So after missing the Black Friday sale, I just picked up FH3 standard digital version on the spring sale. Part of the reason for this post is so that I’ll have something to link to from the MS store page since they have a 1000 character limit on reviews.
The original Forza Horizon was an amazing game for its time with bringing the great Forza simcade style racing and car collecting into an open world game. It didn’t have any real faults, aside possibly from some of the console racer tropes and the overly aggressive monetization/microtransactions (the first few days I played the game I didn’t have an internet connection, and the release version on the disc was much better about this than the later patches that kept trying to push DLC cars and expansion packs).
FH2 was one step forwards, two steps back IMHO. Sure the XBONE version had some nice new features (much better graphics courtesy of the much more powerful XBONE hardware, improved vehicle customization, a more open map, changing weather, and drivatars), but the actual gameplay itself was a step backwards and the map was a lot less varied than in the original FH. The XB360 of FH2 was mainly just a step backwards other than a few new cars since it didn’t have the XBONE improvements. The new system of automatically matching all the AI racers to your car and recycling all the tracks with all the vehicle classes effectively destroyed any real sense of game progression and broke a lot of immersion (hypercars racing on a dirt track? LOL no.). Unless you were a completionist and wanted to win every single race with every single type of car, there was no real reason to buy any cars except maybe a decent budget AWD vehicle for the dirt tracks.
FH3 is (mostly) a solid step forwards from FH2, but still doesn’t live up to the progression that FH1 had. It has a vastly improved map and brings back the street races, and also further improves customization. Blueprints are also a nice touch with being able to customize the existing tracks and challenges, although I really wish we had the ability to plan our own courses. The whole player as the festival boss thing feels mostly like empty words to me, I don’t feel like I have enough control over the festival or the tracks. It feels like my character could very well could be just another racer who won the privilege of choosing the next festival location for all the power they actually have.
Unfortunately, FH3 retains the broken auto matching system of FH2, and breaks it further by introducing Horizon Edition cars. Once you get a HE car, there is no reason to use anything else since you’ll be shortchanging yourself on XP or credits. To make things worse, everyone received a free HE credits car (Lambo Countach) so I wouldn’t be surprised if a very large portion of the newer players aren’t really using anything else for the races (outside of the blueprint races at least). FH1 had a nice progression that had you mastering a variety of vehicles to fit the different race classes and restrictions that has been lost in the newer games.
Console racers also really need to move past the player always starting at the back of the pack and cheating/rubberbanding AI racers. This isn’t particularly any better or worse in FH3 over the other Forza games, but it is something that really needs to be improved moving forwards.
Aggressive monetization is another thing that isn’t really new to FH3, but is still something that needs to go. The full price of this game is $60 which is fair given the amount of content it has, yet in game we’re constantly subjected to ads for addon content, including a giant fullscreen menu prompting you to buy the expansion pack that you have to opt out of (the default action is to buy). To add insult to injury, we also have microtransactions polluting the game. These negatively affect the gameplay by encouraging the developers to put in grindy, timewasting game mechanics and balance the game in such a way as to encourage players to buy the shortcut items with real money. Not cool.
The real travesty in FH3 is the staggeringly poorly done PC version, which still has a lot of major issues even with the latest patch. You would think that Microsoft of all companies would have a tremendous amount of experience with developing for PC hardware, yet I’ve seen multiple articles that seem to show that the PC version is literally the same as the XBONE version, right down to the low level memory management that works for the XBONE hardware but is entirely inappropriate for how almost all PCs are configured. This results in the game using the CPU when it should be using the GPU, overheating hardware, and a host of performance issues (severe stuttering even on high end machines) and crashes (I’ve had the game crash to desktop several times, and even reboot the whole PC more than once). The only way I can get it to be semi stable is to lock it to 30FPS, the unlimited framerate seems to over stress the hardware and results in hard freezes and reboots. As a side note, Fable 3 on PC had this exact same issue (maybe that’s why they stopped selling it).
On top of that, both PC and XBONE versions seem to have had a lot more network issues (could be server side) than the older games, so from a technical standpoint, FH3 is a step backwards from the earlier games. At least the PC version supports full online functionality even if you don’t have gold on your XB account.
To conclude this review, I would say that despite its issues, FH3 is still a blast to play and is worth picking up if you have an XBONE to play it on. Given the number of issues I’m having on my relatively high end PC (Skylake i7, Nvidia GTX 1070, 850 EVO SSD), I can’t recommend the game if you plan on playing exclusively on PC.
My final score is 3 out of 5 stars. Minus one star for the broken progression and general gameplay quirks, minus another star for the technical issues on the PC, and minus a third star for the aggressive monetization. Since I’ve already not recommended the PC version, that brings the final score to 3 out of 5.
Moving forwards, there are several things I would like to see done with the FH series.
In no particular order:
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Have a large, varied map with all types of driving conditions. FH3 kind of has this now with the Blizzard Mountain expansion, but it really should be done in the base game next time. Maybe we could have a global festival in the next game with multiple maps?
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Do away with the progression breaking auto matching of FH2 and FH3, and the HE cars. Give players a reason to collect and maintain a variety of cars for different races like in FH1, rather than just using the same car for everything.
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Fix the Forza racing paradigm. Right now (unless you use a perk or play online) the player always starts at the back of the pack. This encourages a specific playstyle, namely highly aggressive driving and cars tuned for launch and acceleration to get out front quickly. The AI players often logjam the track, making some of the shorter races unwinnable at higher difficulties since you don’t have time to fight past the mess before the guy out front has built up an unbeatable lead and isn’t catchable since due to the automatching system, his car is 50 points faster than yours.
Starting positions could be chosen (as they are IRL) by having qualifying runs and/or putting the slower cars out front if there’s variation in the racers’ vehicles. Aggressive driving could be discouraged by having penalties for ramming other drivers (might be hard to implement reliably and fairly). Simulation mode is a start for this at least since you don’t want to damage your vehicle.
The game should also do more to train the player to race well instead of trying to win at all costs. This isn’t really a Forza issue, as the FH games actually lets your progress without winning any races and gives plenty of XP and credits to all finishing positions, but after decades of racing games that pushed the need to always get first, this is a hard thing to unlearn and I find myself always trying to win everything (although there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from taking out a rogue AI racer who has built up an impressive lead by not slowing down at all for a tight corner, and slamming into them and using them to brake you).
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Add a test drive mode to autoshow so I can test drive cars before buying them. I don’t like spending a bunch of money on a high class car only to find that I don’t like the way it handles.
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Add more ways to show off your car collection. Test Drive Unlimited 2 allowed the player to by houses, some of which had very impressive garages that you could organize your cars in and walk around them, maybe we could have something like that?
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Cut back on the aggressive monetization and in-game advertising. It will gain you a few additional purchases, but also generate far more ill will towards the developers/publishers. Car packs are way too expensive for what you get. Base game has over 400 cars for $60, but cars from car packs are over $1 each (and $3 if purchased individually) with no other content. Not to mention the car tokens and treasure map and early horn unlock nonsense.
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Add ways to use more than one car at a time. Maybe have the ability to hire racers, and put them in one of your cars to go race for you to earn some credits on the side, or just drive around with you in free roam? If you had hired drivers following you around, then you could switch cars without having to go back to a festival location.
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More appearance customization options. Maybe have a way for players to create custom bodykits for cars?
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Interactive systems on cars. For example, being able to roll the windows up/down, turn the headlights on/off, and put the top up or down on a convertible.
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Have automatic/manual transmission, ABS, traction and stability control be set by what the car realistically has rather than a global option that affects all cars. Upgrading the brakes would allow older cars to have ABS and traction/stability control, and changing the transmission would affect what the car has. Cars with automatics would generally also be able to function as a manual without clutch (at least for the newer vehicles) since most automatic transmissions allow you to manually select a gear. Bonus points could still be awarded based on what you actually drove a race with. Aftermarket transmissions could have options for manual with clutch if you really want a manual in a car that IRL is only available with an automatic transmission. Similarly, if a car IRL has options to enable/disable ABS/Traction/Stability, then we should be able to do it anytime (possibly as part of the interactive systems idea), otherwise they would need to be defeated at a garage.
Anyways, long post, but those are my thoughts on FH3, and the FH series in general. Comment as you will on them.