I’ve been playing Forza Horizon 4 for a little over a year now. Decided to try out Forza Horizon 3, as I saw people mentioning that it’s the better game for them. So I picked it up a few months ago and holy cow is this game good. The visuals, the amazing skybox, and the great music in the game in combination with the big and diverse map hooked me up immediately. I’m not saying that Forza Horizon 4 is bad. It’s a good game, but Forza Horizon 3 is a great game. The vegetation textures look so much better than the ones in Forza Horizon 4. The game has absolutely incredible graphics. The skybox is one of the most realistic things I’ve ever seen in a video game in 25+ years. Even at night, the skybox amazed me. I took a few screenshots of the moments in Forza Horzion 3 that blew me away, and I want to share some of them here: Forza Horizon 3 (PC) - Album on Imgur
Do not get me wrong here. I like Forza Horizon 4 too, but I hope they try to achieve something similar looking to Forza Horizon 3 for Forza Horizon 5.
The Car Meet at the Airport was awesome…you could view the cars as everybody lined up…follow the player if you liked his design and you could view the player’s profile in addition to purchasing his car design if he shared it,…the drag race was a good way to make money while competing online …the map just seemed to be more fun to cruise around especially online…and the Hot Wheels expansion was the coolest expansion the Forza Horizon Franchise has created…the jumps were epic…it was so much fun…the current game seems to have lost that fun vibe…it seemed like they tried to do too much in order to stay relevant!
Skybox is truly amazing in FH3. In FH4 it’s not bad, but it’s not on the same level (the Moon is a joke in FH4).
There are some elements that are better in FH3 (I miss custom championships that FH3 has), but overall FH4 is a more complete and better game and also still (almost 2 years since the release) one of the best looking games ever made (on PC @ 4k with all the bells and whistles).
I hope this is a joke or you really need to play more videogames. In 1080p there is so much noticeable shimmering all over the place that its ridiculous. In combination with a terrible AA, makes the game to look bad overall. It still looks decent but from there to one of the best looking games ever made… im still laughing.
I have a feeling you haven’t actually seen the game in work with its full graphical potential. I play plenty of video games (not just racing games and on all 3 consoles, but my main platform is PC) and I stand by my statement that FH4 is still one of the best looking games on the market today.
For someone who has never played 3 and has everything in 4, is it worth going back to play it? It’s still quite expensive considering how old it is. The ultimate edition is $89 CAD…
Wait a couple of months and it will be free with GWG.
OT it isn’t really fair to compare the two now, FH4 is a live service game while FH3 wasn’t, at release FH3 was miles ahead of FH4 at release.
Even now though in my personal opinion FH4 only has 2 things over FH3, fortunately they’re the core of the game though the driving + the variety of cars.
Almost everything else around the fantastic core is among the worst it’s been in the series though for me, even the God awful 360 version of FH2 I rank above it for multiplayer.
There was a deal on FH3 (incl Hot Wheels & Blizzard Mountain) and FH4 Ultimate Bundle recently for about 60€ and I’d say it was worth it.
I do feel that the world itself is quite a bit nicer and more diverse than what FH4 has to offer. Bucket List instead of stories, actually progressing the Horizon Festival forward, traffic including drivatars in speed and drift zones (although they all are still arguably much easier to complete than in FH4). Loooots of championships all over the map, car meet (haven’t tried that out). Other than that it’s pretty samey-samey.
I still prefer FH4; although I won’t go into to much detail in my opinion the race tracks are much better and I especially prefer the car physics. FH4 / FM7 feel more relatable to actual cars, FH3 consists of much sliding all the time. AI meanwhile is insane and will skyrocket past you when you’re in the fastest car but can still corner better than anything and generally have little incentive to follow the ingame physics.
They got rid of that for FH4 (by ghosting them) because people didn’t like the randomness. I’d say for the majority of people, it’s preferable to not have to do it over and over again just to get lucky with the traffic (though they left that element in street rivals for some reason).
If there was a deal on it I’d say go ahead anyways. There is certain fun in it but I prefer FH4 and FM over it. I still play a race or championship pretty much every day just to get my Forzathon Hub Points a bit higher (although that certainly won’t help me climb a rank with FH4 / FM7 currently not refreshing for me at all).
I suppose FH3 will be removed from the stores soon at which point it will become quite a bit harder to get it.
Bree, are you sure there is traffic in rival street races on FH3 ? I thought it was added in FH4 but possibly a miss from me.
Is it worth ? Absolutely if you race clean. cars grip is an inch less arcade. Concerning buying it, better consider buying normal version, extension are coming regularly at acceptable price (<7euros) and I don’t think there are much pay to win cars in cars pack / as far I remember I bought only 1 car pack. All that did buy ultimate shared they regret it ( how foolish was I to buy ultimate FH4 … ) . FH3 is 20 euros on cdkeys for my locale.
Personally, I went to FH4 because I like winter season. Sadly FH4 winter is far away from the fun of blizzard but, at least, it’s public online.
Sorry, my wording was a bit ambiguous, I just meant that element is there in FH4 street rivals, despite having been removed from drift and speed zones.
Goliath was fun. Skybox was great, beach graphics were killer.
Drag strip meet was a lot of fun, super competitive.
I’d have done bracket races rather than class races, there were stupid fast 49 Mercs and Pacers (I had some).
I go back and play FH2, FH3, FM6.
FH3 worth trying, fun game. Less chore than FH4.
No dress-up BS, and can grab tunes like FM6.
Hope as you that FM8 and FH5 are more fun, less stupid fripperies.
FH3 is indeed a much better game and a more interesting world map than FH4, but FH4 did make some substantial improvements to the driving model. As much as I enjoyed FH3, going back and playing it can be a bit frustrating with how slidey the cars are compared to FH4.
FH4 really dropped the ball on game design though. Pretty much all the game modes are worse (especially MP), SP progression is a bad joke, the terrible mobile-inspired exclusive content design from FH3 has been amplified and is now the main focus of the game, and the map design just feels samey and boring compared to FH3 (at least there’s more technical driving roads).
Personally, I still think FH1 is still the best game overall. Not perfect, but it’s the only Horizon game that really got the whole package right IMHO with good SP progression, MP, vehicle handling (although it was missing tuning), and a very interesting and diverse map with great driving roads (something that newer Horizons struggle with, either they get the map visual variety right or the roads, but not both). Plus it didn’t have any of the time gated exclusive vehicle or persistent online economy/auction house nonsense.
Not sure what version of Horizon 4 you have but the environment graphics in H4 are WAY better than 3. When I play 3 now I can’t believe how goofy the trees and other items in the environment look compared to 4. Shadows are way better as well. I remember all the complaints 3 had regarding the horrible last gen plants and grass textures when it came out. They still look pretty bad. I don’t think I have a game that looks better than H4 on extreme settings with the AA cranked running over 60FPS.
Yes, I mean people go on about ACC looking good, but their graphics engine brings pretty much any PC to its knees, and my PC that can run FH4 really well just cannot make ACC look good. Even if I run ACC at 4k and downsample to 1080p, the aliasing is still much worse than FH4’s. I can’t wait to see what they can do with the next Forza games, when you think how much better FH4 looks than FM7, and that they’ll have had another 2 years of time to improve the graphics since FH4.
The other thing is how dynamic the environment is in FH4. Even Gran Turismo 7 on PS5 had completely static trees when they showed footage from it. Compare that to FH4 which has branches moving in the wind, and they can break when you hit them, and it’s a game on previous gen hardware from nearly 2 years ago.
Sure, H3 has a lot to like; I still return to play it myself semi-regularly. And say what you will about H4’s bones and inner-workings (totally jacked up), but the one thing H4 has over H3 is the visual; the graphics are just above and beyond, full stop.
(Sometimes reading these threads, I feel like I’m playing an entirely different game altogether.)
