Forza Horizon 5 | The ULTIMATE Critique - YouTube
I have posted this in the weekly but now having watched the bulk of it I think it needs it’s own thread, there’s so many topics we can discuss + chew the fat over seeing as it’s 2hrs 17mins long, so as not to clog up this post I shall post my takes I wrote down as I went through it in the next post.
Enjoyed the video, appreciate all the effort that must have gone into it and many of the subjects they are spot on with, just a few points though…
Not meant as disrespectful but most of the Eliminator criticisms stem from a lack of proper in-depth knowledge + experience in the mode, people who play it regularly learn the things that are said about and they aren’t as random or luck dependent as the video makes out, there’s a knack to most of them that just take a long time to learn + memorise.
From about 39:30 until the 45 minute mark all the criticisms are correct but are all in FH4 just as much, you do get a summary of your XP before you go back into the map as well, and FH4 started that obsession with the stupid emotes on the podium, I mean the loading screens in that game featured your character constantly doing their chosen emote to awful music, online with the terrible loading times you could sometimes be looking at nothing but that for over a minute at a time, as someone who thought/still thinks those songs in the loading screens were some of the worst licenced stuff I have ever heard in 20 years of gaming they soured my experience so much.
That bit from about 52:20 to 40? Beautiful and couldn’t be more spot on.
The EventLabs are a great part of the playlist but they could have mentioned PG used to do the community championship in FH4 which featured 3 player-made tracks in 1 championship instead of just one-time things that have only just had AI added into them recently.
The requirement not to win in seasonal games was something that was yet again done in FH4 and just carried over to 5.
There is a barrier of entry to the Trial albeit a very flimsy one, you have to have reached the HOF.
Highly disagree on the Rally DLC purely because of the roads, they require more actual driving, reward course knowledge + anticipation and punish all power no handling builds more than any non Guanajuato course in the base game.
Quackula was very good, honestly never heard of him in the game before this but clearly knows his stuff. and he seems to be one of that very select few on the planet who are immune to this perception filter FH4 seems to have over almost everyone.
Overall though I think it was a great video that’s gone way further than anyone else I’ve seen on YT, I can forgive a few mistakes + some takes I don’t agree with over a 137 minute dissection of the game, that’s one heck of an undertaking from anybody to put that much time into analysing the game piece by piece, I hope it gets the views + recognition it deserves.
lol so wrong on elliminator
Oh cool, it’s Moses B on another tirade about the game, next.
(Also, wasn’t the whole name change hoo ha a signifier for a move away from racing content due to the toxicity he perceived in the community?)
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My honest reaction to every SechsComic73130 post
is it really Moses B under a diff name? that’s funny, last thing I expected after his “last” video. I will watch it,
I just hit 500k tune downloads today and realized we’ve been playing this game for almost 2 years.
my overall impression is, it’s almost “complete”, it’s miles ahead of FH4 (took a minute to get there) and it dwarfs all other car games. I’ve tried almost all of them, they’re cartoonish and horrible by comparison.
forza horizon 5 is a massive interconnected undertaking and has the player population of a large US state or a small country, it’s incredible that it functions so well and has so few flaws overall, even when it comes to content I don’t like or use, it’s not bad stuff.
I’m definitely interested in a deep-dive that isn’t totally colored by FH2/3/4 nostalgia, which somehow seems to be the driving force in this community’s opinions of the current game
Couldn’t watch it. The intro alone made me nod off.
I was just looking for someone to post this so i can comment. I havent watched the whole video nor do i intend to. Id like to speak about the creator UltraViolet.
This guy has been on my radar for quite some time. He ran his youtube channel under a different name (forgot what it was). He changed it after announcing his “departure” from the racing games community about 7 months ago. You can even find the video on his channel. I could never listen to this person and take his words seriously. And here’s the reasons:
When Horizon 5 launched he had a video basically praising every single aspect of the game. And i mean every single aspect. He spoke positively about the map, the progression…He event went as far as saying that the current map is on par with the og horizon games. And that horizon 5 is THE GAME that players have been waiting for all these years. I can’t really speak word for word but thats basically what was said. Now this video has been deleted or possibly delisted. I did call him out for it on a few occasions in the comments. Maybe he took notice of it. I was surprised he didn’t do that much earlier.
The problem is that after that video he’s went on a long ride of progressively “critsizing” horizon 5. He’s had bunch of videos/documentaries if you wanna call them (because thats the genre he’s transitioned into) talking about the post launch and how disappointing it is. He has a video on the hot wheels expansion and the 10th year anniversary talking about everything wrong with modern horizon. And as well as donut media in the thumbnail being named as “a whole new low”.
So im sitting here thinking did this man change his mind sooo drasticly over the course of a few months since that initial horizon 5 video? Or did he just spew all of this initial talk praising everything because the game had just came out and there was obviously lots of hype around it? Naturally maybe clouding his judgement? Spoke too soon? I suspect its normal if a new player changes course. But this man’s come out saying in this vid that horizon 2 was his first game in the franchise.
Ok fine maybe he was wrong. We all sometimes say contradicting statements that blow back at us at some point right? Except if you had a chance to watch the video which again is now deleted its literally him praising all of the aspects that he’s now turned into “critisizm”. Its not even about 1 statement. He had like a full video filled with nothing but positivies towards Horizon 5.
Ok fine he did say these things. He was clearly wrong. Lets move on. Who cares…But then you look at his channel. You can clearly see his content over the years has shifted towards this genre of game reviews/releasing mini or full blown game documentaries “critisizing” games.
Then there is this video of him basically leaving the racing games community. He even rebranded his channel, said he’s gonna review/move on to other games. Well 3 months later he releases a video on the crew 2. And now it seems he’s back on track making the same old content. And now has a new horizon “critique” video… 2 Hours long? Wow.
I bet he’s going to say something he’s never said before. Put on some teasers/trailers horizon footage in the background. Put on his Morgan Freeman voice impression and try to talk like he’s soo deep into it, you better believe he means what he says. On top of that 99 % of what he talks has been rinced and repeated, chewed and spit so so many times everywhere by everyone by now. Including here. Even by himself in his previous videos. So what does this 2 Hour waste of time really achieves here?
Other forza content creators do the same thing. Yuwan Thayakaran on youtube: 9 THINGS Horizon 3 does better than 5, 12 things we HATE about horizon 5, 6 features we would love to return to Horizon 5…
Erikship 111 has almost nothing to say, yet here’s 8-10 minutes just talking for the sake of talking. At least he’s bringing information that might be interesting.
The Goosiest had a video jumping on the hate train back many months ago talking about such irrelevant things to h5. He doesnt even play the game properly to know anything about it. Its all just stupid challanges and driving around aimlessly.
If he wanted to give a genuine feedback he wouldn’t need to farm views by recycling the same topic on repeat. Backing off and then coming back. He’s clearly a fan of the franchise. Whitelight for example didnt need 10 “documentaries” to proove a point.
Negativity spawns more comments/views/likes etc. Plain and simple. Dude’s probably just sitting back and watching everyone react.
Btw i found the unlisted video
Watch and compare. Its actually 36 minutes long… Link was found in the description of another fh5 video of his.
Let me just quote this " PG have made this masterpiece of the world. i would mention some faults i have with the map, the problem is i wouldn’t find a single complaint thats large enough to even mention"
Comparing to its new 2 hour review he has a marker named “Horizon 5’s lackluster map” . I think this speaks enough for his integrity
Thanks for an actual explanation about him (unlike some ahem…) I don’t regularly watch FH videos or follow any YT’ers related to it of any sort (apart from some of geist’s videos) so wasn’t aware of any of that, some of the things I picked out did make me think he isn’t the type of player you would expect to make a 2 hour+ video on the game, levelling many things solely at FH5’s door that actually originated in FH4 and while he’s free to dislike the Eliminator the reasoning + criticisms were mostly things someone who has minimal understanding of it would make.
Quackula’s section is well worth a listen to though the online segment, that’s someone who is clearly involved in the game on a regular basis to a good standard and he does talk like a neutral party.
Regardless of personal opinions on the creator though I thought it would be a decent basis for a discussion, whatever people think of him I still think a 2hr 17 minute video deserves a fair chance, I can’t remember seeing a video of such length for the franchise, it’s one of those that just seems to be able to get away with the many many mistakes it’s made particularly in the last 5 years, outside of places like here you won’t find much in-depth + at length analysis of the game.
Meanwhile in a franchise that does much less wrong there are countless videos on Dark Souls 2 including one group titled ‘In defense of Dark Souls 2’ that totals nearly 10 hours on it’s own, that is still a fantastic game in it’s own right with many unique ideas but because it’s widely considered the worst in that franchise it has been discussed and analysed to death by so many people, and at both ends of the like/dislike spectrum.
But at the risk of insulting millions of people I would say that says more about the quality and general intellect of the average Joe from the respective franchises, put your typical Trial idiot in any Soulsborne game and you’d watch them fail to make it past the first boss as they take the same approach as they do in FH, mindlessly mashing the attack button with no thought involved.
Difference is that series punishes stupidity, impatience and thoughtless behaviour, FH rewards + enables it, resulting in a player base mainly consisting of idiots who don’t have the ability to take a step back and just think for half a second, either because well…they’re just stupid full stop but mainly I think because this franchise doesn’t really do anything that requires you to properly engage your brain anymore, the very few things that do are only when other humans are involved, and even then they have to be in that minority of us that still actually want to play the game the way it should be played.
But hey I’m not daft, if any of us was top brass at PG/MS wouldn’t it make our lives easier to have the majority of the customers be clueless? Means you can cut corners, make mistakes and half bake things with much less recourse, and the intelligent + passionate players who will pick up on them become little more than a drop in the ocean.
I do hope recent months though are the beginning of that pendulum swinging back to where it should always have been, the graphics + physics alone are enough to satisfy any casual player who just wants to fool around, so just let them do that in the map and also let them rent any car in the game which lets them experience every car they like, the trade off being they can’t be upgraded and it earns them no CR or XP, anything after that they should either be ignored or made to buck their ideas up.
I might sound elitist with that but I honestly don’t care, the people who support PG’s game week in week out and/or play it competently are who it should be designed around and for, pop in pop out casuals who couldn’t even spell chicane let alone know what one is should be given the superb foundations and little more, the engagement metrics would still be through the roof with that approach.
Perhaps if reaching the HOF wasn’t so poorly implemented racing in FH5 could have ended up being a step in that direction.
I’ve been trying to follow this thread simply out of curiosity, but I haven’t even looked at the video in question, mainly bc I’m not seeing anything that hasn’t already been discussed, evaluated & critiqued to death in this forum & many other areas. Seeing the length of the video just made it easier to hard pass.
I think there are some valid points being made, but it also feels like it’s going into a bit of extreme viewpoints of interpretation of the player base. I feel the design of the game itself invites that vast, extreme contrast of players into the game, which will create interactions of both novice level arcade enthusiasts & veteran level passionate players. This level of complexity & variety is honestly part of what makes the game great imo, but can obviously also create some of the issues being highlighted.
The game obviously has its fair share of flaws, but overall, it’s unmatched in many ways within its genre & I think it’s just naturally reaching a point of player attrition given its age & underlying repetitive nature.
Which was it the last racing game that managed to receive an appeal as massive as forza horizon? Maybe need for speed? From like 20 years ago? And its still a hard comparisson to make. Yet there must be something right they’ve done? Game has its faults but in the end of the day this is a business. The game needs to sell and needs to make money. It has to appeal. Apparently this is what attracts people. Mike Brown and his tiktok anology comment he made after leaving PG strikes it where its at.
Different times, industry’s changed, people are different, the way entertaiment is consumed is differently. We can deep dive inside and nitpick all day thats faire. Imagine if a community manager or a dev had to sit down and listen to all of it and indulge in consuming and spitting over and over the same thing. In the end of the day if they want to make anything out of this game they’ll just have to lift their heads up and get going. If you dive into all the negativity all the time it just eats you. And its not healthy. There’s probably very little to no power that devs have over new industry standarts.
This video is very dated in the first place. I just find it unnecessary to do all that again. There’s no way in the world that PG or Turn10 haven’t heard any of the criticism that was already chewed so much the past 7-8 months+ since launch. At this point all that’s left to do is to move forward. And make the next game. Anything else is just a waste of energy and straight up spewing negativity for the sake of it.
And i’ve learned from myself that digging into things and rincing the same negative ideas over and over accomplishes nothing. And that’s the last thing this game needs right now. The video would’ve sit better if it was made a year ago and even then i wouldn’t really want to listen to this creator knowing he might be a bit disingenuous. Especially seen by the way he operates his youtube channel. Its a bit childish actually.
Yeah even before I read what @Scubadubba6524 contributed to the thread, I was going to criticise the creator.
He claims to be taking a sober, more in depth look, but a lot of his takes throughout the video are gut emotions taken off the cuff and never really thought through fully. I mean he argues that 5 has too much freedom and player agency while ignoring the fact that 3 had more player agency than 5 did. He’s failed to figure out the real problem and is just trying to condense an emotional reaction into attractive soundbites, and not doing a terribly good job about it either. “It’s just stupid” is not a productive take, nor an intelligently sounding one.
I’d also point out that the video could have been significantly shorter with better forethought and structure. A lot of time is wasted on “we’ll get back to that” and jokes about frustration.
I agree with the idea that FH5 is not the game that critics have made it out to be, but there are a lot of issues with this creator’s breakdown of the game and his logic in general.
Those videos especially looked like they were “cashing in on the hate-train”, everybody was making videos that were negative of the game and got loads of views doing it, so why not try that to get the channel off the ground? (because that worked out so well).
Goosiest is another one of those train riders, he maybe does one FH5 video every 2 weeks or so (with Rizon no less, keyword: MitchCactus) now, but you know, views are views, by the way, you forgot one person in your list
Around the mid-end of FH4, a few videos by a youtuber called “JustinHTi” gained a bit of traction, Mr. “It’s reasonable to expect over 900 cars (the largest ever amount of cars in a Forza game (e.n.)) in Forza Horizon 5” got that for 1. Making the most cookie cutter white bread car wishlist of all time.
And he still got more subscribers out of that than Moses B.
To this, my answer would probably be one of the first four Gran Turismo games, most likely 1 or 3
I might not really like it but i understand content creators would want to ride a trend. Yet this guy he takes himself seriously. He’s clearly into making his channel and himself look professional. Like he puts in the time to write these scripts, he’s adding nostalgic music and uses footage from the official forza channels to make his game documentaries a bit more cinematic. He speaks calmly in your ears, tries to sound profund and complicated.
Its a whole other deal when say blackpanthaa puts out a video saying horizon bad because of this. One is made to be taken seriously , other is just some random bloke rambling like you can allow him to be objectively wrong. He’s not trying too hard to convince you about everything. But then Moses B/UltraViolet is. One puts out 8-10 minute video, other puts out 40 minute or 2 hour video speaking constantly. His entire youtube channel specialized in this. So he must act professional but he doesn’t.
The whole post I pulled this from is excellent, but wanted to point this one comment out because it’s how I feel every time I’m getting blown away by the meta-power-tune players in trials where they get to ignore physics while I have to tip-toe around the track and have to race correctly.
As for Me: the only game that comes close to rivaling Horizon is Grand Turismo, and the only reason I’m not playing that is I don’t like being track locked all the time. GT even has my current car… and I’ll be honest, there is still a part of me that really really wants to get it just for that reason. LoL.
…anyway, I didn’t watch the video because I’m weary of grievance media these days. Not saying I think the game is perfect or that I might not agree with some of the critiques… just that I have better things to do, like play the game.
What’s the TLDR? Does the video focus mainly on critiquing FH5 or does it focus on how the next installment of Horizon, FH6, should evolve and build upon what we know of as FH5?
The reason I ask is because FH5 truely has been critiqued to death and there’s little left to critize outside of the choice of event labs on the weekly playlist.
Noting that FH6 is more then likely currently under development, I personally would like to see videos focusing on FH6. Specifically videos that take a realistic approach on what can be improved/tweaked/enhanced to make this game even better.