A note on my answer for question 2 - I would recommend it for this game, but I wouldn’t if the game had some actual replayability. I pretty much bought the expansion to help keep the game fresh, something the base map is not doing for me.
I would recommend an additional “a few weeks” option for question 4. I chose a few days, but only because it was closest.
Wallriding is an issue against Drivatars, but I’m very glad we have something against it in Open. Horizon Tour is going to be full of wallriders, though.
The best thing I can imagine to add this expansion is Eliminator. All you Eliminator players, don’t you agree that head to heads at high speed on the tracks would be great?
The natural landscape on this map is stunning. Alot of intricate detail. Lots of hidey holes and hidden valleys and steel girders. It creates a great impression of scale. It’d be a real crime if this expansion was left to gather dust with nothing fresh with all that work done. That’s even leaving aside the routes and the roads.
I’m a little bit out of my element in answering these questions as I do occasionally suffer from mild nausea playing roller coaster style racing. I find three laps of the longer tracks grating. That is off putting somewhat tbh but I appreciate the quality that’s gone into this and that mine is not a representative experience.
For all of that, I do recommend it. I don’t know if it has enough content tho’. Yeah, I’d integrate as many games as is feasible to make use of the natural landscape. I’m quite taken with that.
I gave it a 7 for the objective things, for giving you a HW experience in Forza clothes + all the spectacle focused stuff it does it superbly, I don’t think it would be fair of me to give it a low score based on the fact neither of those things cut much mustard with me on a personal level.
I think having thought about it a bit more though I am a little worried, this had more time to be worked on from the main game’s release than any expansion in the series so far and yet it has to be 1 of the shortest to fully complete + see everything.
I like the look of the map especially when I’m on the outer edge, turn, and get a broad view of the whole thing.
Most of the Hot Wheels cars don’t interest me. The Deora is an unexpectedly good car out of the box, I don’t mind the Mustang, and can tolerate the Bone Shaker, but I’ve already driven the rest once in Horizon 4 and have barely ever or never driven them again.
And as for the other new cars, I’ll race them in Mexico on proper roads.
I don’t feel the expansion has much longevity. If the servers will behave (which they haven’t been doing for the past few days), I’ll try getting the accolades for Open and Tour tomorrow (or failing that, over the next couple of days), but then I will’ve done everything.
After that, I’ll probably return weekly for the sake of the Festival playlist just as I used to go back to Lego Valley to do the seasonal PR stunt, but would then leave again immediately afterwards.
I just have the Open and Tour requirements left now. I’ve enjoyed it. Racing on unbeatable has generally meant its challenging albeit it feels like the AI gets a speed boost through loops and speed pads which we can’t match, so a couple of courses felt somewhat broken. I like most of the new cars and it feels like it was put together with a lot of effort. 8/10 from me.
It’s not just you, but you’re the easiest comment to respond to.
I think “it clearly took a lot of effort” is a terrible reason to boost one’s personal score of the expansion.
Yes, it’s clear a lot of work went into the expansion, but when it creates such a short and shallow experience, it’s wasted effort. Rewarding people for such wasted effort only encourages more wasteful effort.
You might as well say “you can make a bad game, but as long as the effort is there I’ll appreciate it”. Is that really true? Would you still purchase a bad game if a lot of effort went into it?
Hmm I think my review highlights would be better broken down into catagories.
Environment: 9/10. Top notch use of biomes and features. The biomes are a joy to explore and having a dedicated zone for winter is a nice bonus.
Tracks: 1/10. Some great visual features and neat ideas like the water plume, magnet, or ice tracks can’t make up for the utter lack of depth and general sterility of the track design. The event lab starting points are better than nothing being there, but also reek of “if you want a good racing game, build it yourself”.
Cars: 4/10. It’s a very subjective catagory so I’ll acknowledge it’s difficult to get a high rating here, and the obligatory hot wheels additions are bound to turn some off, but there are a few interesting new cars. The expansions requirement to need cars to be B class or above does hurt the expansion’s ability to vary up the car list a lot.
Replayability: 0/10. Complete and utter failure. The devs chose spectacle replacing depth as opposed to enhancing it, and spectacle without depth quickly becomes mundane.
Overall I gave it a 3/10, mostly out of respect for the environmental design.
Expansion starts getting boring after the first three hours. If you don’t count the time spent enjoying the cars added, I’d say, stretching it out, there were a maximum of 10 hours of enjoyment to be had, for me at least.
The worst part is, this is a racing game. Adding depth and replayability should be the easiest thing ever.
It’s not a rollercoaster. Anyway I’ve been painting cars with the new paints, and that takes a few more hours. Then there are about 8 new cars to paint as well. Then there was all that time in the Auction house trying to get the cars, and all the time getting skills, and buying Zenvos. I have already spent about 2 weeks on the expansion.
Is that an official requirement? Secondly, how do you know what difficulty I have set? Anything higher than Pro is just banging your head against the wall as the AI have broken programming.
Banging your head against a wall takes ages, and ages. You have to beat Goliath on Unbeatable, else you haven’t completed the DLC… as a challenge to yourself.