Giant Bomb Forza Horizon 2 Race Night: Hoondown Deux

Starts every Thursday Night at 9:30 PM ET (6:30 PT)

Runs until people get tired (usually 12 AM - 1 AM ET)

Since November 2009, a subset of the Giant Bomb community has gathered to enjoy races and events with like-minded members in Forza Motorsport. From Forza Motorsport 3, 4, 5, and the Horizons, without missing a week, we have come together to be silly in cars.

The Horizon Festival has returned, and with it the prime time Race Night shifts its focus to the world of Europe. Frankly, Forza 5 wasn't going to last forever, anyways, so it's time we roam together, race together, and destroy all other clubs together.

Basically, it comes down to this:

Do you like racing cars? Do you like doing silly stuff with cars? Do you want to do any or all of that with the Giant Bomb community? If so, you should join us.

Hosted by Trace (Peace Egg on Xbox Live).

How To Join

This section is subject to change dramatically based on any improvements made to the Xbox One, especially if the "send an invite to the entire car club" feature returns. I loved that feature.

1. Follow my gamertag, Peace Egg. You should be able to do this without needing my permission on the Xbox One. Also, you should probably send this on the Xbox One, not the 360. I imagine that helps with making sure the following stuff works properly.
2. When I start up the private lobby for Race Night just before 9:30 PM, I'll go through my list of followers and invite anyone playing Forza Horizon 2 into a party. This would be a good time to be playing Forza.
3. If you join us for a week, I'll probably follow you back, which means you can probably jump into Race Night lobbies without needing an invite. Probably.
4. We'll begin road tripping or free roaming. It'll be great. You'll enjoy it.

The Rules

Our standards are pretty simple, much like Giant Bomb's rules: Don't be a dick. So far, we haven't had any major issues with this, but allow me to elaborate with suggestions that will greatly help everyone's experience:

Don't intentionally crash others during races.

Forza Horizon 2 can handle heavy contact during races, and it's often encouraged, but there's a difference between hard racing and flying into a 30 MPH turn at 180 MPH to take out a pack of cars. Save that for the Drivatar AI.

If it looks a little dirty, no big deal. If you look like you're going to try and murder someone with a vehicle, at least call out Gran Turismo first. Give them some warning.

Be mindful of the voice chat.

With up to 12 people, there's going to be a lot of potential voice chat going on, and it's not always likely we'll be using party chat. Do keep in mind that sometimes I'll ask for race suggestions or someone will try to explain game modes to newbies in the lobby. Chattering over this sort of stuff only delays the fun times. Don't delay the fun times!

In addition, if someone's headset is acting up, most especially with echoes or high-pitched squeals, we'll ask you to try and fix it ASAP, since that almost completely prevents us from communicating with one another. It's highly frustrating. Usually, unplugging or muting the headset until you can deal with it is a good temporary fix if you're in the midst of racing when this crops up.

Oh, and don't snap in TV if it's going to blare through your headset. That's just annoying.

Other Things You Should Know

If you want to join, JOIN.

Don't mull over whether we have enough room or anything. Our fields are full of people with widely varying skills, and as long as you're willing to understand that racing's not always about finishing first, but finishing well, you should have a great time with us.

Plus, XP is delicious. This is a known fact supported by cans of Mountain Dew.

We don't mind if you're late.

Seriously. As long as we have open spots (and we will have open spots), we're looking for people until the end of Race Night. If you can only make it to Race Night an hour in, then you're good. Get in here.

Yes, we're starting a little earlier now.

9:30 PM ET is an hour earlier than we used to race a few years ago. Due to work and aging attendees (myself included), we'd like to get more racing in before we reach an ungodly hour of the night.

You don't need any cars or DLC, but having a car for each class would be nice.

The car suggestion is for your own enjoyment, as earning less money from rental cars is rarely fun.

Have fun! That's what we're here for.

I believe the kids call that hooning.

Hooray for starting an hour earlier. (edit: oh, apparently you started that on Forza 5 and I just never noticed).

Since Friday is a holiday for me, maybe I'll be able to join. Really enjoying the game and there should be many opportunities for fun, dumb stuff during the Road Trips/Freeroam!

Erm... Seems like there's been some sort of server explosion. Been stuck at the title screen for a good 20+ minutes.

Yea I'll be on for this for next month , hopefully servers are fine still not letting me join the club

I'm super excited. Let's get our free roam on.

Looking forward to this when's it start an hour ? These time zones get confusing

It was a blast guys! Hopefully I can make it every thursday night!

joshertx14

That was some really fun stuff. I will be here next week for sure!

edit: Just want to throw this out there that the offroad Land Rover that looks like a Jeep has a jurassic park skin.... Yep. Got that.

Thursdays, 9:30 PM ET :( Oh man, that's like 10:30 am on a Friday over here in my part of the world. Bummer, I'm in work at that time.

I bet if you add some of our gamertags and join up with the club you could probably find someone playing sometime when you actually have some time free. It isn't the same I know but I'm sure you can find someone to play with!

Sorry about the drop out last night! It was the end of that race and I just got to sit and stare at my car's profile for a while, like a good couple of minutes while. But, it was fun.

Also, I object to the first heat because I had no idea I would be stuck in my goofy-ass rally racer for the events!

@earlessshrimp: Not being able to upgrade or buy new cars online is also a huge bummer, that was one of the great things about Forza 5. Oh well.

I enjoyed the races, even though I didn't have a car for any of the classes (at least the two road trips I participated in) - also I wanted to ask about some stuff, but then I had to throw away my phone mid-race before they record my voice.

@iron1c: It certainly wasn't the worst thing. But when you jump in you're kinda stuck with the car you enter with until the next event? I didn't get too much of a chance to mess around with the online stuff, so I'm not sure.

Also, unrelated note: I know the perfect place to grind out perk points you guys. I think I got about 8-10 in about 20 minutes!

@earlessshrimp: Feel free to elaborate on the perk spot before they roll out the loot patch for forza horizon 2 and we can't grind it anymore.

On another note I went through and grabbed one car of each class and got 1 of most of each of the types as well (jdm, hatchbacks, etc). Did a little upgrading and got a few choice cars like an old school VW Beetle, a drift car (initial D style babeh!), and an escalade that is wrapped like a police car. At least that way next week I won't get stuck renting cars. Also did some upgrading on one car from each class to maximize the performance in each group so I hopefully won't look as dumb as I did with my stock supra last night!

Looking forward to the next get together.

@amikron: Basically go to the Industrial Zone, unfortunately I can't recall off the top of my head where it is on the map. But, it's the Zona Industriale(the one where the Air bucket list challenge is). You can pretty much find your own route to circle around doing e-brake drifts, jumps, wreckages, etc to keep your score going. You can really keep it going forever if you wanted to. Personally, I recommend banking every 90-150k since that nets you pretty much a level per go.

@earlessshrimp: Thanks for the tip!

@earlessshrimp: doing this stat. will return with the results

This sounds fun been loving this game will try and hop in next week

I should mention for anyone doing EarlessShrimp's method, it helps a ton to get the perk that lets you have an extra second of time before your skillchain breaks. It enables you to get away with a lot more as you tear around that area. I would make that the priority if you are considering skilling up at all with this method.

edit: The perk is on the left side of the tree, 2nd row from the bottom I believe.

That's cool. I can't believe I didn't know there was a Forza club here on Giant Bomb.

Sadly however, Thursday is one of two regular date nights for my girlfriend and I, so I won't be able to attend. I'll still sent that follow to @Trace if that's OK though. Maybe I can sneak in before the end?

Horizon 2 is easily my favorite game of the year thus far. Of course it hasn't had a ton of competition since InFamous: Second Son was kind of a letdown for me. Spent most of the summer replaying XCOM, but you can't really count that as a "this year" game now can you. Hopefully Sunset Overdrive will give it a run for it's money. But I'm rambling now... apologies.

Hope I can catch some of you guys this Thursday!

Gamertag is ZZoMBiE13
:)

@Trace I am going to try and join this week. Do you have any rules about streaming while doing this?

Not 100% sure I'll make it thursday. Gotta play Alien Isolation with my Fiance and get that done ASAP 1) because it's awesome and 2) so she can play Costume Quest 2. If anyone's down I might have time to mess around Thursday during the day

I'm not terribly good, or terribly talkative, but hopefully join you guys for a scoot around sometime...

@zzombie13: Sure, whenever you're able to join us is fine! As long as we're not full or done, we're always looking for more.

@dwigtk: No rules whatsoever, feel free to stream! The only reason I don't stream myself is because the party chat is so often not picked up.

...which, come to think of it, isn't an issue with Horizon 2 because we haven't used the party chat system. Huh.

@Trace: Sounds good, I will steam it on my Twitch page then if anyone wants to watch. If I get in

Looking forward to this hopefully get in tonight

Im not going to be able to get on until 10. Hopefully I can get a slot this week. Looking forward to it.

Short notice to mention some stuff for tonight, but here we go:

• We'll probably run road trips at the beginning, and then later on (say 11:00 or so) I'll switch over to free roam. I found the online co-op bucket list challenges after last week's Race Night in a fit of I-really-should-have-seen-them-on-the-map-already brilliance. We should try some of those challenges this week and see what they're like.
• I'm going to try and add anyone who's friended me to my friends list to make joining my game a little easier for them. Note that people who quit the club probably will be unfollowed so I can keep my friends list relatively clean. I'm sure that makes some sort of sense, given it's Giant Bomb Race Night.
• I'll probably also give streaming a shot, since I wasn't able to do that in Forza 5 while using party chat. Don't let that dissuade any of you from streaming if you planned on it; after all, the more perspectives, the better.

See you in about an hour.

I learned that I fucking hate androids in alien Isolation last night! I should be there next week for Race Night though.

@Trace: So what was the issue last night with the Co-op bucket list? Was it only a couple of us could do it at once?

Apologies for missing last night, will try to make it next week! Did streaming work out for you guys last night?

Someday, I'll bring the Race Night cat back for all the Race Notes we need.

It looks like co-op bucket lists are limited to two people, so while it's possible in freeroam, it basically leads to six pairs or so in an event that requires loading into a separate instance. I was expecting they'd be like the freeroam challenges from Horizon 1, which I found far more interesting.

Not any better than Forza 5, sadly! The voices of other players still don't come through, and I'm not sure how to correct that or if it can be corrected. It's a pain, and also severely limits the usefulness of any streaming.

The more frustrating part to me was that only two people can be attempting a particular challenge at any given time, so you end up with a lot of people just queued up doing donuts near the event starting point waiting for a chance to get in.

Does anyone from the community stream this?

@lelcar: I streamed it a bit on my Twitch page but it was not much fun to watch as I had damaged turned on so my car did not last long and you could not hear the others playing, feel free to check out the archive here.

@chaser324@Trace Yeah it was too bad the bucket list didn't quite work out, but I haver to say ripping donuts in the middle of the roundabout with @marino was still fun. At least we know for next week to give it a pass and stick to the free roam, which was still a lot of fun.

I'm totally gonna play tonight, anyone else planning on showin' up?

edit:

Fantastic just like last time, lookin forward to next week!

Hopefully next time I'll use a little less of my VW bug though...

I haven't written a recap in well over a year. Let's try one of those.

Cue the cat!

• Open lobbies are OK for actually making the club XP work for once, but otherwise...probably best for us to leave it closed. Too many interesting characters out there! That's being overly kind.
• Probably too much D-class racing this week, as well! Note to self: Start in a faster car to encourage faster class options.
• When playing Virus Tag, consider utilizing the Nick Taylor Maneuver: Just drive around the boundary of the map at high speed until the infected realize they've forgotten about you.
• Post-championship disconnects are annoying, but at least it isn't the memory leak glitch from Forza Motorsport 4...
• I am willing to host a TEDx talk on how I'm a completely talentless idiot who slams into walls at top speed and utters guttural tones intended to be bad jokes. This is peer-reviewed and has numerous citations.
• When taking a huge jump with the crown in King, check to see that someone isn't casually rolling over to the very spot you're about to land on.
• Seriously, don't hit that wall. You know the one.
• Sometimes Race Night ends with a whimper or a tasteless joke...and sometimes, it ends with a Sandstorm.

Thanks again to everyone who attended, and remember: We do this every week, and we're always happy to have people join us so long as there's room.

• When taking a huge jump with the crown in King, check to see that someone isn't casually rolling over to the very spot you're about to land on.

Highlight of my career.

Lotta fun last night, thanks for letting me join in. Hope I didn't miss too much after that second disconnect

I keep forgetting about race night. I have set a reminder in my iPhone for this Thursday. If you guys want it streamed, I am more than willing to.

@enemaems: Some of us have been streaming it, the issue is that there is no way to put your voice and the other drivers voices through as well. So you can stream with the others voice chat, but then you can't talk to us, which sucks

Well that is dumb. Either way, I'll see you guys tomorrow night. Really looking forward to finally playing some MP in this.

I am going to try streaming tonight here: www.twitch.tv/dwigtk

Ugh, this game sucks...

Had my Internet connection crash right at the start, and then the game itself kept dropping me. What I did play though, I had a great time. For whatever reason, my mic would not work. Think that was because of the game dropping me constantly. Enjoyed listening to the Arrow discussion. :)

Anyone in Australia do this?

Oh man, it's late. Cue the cat!

• Trace is lazy
• "Stop hitting my car in the butt." -Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop
• Girl, I thought you had me coming over for some Nice Massena and then it was all FORZA 5 back at your house.
• Sushi's Duck Dynasty truck is a monstrosity of inhuman proportions.
• fucktruck.hiphop -- your home for professional resumes and dignified social stances
• We have all the best domain name ideas and we're goddamn monsters for it.hiphop

Happy five years, everyone! Next stop: Ten years...?

Dot fucking hiphop.

slowbirdwontshutup.moe