Forza Horizon 5 (2021)

The whole party vibe just doesn't feel right to me. In every Horizon game, I always feel a little bit repulsed by the balloons and cheering fans and spotlights and constant flashy celebratory vibe. They really lean into it more and more every game. This whole game premise is built on a "festival" where adoring spectators cheer as we are handed the keys to a whole garage of supercars - our reward for just showing up. The hype builds as we understeer a hairpin turn at 120mph and smash our new McLaren into the stands. Presumably, this is how they had all hoped to die. There's no damage to the car, because we are just that good. Heck, we got xp for a spectacular crash. Queue more fanfare, please.

It's just too much. I can't focus on the driving or the story (if one exists) or anything else when the sounds and visuals are all about celebrating how great - or awful - my driving is. Just stop. Please. Let me at least accomplish something before the confetti begins.

I miss the old days of gran turismo, buying a $2,000 beater and proving ourselves; winning modest prizes, economically prioritizing upgrades, trading up, and doing it again. It's really hard to enjoy the racing or the economy aspects when I'm constantly reminded that I'm at the center of a country-wide rave in my honor.

I didn't think I'd say this a week or two ago, but there isn't enough end-game content in this. While there are accolades I can unlock, achievement hunting really isn't my thing. I like the weekly challenges but they are now easy to complete in a single lunchbreak or hour after work on the first day and then I'm left with nothing to do until the weeklies reset the following Thursday. And singe Playground Games nerfed car mastery, I don't really have a lot of reason to grind skill points save for levelling up, which functionally has no point.

Don't take this to mean I've soured on the game, I think it just means I think I will really only visit FH5 once a week, or if someone I know needs help with something. It also means I've about three times more excited for GT7 launch day.

More time for Returnal!

Oh no, now I’m playing the auction house. I’ve made enough money to buy all the houses in the game which has, in turn, made me more money back. But I’m making several million credits a day simply because people seem to want to take the easy route and buy the Hoonigan Porsche instead of working for it. But I can make enough skill points to earn several of them a day so I’m raking in dough. God bless the lazy ;-)

Lord help me I’m hooked.

I scoffed at all the 2021 top ten lists that included this game. I played Forza Horizon 4. It was fun. I tried a bit of this when it launched and though, "yup more of the same". I didn't understand why anyone would include this arcade racer that is just more of the same on their list.

But now I'm playing it, and I get it. It's fantastic. It's has low or high stakes racing, depending on what you feel like. You can spend a day in intense competition, or just chill and drive around in your favourite car. It has progression, but you are not locked out of your dream cars until you beat X number of races. It's casual yet also intense. And the cars. So many cars that meant something to me, like the Stingray that my dad restored and put on display in his showroom at work. Or the '95 Porsche 911 in 'Smarties' blue that I weirdly fell in love with as a teen. Or my first car, or my brother's first car. And the list goes on. It's like a nostalgia factory for someone who used to care about cars (my dad worked in the industry) for a couple decades of my life, and those two decades come alive in this game letting me own cars I only dreamt of as a kid. I thought I wouldn't care about a racer as much as I do about this one because I'm not really into cars as an adult, but boy did they still figure out how to hook me. The one con? I don't understand why this game doesn't have a Lotus Esprit. I'll take any decade. 70s, 80s, 90s, or even the last of the Esprits in the early 2000s.

Poked my head in Forza Horizon 5 this evening, finally. I’ve been hearing nothing but effusive praise for the game since launch. So what did I find?

It’s what I expected, more Forza Horizon 4 in a new setting. It has the same annoying un-skippable intro racing montage (this time with some air dropped cars à la Furious 7), the same insufferable radio DJs, the same stiff voice acting and hollow story all paired with more the same fantastic feeling driving.

Like Forza Horizon 4 the sequel is the same highly enjoyable open world racing game wrapped in a cheesy and often overbearing narrative. But like it’s predecessor, it succeeds despite its weaker parts because the racing feels wonderful and the map is big, detailed and gorgeous.

Also like Forza Horizon 4 I’ll probably see myself bounce off this once I’ve had a few hours to fill my occasional desire to play a racing game. It’s certainly better than the last Need for Speed that I played, and is enjoyable enough in stints to justify jumping in every now and then when in between other games.

Reached Hall of Fame

My thoughts:

Forza Horizon 5 is still the most polished open-world arcade-sim racer as of recent, but in my opinion, it's still far from the 10/10s that critics are giving. From a couple of weeks from launch, my impression of FH5 was that it's at least an improved FH4 (in most ways), which was the lowest point in the Horizon series (but not necessarily a bad game either)

Pros:

• Mexico map is AMAZING. Large map with a huge variety of biomes, terrain, altitude, and road conditions
• Easily the prettiest racing game to exist visually (at least until Raytracing Gran Turismo 7)
• I actually liked the summery vibes soundtrack this time especially for Horizon Pulse Radio, similar to the song selection of FH3. Really disliked FH4's radio.
• Proceed single player by doing ANYTHING you want this time. Everything leads to progress, even if you decide to just focus on dirt racing for example.
• Many character customization features, including prosthetics and custom pronouns to fit with the modern era... Except for the voice options (mentioned in cons)
• Introduction sequence is breathtaking, along with the first drives to set up new festival outposts.

Cons:

• ... But there's little depth after the "flashy first impressions"
• Huge amount of been there's, done that's if you've already played FH4 alot. FH5 doesn't feel very fresh gameplay-wise, especially since the Showcases barely feel anything new.
• Very Shallow Singleplayer, in comparison to FH1 & FH2.
• The most cringe dialogue to date. NPCs now insert random Spanish words every sentence to remind you that you are in Mexico, but the language hybrid comes off awkward.
• The whole "Horizon music festival set piece" is still mostly just a background object, rather than the main overall theme in FH1 and FH2. FH5 still feels a bit soulless compared to those entries, but at least the festival has more of a physical presence than in FH4.
• Your character NOW has a voice that can't be turned off! It now forces the "You're a person from FH4's UK" storyline incase you had a headcanon for your character, so you're stuck with a British accent. Also, your character makes a lot of sarcastic remarks.
• The AI cheats really hard. FH4's Unbeatable is a joke, but now even in Highly skilled difficulty (2 steps above average), they drive too perfectly in rain/dirt.
• Release FH5 has a rendering distance bug where far-away objects are really low-rez, and look terrible as a result. At least FH4 worked and looked good from the box.

The REALLY bad: Multiplayer is AWFUL and is currently a downgrade from FH4 (which was also mostly bad at launch!)

• You spend 40% of the time just waiting for something to load
• No options to pick what class & terrain you want to play! In other words, you might want to race just average A-class Import Tuners in circuit race but nope you got placed in a lobby that's S2 Hypercar off-road Cross Country hell and are stuck with all of the loading times just to enter and exit. And then you have to re-queue in matchmaking again until you finally get something you can tolerate.

Unfortunately, I've preordered the $100 premium edition and was left... unsatisfied? The cheap AI, cringe story events, and terrible multiplayer really killed the game's longevity for me (as of release state), because I already feel done with the game. These are just opinions from someone who's been following the series mainly since FH3. I just hope the DLC's are interesting because FH4's Lego DLC felt really really bad to me.

If this is your first Forza Horizon game, please disregard my opinion. You'll have a blast!