issues surrounding rewards and online can play can be solved, I guess everyone could be happy.
Europe XO €59,99 and 360 is €64,99!! So, more expensive and less content.