Why is forza horizon 5 so .. let me explain

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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I love racing games, Forza horizon is the perfect fusion of simcade handling. It feels like what Project Gotham Racing was aiming for. It’s unfortunate there are no other games like this on the market because i would have abandoned this game a long long time ago.

The AI is terrible, the online is horrible and each season leaves more to be desired. Yet i come back to this game again and again and the only reason why is it’s the only game like this.

What needs to Improve in Horizon 6? Expand the online race options. Right now all we have to choose from is B A S1 and S2 … No D or C. The one online mode i have been finding fun but infuriating is Horizon tour.
Recently i have been running into cheaters which ruins the game for me. what fun is it when a person can slide along the wall at 200+ and pass me while i try to race proper?

An option to either make my own custom Horizon Tour or the option to find one to my liking.

Less super cars and more “beaters” I want to see some Thunderbird more Lincolns, there are alot of interesting cars to put into this game not just hyper cars.

There are alot of improvements Horizon 6 needs to work on. After this game not sure how hyped i’ll be for it.

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Very well put. When I describe Horizon 5 to my friends (who are gamers, but not racing gamers), I always say it’s the best contemporary racing game currently available on the Xbox and PC. However, I always tell them that it is by no means close to being in the top 10 racing games ever in my eyes. There will be plenty of people who have Horizon 5 in their top ten, which is fine, but to this date, the first Horizon is probably the only Horizon game in my personal top ten racing games of all time list. All the sequels are probably scattered throughout my top 25 though.

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I’d agree that C and D classes should be added to open racing. I know I’d play that aspect a lot more if that were the case.

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I feel the same way. I still play Horizon 1 on a fairly regular basis. It is actually a toss up for me between Forza MS 4, Horizon 1, and The Crew 2 as to which is my #1 all time favorite. Those are definitely my top 3. I also liked the Horizon Fast and Furious teaser. I play it from time to time. It is the only Forza game in which I can drive the late model Dodge Charger in R/T (ie, non SRT, non hellcat, etc) guise.

I played Horizon 4 nearly daily from early release until about a month before the release of Horizon 5. I quit playing Horizon 5 for a couple of months last summer, due to boredom (Horizon 4 and 5 are so similar in my eyes), but then returned as there isn’t much else out there like it.

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For your voting convenience. You might also want to vote in this thread: I want custom championships back

Forza Horizon 5 can be so frustrating, because it’s a phenomenal experience with such great potential completely stifled by absolutely infuriating gameplay design decisions.

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The physics, which has been trending in the right direction but still has a lot of issues, the open world, and the car selection, all make it impossible to keep FH5 out of my top 10.

It’s so frustrating because I don’t want to reward the company for the recent stewardship of the franchise, but at the same time I really, really, really want to play an open world racing game like this. Having genuine downtime with cars, the feeling of freedom that only the open world can provide, the surprising quirks of racing on real(ish) roads, and my favourite video game racing discipline (street racing) all combine into an irresistible package for me.

The franchise is just bursting with potential, and there are elements of PGG who consistently nail it, like the team who handles programming the graphics and handling for cars, or the environmental design. There are just what feel like top down decisions that completely ruin everything, and it’s so frustrating I want to scream.

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Given that my First racing game was From 1999/2000 ive seen a lot over the last 24 years.

What ive noticed is this: We lack Proper Singleplayer Racing games that arent afraid to be Gritty and more rough.

Maybe its because we grew up different, but racing games in the past didnt have an E-Rating. (TDU2 for example)

Lets face it, Racing games never had good story writing but a Story or progress in Racing games is more enjoyable then having no Story at all or forced happy dialogue.

Do i Really need to make my Own Character if i dont Agree with my Characters Scripted comments?

Example Bourne Fast: these 10 are Taking street racing seriously but our character literally answers to the question of how we are faster if we arent focusing on racing lines and Proper handling with “We use Special car horns”

UGHHH i wanted to punch my character so bad at that moment.

As above mentioned the sheer amount of Hypercars and supercars gets oversaturated.

Its at the Point where im more interested spotting Someone Driving a “Slow and Common” D-Class AMC Gremlin with a unique Livery then seeing the 50th Yellow Diablo GTR with the 4 Gear Dragtune spamming the horn at the festival trying to challenge everyone.

As someone who spends quite a significant time in the Livery , Tuning and Track Editor, Its a Rarity to find other players in the Lobbies that have any self created content.

Co-Op is A Self test in Mental Patience.

Its like no one Bothers to properly built Good handling cars, they just make them fast.

Brakes seem to be none existent. And the worst thing about it?

Loosing against someone that hits every wall and Teammate while you try to race clean.

And even if You are 1st , it doesnt matter if you win when your Teammates cant overtake any of the Ai and keep battling eachother. The team still looses.

Its not like there are any modern alternatives to FH5.

The Crew Motorfest is A Horizon clone , unlike the now sadly unplayable the Crew 1. NFS Unbound… im not touching that cringe with a 10 foot pole.

If i really want to play a Fun Racing game i go back to

Burnout Revenge, Flatout 2, Burnout Paradise, NFS Hot Pursuit, even NFS Underground 2 and that game just turned 20 this year.

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Horizon 5 certainly improved since launch and after Mike Brown’s departure.
Still, I hope Horizon 6 will change the Playlist structure we have since Horizon 4. It could also learn something from The Crew Motorfests car/theme presentation and customisation.

The only Horizon in my all-time racing game list is the first one (aside NFS Porsche, PGR 2, GT 3 & Burnout 3).

Interestingly, for me the biggest potential competition in arcade racing doesn’t even come from a pure racing game. I think GTA 6 will be this advanced it’ll rival all the sub-Horizon games (Crew, NFS, TDU) with ease.

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GTA 6 will definitely be a big competitor for arcade racing games, GTA 5 already is one of my favourite racing games, there’s literally no other game I’ve played online with 30 people and had so clean races as that one.

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I was in Broughy’s Xbox NoDo crew for a while as well.
It was amazing how intense, clean & fun racing in GTA Online can be.
R* did experiment a lot over the loooong life of the title (active aero, speed-relative downforce, different downforce settings per F1 car, tire wear, drag & drift racing) and overcame major issues (untied car speed from the FPS, handling flags that render all curb boosting useless).

And since all new cars basically look like the rl counterparts and offer a lot of customisation I seriously think GTA 6 will be right there at the top for arcade racing.

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Played in NoDo too on PC and then in the Project Homecoming FiveM servers which is where that video is from. If you have a PC capable of running GTA V that’s the best place for clean races running almost 24 hours a day with good moderation.

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I personally think his departure and the updates improving was just a coincidence. It’s not like they chucked everything out after he left. I’m sure at least a couple months of content after his departure still had his creative stamp on them. Plus, while we have had good updates since he left, we’ve had a good amount of duds too under a new creative lead.

Frankly, come to think of it, who is new the Mike Brown? Have they ever attached a face or a name to the new creative lead?

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Only if it actually comes with wheel support and proper FFB. Which I hope it will as that’s something really missing in 5. That said the guys from R* presumably know more about things like tyre physics than PGG and T10 together.

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Is it Torben? I don’t know but think someone here wrote that he was.

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I said don’t quote me on that! I think it’s jumped around the office. They did trot someone out on one of the Let’s Go videos that had the title at one point and it wasn’t Torben, but I got the impression that she had taken over for 5 but wasn’t necessarily the creative director for 6.

I honestly forget the name. It’s probably for the best though to not think about it. Whoever fills those shoes is also inheriting no small amount of the vitriol that Mike Brown earned. As much as I want to make clear that what’s happened to the franchise over the Mike Brown era is unacceptable, dogpiling pressure on the new creative director probably isn’t constructive.

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Yeah, agreed. Assigning blame or praise to one person when it’s a team project is wrong. It’s not the Geoff Crammond era anymore.

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I don’t want or need a story line
I don’t want cut scenes
I don’t want a customized character
I don’t want online multiplayer.

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When i tried FH5 for the first time i was genuenly very excited coming from Horizon 4 which i bought like 6 months before FH5 got announced.

I remember i had it pre-installed on steam, joined on early access. And you know the first thing that happened? My game crashed. Now i had to figure out why. Went on reddit and found out it was my antivurus, specifically bit defender causing the issue. I disabled it and the game ran just fine.

But oh boi was that only the beginning. Crashing, LOD issues, fps drops,connectivity issues… One of the very first things i remember doing after the introduction was to join a horizon arcade. And i was really disappointed when there was nobody around, as opposed to in Horizon 4 where forzathon live was always packed with players.
On top of that it was horribly balanced because i was not even able to complete the first round. I suppose they balanced it according to how it worked in FH4, but the thing is in FH4 you almost never do these events alone. Although I remember more than a year ago doing forzathon live in FH4 on fortune island with one more player and we only managed to complete 2/3 rounds.

So it was a horrible launch for me. On top of that i was doing night shift at the time and i was extra tired, didn’t have much time to play forza but i really wanted to. And this added more fuel to the fire i guess.

At some point after working with support and tweaking the settings and reading things about how to optimize the game i managed to run it without too many problems. And i began to somewhat enjoy it. Untill about maybe 2 months into the game where i remember doing the festivlal playlist. And i was starting to see how this could get a boring over time. Rincing and repeating the same events from the base game?

It was actually just before update 5 - Horizon rush. As i was getting fed up with the playlist i went on forza support and wrote feedback about it and i suggested they do more updates like Horizon Rush. After that i’ve looked pretty much everywhere else possible to find my own fun. Online racing, eliminator, painting/tuning my cars, eventlab… I obviously still did the festival playlist but it was ups and downs from that point.

And i was gullible enough to think something might change in the coming year but it really didn’t. The moment the frustration hit hard again was around expansion 1 and the 20th anniversary. And that was pretty much the moment when everyone started talking about the game much more and pouring their frustrations and anger out…

And we’re now in a state where players are somewhat happy. Most of them already moved away from the drama.

And if this was kind of a rocky journey. I can only imagine what’s going to happen when the next game comes out. Like Forza Horizon is massive now and players are watching and they know the ins and outs of this franchise so darn well. PG, Turn10 and Xbox better prepare hard for it because players aren’t buying into excuses no more, well maybe some of them aren’t.

PG is probably one of the few working studios that pump out great games for Xbox so Horizon 6 will probably be fine. Unfortunately if they’re planning to do proper justice to the franchise, they’ll need more time which means we’re probably not getting the next title anytime soon.

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I think most of us have only reached this point because we’ve all realized that Horizon 5 isn’t going to suddenly be something different almost three years into its life. Frankly, given how long its been since we’ve had a new story, and we’ll be in year four starting late this year, I imagine we’re getting closer to end of life it terms of support. I’ll be surprised if this game continues into 2025.

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Year four?

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