Wanted to start a nice discussion about what got you into horizon, what your first experience was and which game it was you started with.
For me forza horizon 5 was my first horizon game, I loved the feel of the game the festival vibes and how the cars felt, the deal was sealed when I drove my first lamborghini huracan on the highway at full speed with the music on the radio blaring, that was special to me and since then I been hooked on horizon lol so much that I wanted to play through all 5 games and so far FH2 is my favourite one.
Arrived late to the Forza game. I had been a die-hard NFS groupie for a loooooong time but had grown increasingly disinterested with most releases after Most Wanted 2005. I stuck with the franchaise for a long time but when I saw Horizon 4 get added to Steam a few years back, I figured why not? Pretty much fell in love after that and was annoyed with myself for not having tried it sooner. Sorry NFS… you dropped the ball. In case you didn’t notice, Forza picked it up.
At some point they gave us FH1 for free so I started messing around with it and thought it was pretty fun but I don’t look upon it as fondly as most here probably do.
Later FH2 was free with Games with Gold and again I had some fun with it but didn’t spend a lot of time with it until much later. This is another that doesn’t stand out as much as FH3, 4 and 5.
My launch Xbox One died eventually so I bought a One S that came bundled with FH3 and the Hot Wheels expansion. I had some fun with it for a bit but didn’t really get into it until much later again.
I ended up buying FH4 and its expansions later in its life cycle, but I kind of got hooked on the Festival Playlist.
I was still enjoying FH4 when FH5 released so it seemed like a no brainer to buy it. I still love the Festival Playlist but what really hooked me in FH5 was dabbling with tuning.
After a year and a half of tuning I’m still learning and the forum members here have been helpful.
It took a long time, and it was at times discouraging when tunes wouldn’t get any downloads, but I did eventually make it to legendary tuner status and my Festival Playlist tunes have generally done well since then.
The tuning is basically what keeps me coming back and it genuinely feels rewarding to log in and see a bunch of players have downloaded and used your tunes.
Got FH2 bundled with a console,and absolutely hated trying to drive with a pad,so never played it.
A couple of years ago i started playing Rally games again - something i hadn’t done since Colin McRae and TOCA/2 in the late 90s .Was getting a little bored of solo nature of rally
(and lack of Alfas) which led me to FH4.
I have gone back to FH2 since and still don’t particularly like it ,even with a wheel.It does look nice tho
I played Forza Motorsport 1-4 on an Xbox 360. Then the news about Horizon came out and I was really excited about that. I played the demo but for some reason didn’t buy the game. Don’t remember why. Then I played the FNF demo of FH2 which was free and was a lot of fun. That was right before my Xbox 360 crashed and couldn’t use it anymore. Then I basically waited until a proper Xbox came out which was a very long time. I wanted a system with an SSD because the X360 was so loud! And SSD’s are faster too. Eventually I played FH3 and FH4 on a friend’s Xbox One X for a bit until I was able to buy the Series X. Now I’m mainly playing FH5 and a bit of FH4.
I started with Horizon 4 about a year after it was launched (Nov. 2019). If I remember correctly, I’d reinstalled NFS: Most Wanted (2005) and played through it. I watched some videos on YouTube about the game, which, I believe, led me to the FailRace crew playing Horizon 4, and that led me to buy the game.
I hadn’t played any racing games since NFS: Most Wanted (2012) and never felt enticed to play any of the more recent games in the series. When FH4 was having some major issues, I did reinstall NFS: MW (2012), but in comparison with Horizon 4, the game physics were weird.
I got started with horizon back in horizon 3. That was also when I bought my first steering wheel. I’ve always loved free roam driving games and had been looking for one for an insane amount of time. I stumbled on to horizon and immediately fell in love with the series. As of today I’ve almost beat fh3. I got fh3 then bought the fh5 disk when it came out on November 9th. Actually, I’ve always loved Forza. I played (and loved) the very first Forza released back in 2005! One of my favorite games was always Forza Motorsport 3. I even got one of my friends into fh4! I bought fh4 shortly after that.
I never owned any XThing hardware, so I mostly ignored the Forza series for much of its life. I think I played a few minutes of the FM3 copy that came bundled with my younger brother’s 360, but that was about it. (Despite owning a PS1 and 2 I never dabbled in Gran Turismo either, which is weird in retrospect.) The first time I saw the Horizon games was when a YouTuber I used to follow played through some of FH2, and then some FH3 a while later. I thought they looked cool, but since I didn’t have the requisite consoles I didn’t give much thought to them. Fast-forward to when the news broke about FH3 going end-of-life, and I discovered that it had actually received a PC port, so I picked up a super-discounted bundle of it and FH4 in the MS Store. I started out with just FH3 and enjoyed it a great deal, and then after a while I decided to try FH4 as well. I had enough fun with them that I jumped in on FH5 right from the start.
One of my earliest racing games was NFS Carbon, I played that for a long time and enjoyed it a lot. Played some TDU2 here and there as well. Then I discovered Forza Motorsport 4, which was my first exposure to the Forza franchise. I immediately fell in love with that game and played for probably hundreds of hours.
Fast forward about 5 years and I stumbled upon Forza Horizon 3, which ended up being my reintroduction to the franchise after a few years away. I immediately fell in love with FH3 the same way I did FM4 and it remains my most played game by far. I loved the open-world concept, the massive car list, the gorgeous Australia map, and all of the great features like the Bucket List and custom championships. It reminded me of my beloved TDU2. After I completed that game, I went and bought FH2 and had a ton of fun in that game as well. Since then, Forza games have basically become the only ones I play. While I’ve become rather disappointed with the direction of the franchise, the lack of alternatives plus a bit of FH stockholm syndrome has kept me playing.
I saw a soundless clip of someone fooling around with an '81 Ford Fiesta in a freeroam environment and I bought the Xbox on the back of that and World championship Snooker. I’m much more interested in fooling around with cars I’m familiar with in real life from today or when I was younger than the hypercar end of things when it comes to gaming.
I bought Need for Speed: Underground 2 on a whim an absolutely loved it. Issue was, it kind of ruined other racing games for me for a long while. I want really that into the genre at the time and every game I tried after that one was either too arcadey or too restrictive. I wanted open world and I wanted at least decent physics.
The Forza Horizon series caught my eye right from the beginning, but I wasn’t willing to risk buying an Xbox just for a game I wasn’t 100% certain about. Then game Microsoft’s brilliant announcement that all exclusives would be coming to Windows as well. One of the first games as a part of this program: Forza Horizon 3.
Got it right after watching a review. Fell in love. It was the sequel to NFS: Underground 2 I’d always hoped for and more. I remember having to pick a starting car, hmming and hawing over having to choose between a pre-souped up Silvia S2000 (my favorite Silvia) and a Shelby GT350R, and after picking the GT350R and racing it a few times in whatever races I wanted thinking: “Man, **** other racing games and their restrictive ********”. I remember creating huge custom championships for rivalries that only existed in my head; Porsche 911 vs Nissan GTR is totally a thing, right?
I didn’t really get good at driving until about mid-to-late FH4 (also about the time I started realizing that I’m actually really into racing games). Still had a blast playing FH3, and even if this franchise does recover it’s former glory, that entry will always hold a special place in my heart.
I played Gran Turismo back on the playstation (the original one) and the original Forza Motorsport on Xbox.
Fast forward a bunch of years and I was looking for a game to push the limits of the graphics card in my son’s gaming computer. I picked up FH5 for him, and got it for myself so we could play it together. I’ve now logged WAY more hours than him.
Late 2021 I had to stay home for sick leave as one of the discs in my neck decided to get cranky on me. Pain and suffering ensued and all I could do was trying to be still on the couch while medicated. After some very long weeks it started to ease up. Then the X-Box I bought for kids for 2020 Christmas actually arrived (What a horrendous delivery time) and I was good enough shape hold a controller with both hands. I knew what I needed to do.
Game Pass says that I can have FH4. Before that I had seen just videos of the game so I was interested.
I played it a lot and liked it a lot. Days went by a lot faster and the pain was slowly subsiding.
Then one day, a new game became available, FH5. Still on my leave, I could play it from day 1 of release and that I did to my heart’s content.
After a while from that I was good enough shape to return to work but since that end of 2021, there hasn’t been a week that I hadn’t played even a little bit of some of the Horizon games, but mostly 5.
If my PC had feelings, It would feel neglected by me.
If you have games pass ultimate, then that includes games pass on PC. You just need to sign into your Xbox account on the Xbox app and viola, you’ve got Forza Horizon on PC.
I got it, yes but I like this as my couch game.
There’s also a matter of screen size. 32" monitor vs 75" TV.
Livery design work however, I would expect to be better on PC.
Odd one, I am not entirely sure why I started playing. My children played Horizon from a disc on the 360. Think we got an One that came with H3. They wanted H4. Something prompted me to buy H2 complete just before it vanished and while I was there I also got M6 . . . so from there I ended up with H1-4 and M5-7. Still didn’t really play.
Sometime in 2019 or even 2020 I started on them and haven’t really looked back, really enjoyed all of them, despite my somewhat frequent moans (which come down to “these are good but have so many minor issues they are not great”).
So I have got all achievements from H1, M5, M6 and H3 that I could do (mix of too late and didn’t buy) and all for H2, M7 and H4. Played all of them more or less at the same time, though spent far more time in H4 than all others combined. Stopped with them when I started on H5.