Physics is still best in class. I have yet to try NFS Heat but, going by general consensus, FH4 is still superior.
Map is excellent with many excellent routes. Sure it doesn’t have deserts, volcanoes or anything, but rural Britain has the charm flashier locations lack.
SUV bodykits let you create offroad monsters out of civilian family cars.
Fortune Island is extremely underrated. It’s got one of the best maps in the series.
Top Gear story was the highlight of mid-2019 and proves Top Gear should have been the 2nd expansion instead of Lego.
Some hidden gems in DLC and later Playlist cars (particularly the Hillman Imp and 1968 Mustang).
Community routes in the Route Creator Contest a few months ago were brilliant.
Wheel paint update and more track width upgrades added to cars.
Mitsubishi and Toyota were brought back, rounding off the car list.
The bad:
Frequent bugs in newly introduced cars.
No newly added SUV has the new SUV bodykits and bars.
The devs inexplicably removed features from the game at launch (FFA Adventure, Class Rivals, duplicate sale in Wheelspins) and were forced to readd them by public demand.
Wheelspin pricing in Forzathon Shop, and even some weekly cars, doesn’t make any sense (Camaro ZL1 for 500 FP? Really?).
Uninspired DLC and exclusive cars (why are the Camaro ZL1 1LE and Mustang RTR Spec 5 not customization options for the regular cars?).
Common requests are ignored (ability to completely mute music, objects in Route Creator, engine sound improvements).
Certain cars are inexplicably shunned. Australian roster largely downgraded from FH3 and does not feature new FM7 additions like Holden HK Monaro GTS 327.
PI system needs a revamp. Some cars require excessively fantastical upgrades to stay competitive, especially in S2.
The ugly:
Wheel paint update messed up wheel paint in designs created prior to it. The devs have completely ignored this issue. This made some painters either leave or slow down production.
Playlist being used to milk engagement out of players, rendering the Forzathon Shop redundant.
Radio stations butchered by self-censorship (Pulse and XS are very bad right now), possibly in preparation for the Lego expansion.
Lego Speed Champions has a few decent routes but is overall uninspired and does not fit with the rest of the game.
General disregard for car accuracy (BMW M3 GTS and VW Karmann-Ghia are the biggest examples).
Inexplicable inaccuracies in car sounds despite existing accurate samples (new Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato is probably the biggest example).
Unfulfilled promises (no paintable brake calipers, only one bodykit added post-release).
Insistence on current AH model which only benefits scammers, flippers and exploiters, despite the pricing update.
Overall attempts to make the game more child-friendly, which impacted the content and the focus of the game. Progressively less focus on car culture and more on silliness.
Eliminator is the antithesis of what Forza stands for. No customization allowed, gameplay based on exploits and luck rather than skill. Launched with many bugs.
tl;dr There’s still a very fun game underneath all the bad stuff, but it’s going in a direction I’m not fond of. It doesn’t play to its own strengths, instead focusing on fads and excessive pandering to casual players.
Up to me, characters, clothes, stuff, dances, forzathon, in race messages and eliminator are the very essence of this FH4 team’s project. Consider that, except Eliminator that is new, all the others are almost the only features bug less and consistent. This is their vision of FH4, from day 1.
The other features are just legacy they were forced to take which explains so little effort spent to make these good.
But there’s good out of it, I will never ever again pre-order a game, I play much less than I used to, I am back to playing some solo games (not FH) and I will certainly get a PS5 next year.
99% of the interior sound is absolute trash. Literally the only things this has over NFS is physics, cockpit cam and more realistic visuals. Even the AI is better in NFS. At least they don’t use nefarious tactics. This feels like nothing more than a tech demo at this point.
I didn’t find a single thing I disagree in that list. Good summary of the FH4!
Fortune Island and Blizzard Mountain are the best expansions in the Horizon series. I would go as far as state that Blizzard Mountain was one of the best expansions ever (of the games I have played over the years).
I would add one thing into that removed features list, that hasn’t been added and probably won’t be added into the game: custom championships (like they were in FH3).
The main map, which by itself isn’t bad, but it’s much uglier and blander compared to that of FH3
The ugly
The characters, their voice acting and the… “humor”. I have never seen such annoying, unfunny characters in any other game. Their constant blabbering in game and in the unskippable cutscenes is just abysmal. The main reason I completely muted the game
I think I spent more than half of the game in the menu. They just waste too much of your time. If you want to spend more skill points, or upgrade/modify more than one car, you spend an eternity there. And the auction house is really, really slow
Not being able to sell the cars without the auction house is just stupid
A lot of people don’t enjoy modes like Eliminator and Playground games. Then why lock cars in these modes? Just sucks the enjoyment out for completionists. Just put (super) wheelspins or cosmetics in these modes and that solves the problem. The devs are just making it worse, because then these events are filled with people who are just grinding for the cars and don’t give a damn. The constant disconnects make this so much worse
clothes, dance moves and other stuff in wheelspins. But I think they patched that out
the game keeps getting more unstable through the updates, with every update, the loading times get longer, the crashes more frequent and the disconnects keep piling on
About Forza Horizon 4 being a goofy game, my 8 years old nephew didn’t find the game funny, and thought that my character doing silly dances in hipster clothes was just plain silly.
Excellent lists, I’ll try to pare mine down a bit since pretty much all the points have already been mentioned:
The Good:
Turn10’s physics engine
Impressive car roster
Route creator
Top Gear Horizon Story
The Bad:
Map is still smaller than TDU’s was over 10 years ago
Major feature regressions from FH3 with custom championships, AI convoys, head to head races and things like ghost racing in multiplayer and FFA playground games
Awful UI that wastes player time
The AH system in general
Fortune Island never got finished
Second expansion was LEGO instead of Top Gear
Way too many bugs and glitches, especially with the lack of attention to detail with the cars
The Ugly:
Games as a service model with lootboxes(wheelspins) and content locked behind time gates (nearly 20% of the cars now)
Too much focus on pandering to young children and industry fads with the ridiculous avatars/emotes, terrible in-game characters, LEGO Expansion and now Battle Royale
PG just doesn’t feel like they actually care about cars or have any passion for the material, and are doing the franchise a huge disservice with FH4
TL;DR With a few exceptions (route creator and Top Gear story), the good parts of the game were inherited from Turn10, and it feels like PG did much more harm than good to franchise with this game and shifting the focus away from the cars and trying to make it another forgettable games as a service title chasing Fortnite and casual players at the expense of the players who actually really care about the game.
I talked about that with a friend, and I called the game Forzanite Horizonite 4nite. It was funnier than it sounded in my head. That’s how much FH4 was inspired by Fortnite.
Sad thing is 2 of your good points weren’t even there at launch.
I agree on the physics and variety of cars, unfortunately there’s so many irritating niggles that in the series I only rank the 360 version of FH2 below FH4, and even that beats 4 when it comes to multiplayer, playground games were actually enjoyable and you didn’t spend longer finding a match than playing it.
I feel like I should also do a more traditional year in review instead of just a good/bad/ugly summary.
This year in FH4 has been two steps forwards, three steps back. There’s been some notable improvements with the addition of features like the route creator, some interesting Horizon stories (especially Top Gear), and massive improvements to the auction house among other things.
Unfortunately, there have also been some tremendous missteps like the LEGO expansion, and outright player hostile additions with the festival playlist and the ever increasing number of locked cars which have been prioritized over fixing other core issues with the game (and come with their own issues like missing broken/missing upgrades and blatantly incorrect models/stats), with simple things like custom championships still MIA from FH3. Eliminator, while not the disaster I feared it might be when I first heard about it (as far as battle royale modes go it’s one of the less bad ones and when it works it feels like the old FFA playground games on a larger scale), is still very poorly balanced with the vehicle selection and quite buggy, and ignores the core Horizon tenet of allowing players to use their own vehicles. Plus it also locks vehicles behind required online play, which is yet another player hostile move by the devs.
Overall, like I said earlier it feels like FH4 is getting further and further away from what made Forza successful in the first place (a quality car game made by car enthusiasts for car enthusiasts), and this year overall unfortunately has continued to move in this direction, chasing after the fickle casual crowd and industry fads instead of focusing on actually making a good game. Hopefully someone at PG/MS will wake up and realize they’re running this franchise into the ground and take corrective action to avoid losing all their core players who made the franchise successful in the first place.
IMO the biggest issue with FH4 is that Playground misunderstood what made FH3 successful and, judging by what’s in the monthly streams, they continue to misunderstand it. FH3 was the first fully-fledged Forza game on the PC and was launched at a time when the PC community was starved of a good arcade racing game, but, more importantly, one centered around car culture. FH3 brought some nice things to Forza, such as licensed widebody kits (even RWB for the 911 GT2) and blowers for most of the muscle cars. There was also more focus on street racing, which finally happened exclusively at night.
Interestingly enough, FH4 at the beginning shared much of this focus, dances notwithstanding. Most SUVs got offroad kits, there were more bodykits added from Liberty Walk, Rocket Bunny and RWB, as well as Forza’s own creations, and the engine swap list for some cars had some needed additions for the heck of it. DLC had things like Bullitt Mustang, the remade S2000 with all the tuning parts and the Hillman Imp with rally and police upgrades. The game shipped with track width upgrades and promised to add new wheel paint options.
Then the team abandoned further “car culture” updates such as the paintable calipers and focused on trying to be funny… Many of the exclusive cars lack the special upgrades the default cars have. I’m convinced it was around the time the Playlist was introduced, because it was also around the time songs were censored/removed altogether in preparation for the Lego DLC. Microsoft claims it was the ESRB, but I’m not so sure of it considering the ESRB did let the game ship with all those songs in the first place.
Under the hood, the game is at its best: gameplay and graphics have reached their peak. The problem is really the package they were wrapped in. There was always some goofy in Forza but it was never its main focus. This is a car culture franchise, first and foremost. Eliminator is a nice experiment but it ultimately wastes Forza Horizon’s potential by building itself around some of the worst things in the game… Dodging trees was never fun in any Horizon!
Great roads: One of the complaints about FH3 was the monotony of the roads. I think FH4 has great tarmac and gravel.
Offroad widebody: This new feature has turned SUV that don’t know offroad into real beasts. It’s a bit frustrating that we haven’t gained this feature recently. I want Escalade and Urus (not concept) into beasts.
New body kits: Anyone who likes custom cars prefers to build their own unique cars. The new body kit was a great addition. Especially Rocket Bunny MX-5 is the best among them. Combining a wide body kit with an aftermarket bumper was one of the features we have been requesting since FH3.
Many Car Returns: One of the reasons FM4 continues to be the best Forza today is a great car list. FH4 has regained many gems from among them.
“Early” updates: All of the earlier updates were great. Adding rims, advanced paint options, and route creators are good examples. I hope to see updates that improve the functionality of these games again.
Route Creator: One of my favorite updates in FH4. This new feature has become a good canvas for our imagination.
Goliath Series: I’m pleased that Goliath has gained several notorious siblings. These long circuits are really fun.
Forzathon Live: This was a fun feature. Many players work together to achieve the goal. There were aspects like car meet and it was a favorite feature.
Bad:
Exclusive cars are overkill: Exclusive cars existed in Forza in the past. But that of FH4 is overkill. All my friends were tired of the system and quit the game. GT Sport can buy almost any car added in the update. This means there is no need to lock the car to keep the user in the game.
Festival Playlist: Worst update. This update has changed FH4 from sandbox to labor. I understand that some people like it, but I hate it.
Unplanned updates: Updates to widebody kits, for example, have been postponed for more than six months from the release date they announced. And they don’t even mention progress on this update. Can’t publish the roadmap as before?
Boring map: FH4 road is great. But the map is boring. FH3 had a good map that was more individual. The map of FH4 is almost “green” except for Edinburgh.
Too much rain: FH4 is set in the UK. And this country is very rainy. But will it be interesting to simulate it in the game? Many of the seasonal events, and many of the default events, are rain. drivatars are hardly affected by rain, so we are forced to race only in disadvantaged situations.
Lack of a main story: Even FH3 had the goal of “making the best festivals”. FH4 does not have that. If you reach a certain level, you will be praised wirelessly. that’s it. We hope that FH5 will have a main story like FH1.
Dead Forzathon Shop: Similar to an FM7 specialty dealer. If they worked properly, this feature would not have died. The appearance of the Forzathon shop, which is being used at other special sales, looks sad.
Good map? Really? Far, far better roads on FH2! I would prefer a remastered FH2 with the cars and customizations of FH4, over a vanilla FH4 any day. And FH3’s Blizzard Mountain easily beats FH4’s map during winter time for offroading.
So for me,
The good = all the cars, the height of the map
The bad = the map, the roads, many of the car sounds, moon-like gravity.
The ugly = the Fortnite-ification of the Forza Horizon franchise i.e. “Forz’nite”, the Lego map, the butchered soundtrack, and the overzealous Forum moderators.
Just because FH2 and Blizzard Mountain are better (this is an opinion I share) does not mean FH4 is bad, lol. Personally I think the map is adequate, with a good balance of fast and slow. I agree the landscape is samey, though, even if it’s to my liking (Ambleside is absolutely beautiful in the Spring and Summer).
Moon gravity could explain why most of the competitive tunes need soft suspension setup.