Howdy y’all. I’ve been very busy on Forza Horizon 4 lately. I’ve had my Xbox in storage for the last 3 years because of various external events that made fun unavailable, I’ll just put it at that.
So, I’ve been outta the loop, by alot. When it comes down to it, is FH4 reaching end-of-life now? I can’t remember if games like this just stop working or something. I know it is audience-dependent. I have no problem with it phasing out, but it’d be helpful to know.
Is 5 worth it too? I’ve seen the graphics, which look great, kudos to the team for those. But, I haven’t seen or heard anything else on it, been busy. How does 5 compare to 4 in terms of overall features like auctions, tuning, and events?
I won’t be able to get 5 anyway for at least a couple years anyway. Entertainment takes a back burner in my situation. I’m excited for it though. I’m so outta the loop, I don’t even know when it launched.
Also, sorry to the mods if this in the wrong spot. Let me know.
tl,dr - it’s good, if you liked 4 you’ll probably like 5
Yes, 4 is definitely heading for end-of-life; it’s at a stage where an achievement cannot be unlocked because of a recently-introduced bug that they have stated they are not going to fix. Of course, that also applies to bugs in 5 (not achievement bugs, though) but they’re not going to say that.
5 has a very strong feeling of being similar to 4. In fact I tend to see it as a massive DLC for 4. Some visuals are identical (wheelspins) and there are bugs copied and pasted from 4 to 5. The feel is very similar. I am of the opinion that it does lack a spark that 4 had.
All that stated, it’s still very good. There’s a wide variety of activities, some new concepts (eg, weekly PR stunts are more restrictive or more options in eventlab), more content is coming out. So if you like driving games you’ll have fun.
It launched back in Nov’ 21 and this first year has had it’s fair share of bugs (as with all games and some still ongoing), so depending on who you ask, the reply will differ.
Some will say the map is bland / boring - some will say they want certain or more car types added - others will want more features… one thing is true though, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
For me (playing on the One S) despite the bugs, i’ve thoroughly enjoyed it thus far and have probably got more interactively involved with others (albeit via rivals) than I did with FH4.
GFX wise for me atleast. I don’t see a huge difference but that could be my eyes (im just the right side of 60) / older TV or indeed the One S, others on the new X series say the GFX are better.
One thing I do miss are the impromptu motorway / highway gatherings & races between random players which don’t really happen in FH5 despite having a great road for this to happen.
I think the main reason for this, is the fact that other players don’t show on the map as they did in FH4 and only show up in your local vicinity.
Bottom Line:
For me at this stage i’d give the game 7-8 / 10 (but as I said above “you can’t please all of the people all of the time”)
Playing on pc so some aspects may vary.
In my opinion the great advatages of fh5 are:
The improved graphics
A way better controller feedback
A lot shorter loading times in online lobbies
Better menus/UI
Eventlab creations from the community
A lot of things are similar to 4. Not much has changed when it comes to auctionhouse, liveryeditor and tuning/customization. Race types are more or less the same. Online has no ranked mode in 5.
FH4 did a few things better:
The map was better
At least at the current point I think the DLCs were better
All the cars are in the game and mostly available in the auction house. Whlie FH5 still drip feeds content over the playlist. Which is fine at first but gets tedious over time. (Hasn’t always been this way but I got to FH4 late.)
At least on my PC FH4 was a lot less buggy and more stable. Had some stability issues at the beginning but once I found the sweetspot for settings it was fine. FH5 sadly is the most unstable game I have encoutered so far. You also can find settings on which it runs fine. But at least for me it was a long and rocky path. Also stability can change with updates setting you to square one. I guess it’s a lot more stable on Xbox.
FH5 is definitely worth getting. It’s free to play on Game Pass. You’re better off putting the money towards a year of Game Pass instead of buying FH5. The graphics are excellent. The new physics model is excellent except for cross country. It’s been almost a year and cross country is still a train wreck. The console versions are more stable and have less bugs than the PC version.
If you can’t get 5 yet then definitely play 4! Do as many of the seasonal and daily challenges as you can (as well as the Horizon 7 and Super 7!), that way you’ll win hard-to-get cars. You can make quick money from them too by buying them cheap in the Auction House (now it’s still online).
4 is great fun and has lots of content, especially if you have the Lego and Fortune Island expansion DLC’s.
5 is good too and has been getting a lot better the last couple of months by adding more content and cars. It’s basically Forza Horizon 4 but overall better (although I’m not sure about the map though). Still a good game that will keep you busy for a while if you’re into cars!
As noted if you liked FH4, warts and all, you’ll probably be happy with FH5, warts and all again
It runs fine on XBox One (same here), better in some ways it seems (less bug and graphics issues, usually).
FH4 is very unofficially EoL already, or feels like it anyway. I suspect official EoL can’t be far off with it going on sale recently.
And I also fear the XBox One is soon to follow. More and more signs of it being stealth abandoned, weaning people off it to the new models. I hope I’m wrong on that, at least for a little while yet.
I have the first disc model of the Xbox One. It’s still pretty new, hardware wise, works great for Skyrim with 50 mods at a time.
Yeah, imma wait on 5. The 1$ Game Pass deal does look good, but subscription services are also on the backburner for me, even if they are cheap at first glance.
If I could, I’d actually sell this Xbox, but no one would buy it anyway. So, I’ll wait. I do agree with you though that the software is diminishing. Course, I had to do 3 years of updates all at once too.
