I will probably get shot down in flames for this post, but these are my honest feelings and thoughts on Forza Horizon 5. And some possible feedback to the developers.
I bought the Premium edition of the game.
Firstly the gameplay and graphics are amazing, top notch in fact, and the races are fun, and there is loads of content, so all in all you would assume I would be extremely happy.
Now I’m a seasoned ( albeit Casual) player of virtually, every car game ever made over the last 30 odd years. My first memorable game probably being Pit Stop on the Atari 2600.
Some of my favourite arcade racing games are probably The Crew/The Crew 2, or any of the Need for Speed games.
My issue with Forza 5 though. is that although this game is great, I struggle to want to play it for any length of time, after my initial wow factor has now worn off. This seems to stem from the confusing menu system and season requirements, to unlock the points required for the various rewards. Now obviously die hard fans of Forza are probably used to this, but I find it confusing and just can’t be bothered to grind my way through all these requirements.
On the other hand with spins and superspins that you unlock through the game and some with the premium edition I think, cars are just thrown at me left, right and center. I would much prefer a more focused linear and rewarding route to unlocking the vehicles in the game.
Maybe Forza is just not for me. What are your thoughts on this
Your review as a new player is not far off that of seasoned players. Only things you haven’t touched on that a seasoned player would are differences between FH5 and FH4. Let’s just say if FH5 was the game of the year then FH4 was the game of the century.
I think you’re right on the money, OP. Horizon draws a lot of people with its graphics and its physics (the latter in particular is why I stay). However, these games (with the exception of the first) really are a case of all flash and no substance. Personally, in addition to the physics, I think I stay because I have this pipedream that they could make a game like the first again, but as I said, it’s one heck of a pipedream.
The only thing we really can do is vote with our wallets. Don’t buy the latest games at launch (and definitely don’t preorder), and wait for honest player reviews and do your research before purchase to make sure you’re funding games that you actually feel worthwhile. Maybe also look into some older great car games with very strong communities and mods to expand the game (like Asseto Corsa) instead of the newer, less satisfying games.
I suspect this to be the major reason. Because you mentioned the Crew games. I love both games, but those are also the most grindiest car games I ever played. Grind for money, grind for parts, grind for fame and the most annoying, grind for top 3000 players just to get the exclusives. Also mentioning NFS UG2. That game is old, like really old.
I mean… it’s no Pole Position… That was the first racing game I played. In a Pizza Hut, even! And later on the Atari 5200. Good times. And yet, the grind in the Crew series is one of the things I dislike. I don’t think age is necessarily the deciding factor here.
Typical youngsters!! Anything more than 10 years ago is automatically classed as old lmao
Seriously though, NFSU2 is from a different era…although it still is a good game and one of my all-time favourites (I played it a couple of years ago on my PC), it is not as good as it was back in 2004 when it released…but then a lot of it was also the excitement of having a game that was like The Fast & The Furious.
Very true…an 18 year old game is pretty ancient! I never had the ZX SPectrum, though I do fondly remember my Amstrad 464 with it’s tape deck! Never played racing games on it though…my favourites were The Great Escape and one that I can’t remember the name of but the main character was a robot that looked suspiciously like Number 5 from Short Circuit
OP, focus on completing the Horizon Adventure chapters, three starring all of the stories and map challenges, and getting as many accolades as possible. Takes hundreds of hours. Rivals races can be played for hundreds of hours. If you get good at custom vinyls/liveries, it can occupy your time indefinitely. For now, ignore the broken AI and let’s hope it gets fixed in the next month or two.
If you’re expecting something like Motorsport, Gran Turismo, or Project Cars (I like all of those series), then you’re playing the wrong game.
Confusing menu and seasonal requirements? And you say The Crew and The Crew 2 are favourites? The latter has even strove to make its menus worse than it was at launch - and they were already quite cumbersome. Adding something similar to FH5’s Accolades with attached unlocks, and then further compounding the issue with some ridiculous battlepass type progression.
For some strange reason (and I mean this literally, not rhetorically), modern racing games have done away with a traditional career mode where you go from “zero to hero”, starting with a beater and gradually upgrade it and/or acquire better rides as you go. It’s because the gaming industry as a whole has switched to focus on the Live Service, MP aspects of gaming to keep players engaged and coming back for more in order to sell microtransactions and DLC. No longer are games about creating a fun and enjoyable experience solely for the player, but a never ending one that continues to generate revenue for the publishers and developers. Also, gamer preferences & tastes have changed and many of the younger ones demand instant gratification & participation trophy rewards and achievements to feel like they are progressing when they aren’t.
Speaking of participation trophies…
Everybody praises Forza Horizon 4, for being the “best” one, but the reality is it has ZERO progression, or incentive to even race because players earn the exact same amount of credits and reward cars if they come in first, or last in a race. This means all there is to do in FH4 is grind race levels and car perk levels like a mobile game. I know this because while I finished FH4 years ago after it was released, I started it again on Steam a few days ago with a new account, and all of this stood out like a sore thumb compared to FH3, and FH5 that uses traditional race performance (aka skill) to determine how rewards are handed out (winner gets more credits and faster chance to buy newer cars). FH4 may be more technically sound than the current version of FH5, but the core game play was gutted to accommodate a much younger and casual audience who don’t like racing games, regardless if they are arcade or not.
It should also be noted the Forza Horizon games are designed as casual time sinks for those who hate racing games. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say, this. This is how Playground Games loves to market the FH series: They’re driving games for those who hate racing games. That’s literal and metaphorical, so it may be why this series might not interest you as much as other racing games regardless, of whether they’re arcade or not.
Glad to see somebody sharing my view on FH4, even when/if the bugs are ironed out in FH5 a lot of things that people dislike about it began + started festering in FH4.
I hope the upcoming TDU can offer a challenge to it because while NFS + The Crew both do some things better than Horizon now and look like they’re trying a lot more they shoot themselves in the foot and out of the running with much worse core driving mechanics.
The seasonal events, including the menu system for them I see as a great part of the game. In fact I am at the point that its almost the only part of the game I enjoy.
I look forward to the new season in a few hours.
Would be awesome if it all worked bug free.
Other than that I like it, including the difficulty.
I would prefer a slightly more difficult progression system. Cars come too quick.
Some of the other menus make less sense. There are too many nooks and crannies to look in.
Forza Horizon takes what Midnight Club, and TDU did years before and tries to build on it, but it’s hamstrung by the emphasis on Live Services the older games weren’t beholden to.
Advances in technology and software are going to produce better looking and feeling games, but none of that matters if the core game play loop is more about providing an on-going service than a quality user experience.
The perfect driving game does not exist… Perfect in this case meaning a game with the open world functionality of TDU where houses and dealerships exist and act as places to show off your collection and coordinate online car meets mixed with the racing physics of Forza. This game just does not exist, nor will it ever exist simply because devs having to prioritize different features within a budget to make their game stand out from the competition. Also, trying to put all the features people want into one game often leads to feature creep and we see exactly how bad the results can be with Star Citizen.
While it’s true that a “perfect” game for any one individual won’t ever exist (unless they win the lottery and go out and make it themselves or something), I wouldn’t go so far as to say your definition of a perfect game with those features won’t ever exist, as they’re all technically feasible and could be done right now quite easily and would please a lot of players. Hopefully this is what we’ll get with the new TDU game, I expect they recognize a lot of players are burned out with the live service nonsense that plagues the current crop of open world racers and will intentionally not do it as their way of standing out from the competition.
My understanding is that Live Service games are extremely expensive to maintain long-term and are only actually really profitable for a small number of companies, especially a game like Horizon where the only ongoing funding is whatever they get from gamepass kickbacks (i.e. MS is footing the bill so the game doesn’t have to stand on its own merits). A few live service games got really popular, made a ton of money for the first movers, and then everyone decided they needed a live service game. Now player resentment towards these types of games is building and the market is saturated and there’s simply not enough players to go around to actually support having all games like this, and in the last couple of years we’ve had several outstanding SP focused games without the Live Services that have been way more successful than the devs/publishers have anticipated. In other words, I don’t think Live Service is ever going to go away, but the last few years of too many games pushing for it have been a fad chase IMHO that will stabilize long term.
I’m doubtful Horizon will be the one to break this mold and I’m expecting we’re past peak Horizon (really, FH1 was the peak IMHO and it’s been a slow downhill from there, rapidly accelerating since FH4), but I am hopeful someone soon (like the TDU devs maybe) will recognize this gap in the market and fill the demand of an open world racer without the live service focus (and rely on things like mod support instead to prolong the life of the game).
I hope you’re right. I hope TDU: Solar Crown, does something to shake up this genre because it’s in desperate need of it, IMO.
Don’t get me wrong. Unlike a lot of people who come to these forums, I enjoy the Forza series, both Motorsport and Horizon. However, the direction they’ve been heading needs some adjustment to make them better vs. make them something they aren’t, or were never intended to be like a lot of posts state without actually stating it.
What is funny is loot boxes used to be the “big bad” in gaming, and that came to a head with the Star Wars: Battlefront II debacle in 2017 – When Disney intervened because the negative press from the P2W backlash was threatening the release of “The Last Jedi” – And prompted many international governments to draw up legislation to restrict them to sales of minors on the grounds they were in fact gambling. Now, it’s NFTs and as you mentioned, it’s been Live Service for a while. As much as I love the games industry and don’t begrudge them making money, it’s always the suits who want to take it too far just to appease the investors and satisfy nothing but pure greed on their end.
