Why so you play FH5?
For me it’s competitive racing. Plus there’s no better car game out there imo, at least with this open world, semi arcade, semi realistic feel.
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Well, for me it’s vibe and sense of freedom and beauty. FH games are always gorgeous. I also think that they nailed the semi-arcady racing/driving style with little sim bits here and there. It’s fun and simple, and customizable, yet there’s enough depth to it. You can do whatever you want. You can compete or you can drive around, world is big enough for it to feel like you’re taking a road trip. For me it’s often therapeutical, FH games were my go to games to relax, escape and chill for some time now.
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This is a great summation. I remember when I was only into purely arcade racing games like Ridge Racer, was looking for something new to play and discovered FH3. Open world to drive in, you can just go and start a race wherever, and there’s rainforests? Count me in!
The draw of Horizon was, and is, the pure sense of fun, even for someone like me who’s not a car person at all. A lot of it comes from that holiday paradise getaway atmosphere, and the illusion of a living world. After that surface appeal, the depth of the driving model kept me interested and challenged, as I removed the assists. I like that the games keep challenging me, currently with learning how to tune, and a ton of leaderboards to try and climb when I feel like it.
Even after hundreds of hours in these games, one of the most fun things to do is to just get in a nice car, point it wherever and go jumping around fields for some 15 minutes. The weird thing is… I’m more or less doing the same things in FH5 as I was in FH4, and of course they’re very similar games. I put some 400 hours into FH4 but most of it was frustration, like trying to have fun because I used to have fun in the earlier games. I’m at 120 hours into FH5 and it’s pretty much only been fun (I don’t really play multiplayer, so I can mostly ignore the broken parts of the game). Some of this is because of better gamification and incentivization in the form of accolades, but I suspect most of it is purely because of the map and setting. Mexico once again gives me that escapist feel that was there in earlier Horizon games but I didn’t really find in FH4 for some reason.
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I can agree with this.
Been doing this since the first Forza Horizon.
I enjoy driving around - not necessarily racing - in various vehicles. I like customizing vehicles. While the latter is still lacking in Forza games, they still do the driving part the best for me.
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Because I feel like I have to…I spent £85 on it so I now feel I need to spend a significant amount of my gaming time playing it, whether I enjoy it or not
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Ok, but what “drove” you to buy the game in the “first place”?
I enjoyed playing the other ones?
I do enjoy racing with other people…I race with a streamer most days and enjoy the banter in the party chat whilst we are racing. I am pretty much stuck in my flat all day every day so racing with other people gives me socialisation.
The thing is, when the game works properly, it is a fun game, especially with others…just that too often it doesn’t work well and then it becomes a hassle. The frustrating part is, underneath all the bugs, glitches and faults, you can see a good game…it’s just a shame PGG intend to never let it see the light of day
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Unfortunately this …
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Exactly this reason…
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Best racing game ever. You have to love it for it. Every Horizon had rather realistic physics so you can train there for real simulators and in open world. Every car lover have to love this game.
The core of the game ergo the cars available + the physics, far better than any competitor + the fact I’ve played Horizon since the 1st one back in 2012
Everything else I look for in a racing game though? Utter rubbish in the past 2 games.
Haven’t enjoyed the maps, the content is disappointing for a game of this calibre (I despise live service and believe only clueless devs with zero creativity resort to basing any game around it) and I’ve been saying the support + care from PG has been poor before it was ‘cool’ (before FH5 dropped).
I thought NFS Heat was ok + enjoyed The Crew 2 despite their cores being rather poor, they at least didn’t give me the impression their devs were just becoming self-indulgent, The Crew in particular still had truckloads for me left to do even though I’d 1000G’ed it.
If either of those 2 games had better physics I’d have switched permanently to them during FH4’s late life, fortunately for PG + MS nobody is ever likely to really go after toppling the juggernaut the Horizon series has become.
Best way I can put it is this, if the me in 2012 playing FH1 for the first time was asked where they seen the franchise being in 9 years time I would never have guessed where we are now.
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I’ve played all the console games, I can’t say there is one I’ve not liked to be fair. I used to paint more than I raced - but having met a lot of the guys on my friends list through this game - at the moment, rivals is what what is keeping me playing.
Whether I get back in the paint booth at some point in the future, only time will tell. Honestly the whole SF thing put me off painting to a certain extent, you can paint something -share it and if nobody happens to download it within a few days of upload it’ll be never seen again.
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I’ve never painted cars before but if what you say is true then I think that’s terrrible considering all the time and effort you’ll must put in. Can you at least reshare it? If so that’s ok imo.
You can re-share it, you could also spam it across every car in the game until it gets some downloads somewhere. That’s just never been my MO if you get me, I shouldn’t have to game the game to get my paint noticed. So it get’s shared and it lives or more often it dies a lonely death lol.
So I stop painting until I get the urge to paint, it is what it is. They’ve stuck to this system for a few games now, so would be surprised to see it change.
Back on topic sort of, I think the tracks in this game are actually pretty good - certainly the road tracks. That’s why I’m doing the rivals thing 
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Besides already mentioned 100€, I really enjoyed FH4, did bought FH3 later, but also didn’t get the connection.
I hopped on hype train, thinking as more or less everybody from FH4 is going to 5, so why not, but this is not it.
I like to play and escape my current mess of a life, but it just leaves me feeling even more empty. FH4 had something, this mess has very little to none and every time I log in I’m asking myself if its really what I want. Playing alone doesn’t help either. Just logging into FH4 feels much better and I’m not sure how long I’ll still be searching that something in 5.
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Although I don’t like all the changes done to the car physics they are still the best of any open world racer. This combined with the tuning options makes car building and testing my main activity in the game.
With improved MP design I would probably race more but it’s simply not rewarding. Too clunky, too much wasted time waiting, low player choice.
Even low budget titles like Wreckfest have a better MP.
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Plus you get what you expect with that… launch the game, play it and quit. No guesses as to how many times you need to launch it in order to play it (on Series X), no guessing about what will work or what won’t, and about the same amount of wrecking as you see in the Trial lol.
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I play it to relax as my second game (Apex Legends is where I’m a bit more ‘try hard’). Just driving about, dipping in and out of challenges, and not taking it too serious, basically. In terms of what it delivers, it’s ideal.
Because evolution made humans play games for survival so it is built into me to become more skilled to survive… even though we no longer do it to survive. It started off similar to the bow, and arrow at a target, and now it’s a driving game. Also leadership comes into it… so we have leaderboards. We are alive, we have chemicals that tell us what to do… we can’t help it, and life would be boring without them.
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