First of all Horizon 4 is a great game, I am not taking that away from it, but on listening to the devs and reading the jargon on the box you quickly realise that game immersion was ambiguously presented to the players and it falls massively short behind Horizon 3 in some key aspects which I will get to below.
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Street races no longer have anyone flagging the cars to go, yes this is a little touch but it adds to immersion, all cars now magically know when to go, having a woman or a man flagging to go was immersive to a street race.
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On winning any race you are ripped right out of your surroundings unlike Horizon 3, in Horizon 4 they decided to stick you in front of a magic screen immediately on winning showing your scores alongside 2 other avatars. There is not even any cheering in the background, they could have easily added this screen to a TV screen in the background of the event behind spectators or stick to Horizon 3 method of allowing you bask in greatness in front of the cheering spectators then on clicking next showing all your point scoring, because of this I do not feel like I am immersed at all, it feels like ‘oh right I won, I guess on to the next race then’…
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AI vehicles are totally toned down, it feels like you are racing in a world that is recovering from a nuclear fallout. I suppose the devs will say that this is because of the inclusion of real players, but let’s talk about REAL players, they are transparent most of the time making you feel like there is a glitch in the matrix and you have chosen the wrong pill. Player avatar transparency should be a choice, I understand that maybe one reason is if 2 vehicles collide you may be blinded for a brief second if the vehicles were not transparent, but since you removed 80% of the AI cars then transparency should be a choice.
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Edinburgh is a ghost town, sure there are small pockets of people here and there but not enough, I feel like I am in the movie 28 days and any second a horde of zombies are about to give chase to my car, hell even that would add to immersion.
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Beaches are an afterthought, it is as if the developers created the beaches last and thought to themselves ‘right I have had enough now this is good enough’, no it is not good enough, if you look at the diversity to beaches around the UK you could have easily added more character to the bland beaches, having large boulders of rocks in the water, maybe a cave system, something, it just looks like a blank canvas with a few touches here and there.
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Groove player is missing, yes groove player ended but they could have added a similar system to GTA V where a folder is created so u can add your own music. In a game like this that is important simply because the game is not lacking in content so after a long while these songs become repetitive and boring and dam right annoying, in fact some of the song choice is shockingly bad, not talking about the genres, I am talking about the song choice within these genres, the music supervisor made a bad choice, do not get me wrong some tracks are great but because of the lack of adding your own music you are left with a choice of songs that is seemingly picked by a person that does not understand the genres of music he / she is putting across to the player.
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Players homes, nice to look at, erm… yeah, how about adding at least one room to each home that the player can move about and view their trophies and cups, oh wait there are no trophies or cups, skip that idea…
What we are left with is a great game full of awesome content and lacking the immersion the developers were excited about taking one step forward and a massive step back compared to Horizon 3 and that is a great pity because the foundation is right there and these small touches rip you right out of the game and events quickly feel like a chore…
In conclusion, if I had to give this game a score from a personal perspective and having played Horizon 3 I would have to give it an 8/10, however if I were a professional reviewer I would be hard pressed to give the game less than a 9/10, the world is beautiful, the sheer amount of content can feel overwhelming and gives you the feeling your are actually having something worth while for the money you paid and these days that is something rare in the gaming world…