great review, I'll pick this up on Black Friday or the next sale, thanks!
Forza Horizon - Take it to the Streets (Quick Review)
Game Review | October 31, 2012 11:17 pm
By AJ
Overview
Wow, just wow. I never thought I would see Forza go free roam. I just didn't think it was going to happen. I really enjoy racing games that are on the very realistic/simulation side instead of arcade style (I'm looking at you NFS, with your ass handling and wall riding antics). Forza Horizon definitely doesn't disappoint in terms of cars handling how they should handle. But for the novice players there are many different ways to make the game much more suitable. You can turn on every assist and the vehicles will almost drive themselves. Conversely, if you take off all the assists and change the transmission to manual with clutch.... You're probably going to have a bad time. But just know, there's something for everyone, and once you find the set up that works for you I can almost guarantee you'll have a blast.
Although this game isn't completely realistic, I believe it's the closest possible when talking about a game with free roam. From light to heavy traffic you can expect assholes in PT Cruisers and Prius' to pull out in front of you or even stop in the middle of the street while you're screaming through a small town or barreling down the highway. That can be frustrating at times, especially at the very end of a race, but take comfort in knowing you don't have to stop and exchange insurance information, hell, go find that asshole and hit them some more (however, just like Forza 3 and 4, there's a rewind feature in case you want to redo something)!
Gameplay
The gameplay is what you'd expect if you have played any of the previous Forza's. Obviously it's a little more challenging transitioning from dirt to gravel to asphalt (sometimes in a single race), but compared to only racing on racetracks, I'd choose this any day. The way the cars handle on every different surface is absolutely flawless; if you have played a DiRT game, expect awesome drifts and huge jumps when racing on dirt, if you've played Forza's predecessors, expect great handling cars on the roads and during street races (assuming the street races stay on the streets!) and you can expect the handling to be very loose when racing on loose gravel.
The map is comparable to a Vice City sized map, large enough to want to fast travel to opposite sides, but small enough to want to race across it. Below you can see the map, it's just a picture pulled from a Google search, you can also see most of the available events, speed cameras/zones, etc. It takes about 10 minutes to do a full lap around the map with an average speed of 180mph. It may not seem that big, but just wait until you have to drive top to bottom and/or left to right multiple times to events, showcases, etc. Luckily you can fast travel to certain areas for a price, unless you complete 3 events at outposts to be granted free fast travel.
Multiplayer
There are a few types of ways to play multiplayer.
1) Free Roam:
This mode is comprised of 1-8 players on the entire map. You can participate in co-op challenges, set records on speed traps/zones or simply drive around crashing into people like an asshat (my preferred method). This is also a great way to look for discount signs (Forza's collectibles), barn finds (free cars available, you're granted each car's approximate location, best to search with a friend!) and other goodies.
2) Competitive Games:
Infected, much like Halo. Zombies vs. Normies. Cat and mouse, two teams of cat and mice verse another team. Cats stop mice, but only mice can win, protect your mice! And lastly, there's a King mode. One player is selected King, they must avoid other players to remain King. If they get hit, the player who hit the King is now King. Very fast paced and also very addicting.
3) Competitive races. Choose from a number of point to point, lap or freeway races. Fastest player wins. There is a ranking that you'll be able to increase in competitive games and competitive races. The highest rank is level 50 and after that you'll have the option to prestige, prestige mode simply resets you to level 1 and changes the color of your online square that shows your current rank. I have not yet reached level 50, I'm currently sitting at level 41 with a total of 156+ online wins and about 180 races/games completed so expect it to take a while to get to level 50.
Achievements
All achievements are very simple, simply complete everything in single player for 875 gamerscore. The other 125 comes from multiplayer and can be achieved with another player and yourself (in private lobbies if that's your thing).
I think I had a total of 22 hours driving time when I completed it, and that was with an extra 8 hours multiplayer tacked on to my total time. The average player is probably looking at 24-36 hours for the completion.
You're only required to race a single race on hard then you can change the difficulty to easy and fly through the races very quickly if you just want to finish the game. There's only about a 5th of the cars and races available in Horizon, but it's a very solid game and multiplayer keeps that replay value high.
Bugs/Issues
I have nothing to report after driving for nearly 50 hours both online and offline except for some random lag here and there. Lag doesn't affect you in any game modes, all it does is make other players online appear to be glitched into the ground while racing. Sometimes other players cars will completely disappear under the road, pretty hilarious if you ask me.
The only other thing that's a little crappy is that there's one car that is leaps and bounds ahead of every other car, so be prepared for every race to be pretty close online unless you're very good and can easily adapt to a track you've never played or you're playing very shitty people which is usually the case. Below you can see my Bugatti SS with a special message to everyone behind me.
Top speed of 275, nothing can touch it!
Overall
Overall I'd give this game a 9.5, just because I can't find anything major wrong with it. People who know me pretty well know that I can always find something wrong with everything and there's always something for me to complain about! Not this game, there's really nothing to complain about. It may be short, but if you've completed Forza 3 or 4, you know how much time and dedication that took to get gold. On. Every. Race. A quick racing game is a breath of fresh air. Take my word for it, it truly is a great game that will keep racing enthusiasts happy for weeks.
(Source: Chicago AJ)
Rating: 9.5 of 10
Reviewed: Forza Horizon
Keywords: Forza, Racing, Forza Horizon,
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