I’m really interested in Forza Horizon 4, but I don’t drive and have never played a racing game before, so I’d like to know how well it explains its mechanics and give players the tools to learn how to play and get good. If it isn’t a good choice for beginners, what game would you suggest, or is there a YouTube tutorial series or something that you think would help?
This game is rather friendly to beginners - you can enable different assists, set opponent difficulty and retry as much as you like (this is all about single-player). The only part of the game that I have trouble with is drifting. It is absolutely beginner-unfriendly, requires hundreds of hours of active training, it seems.
As far as I know, you can play a digital download version for up to 2 hours before your return expires. So you can buy a digital download, play it a bit (have it running for an hour and a half), see if you like it, and return it if you don’t. I bought FH3 and absolutely loved it, now playing FH4 - learning how this drifting thing works. It is definitely very, very different from any other racing games I’ve played, ever.
There is also the demo you can try. If you have everything set to easy, the game is almost impossible to lose. Then you can just adjust up until they keep up with your driving skill. And if you need help there are a ton of tutorials on YouTube. Maybe not yet for horizon 4 but pretty much all driving tutorials for any forza would work.
Forza is a great place for beginners. The driving physics are realistic enough that the skills learned can be applied to real driving, but at the same time with full assists and easy AI it’s very forgiving. You don’t actually need to win any of the races either, just complete them so you won’t be stuck unable to progress because you aren’t good enough.
The only exception to all of this, like was mentioned already, is drifting.
The demo is free, give it a try and see how you fare in the first few races to gauge how you like the gameplay.