Hot Wheels Expansion trailer thoughts

Dear open-world driving game fans

Here we go again for another epic road trip to our fun childhood memories of playing Hot Wheels which shows up one of the most iconic cars like the Deora II, which was debuted in 2000, then in 2003, Hot Wheels Highway 35 CGI cartoon was released, features Vert Wheeler (The main protagonist) who drives it for the Wave Rippers team, making the car become even more famous.

Also, this trailer gives me the vibes of Hot Wheels Highway 35 & AcceleRacers.

...Again?

@facelessvixen: To me, it's great to see a new incarnation of this expansion pack.

Some more details here: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/06/12/hot-wheels-returns-to-forza-in-the-first-eagerly-awaited-expansion-to-forza-horizon-5/

It looks really cool. It's nice that they're also adding some new biomes and not purely just layering it onto the existing environments. The blog post says there are four new biomes - Giant's Canyon, Ice Cauldron (this is both the ice and lava areas in the trailer), Forest Falls, and Horizon Nexus.

More info from the blog post - ten new cars and custom tracks that you can snap together from 80 track pieces.

Curious to see what the next Forza Horizon game entails, you get the feeling Playground have hit a wall.

The Hot Wheels expansion in 3 was a lot better than the Lego one in 4 was. So if they are going to go with a toy/fantastical theme, this seems fine. I'd much rather have something more akin to Blizzard Mountain or Fortune Island though.

@psygnosis911: I guess that you prefered Hot Wheels to Lego in your childhood.

@thepanzini: How so? The last game is the best one yet and they continue to refine their systems and add new challenges to spice things up. There are plenty of exciting locations they can still explore and the next Horizon will probably make use of all the graphical gimmicks like realistic damage modeling that the current Forza is slated to have.

The wheels can always get rounder.

Pass.

I have never been into these types of expansions, but I guess I understand the appeal to some people.

Also, gotta strongly disagree that Playground has "hit a wall". FH5 took what they did in FH4 and expanded and refined it.

@humanity: Is a new location enough of a difference, considering Horizon already has mutiple biomes and dynamic weather.

I would not be surprised if after the next installment Horizon gets a year extra.

Given Fable is being made using the motorsport engine you could have a ton of new gameplay opportunities, having you avatar navigate on foot, crafting or lite sim aspects.

@thepanzini: Horizon already got an extra year between 4 and 5 (it was on a two year clock and they switched to 3 year, though Horizon 4 got a lot of post-game support, including tons of free updates.)

I think the big difference between 5 and 6 will be leaving the XBONE generation behind and focusing on the series generation, which will allow a number of changes. Not just things like resolution but being able to rely on having an SSD and being able to have more math intensive physics etc (the XBONE's biggest weakness was in CPU rather than GPU).

I think that a game built only for the Series consoles will be a significant improvement over 5 in a number of ways.

@bigsocrates: Yeah that's true but I think the timing of Horizon in 2 years and Fable probably in 3 means they could put a lot of very different type of content into the Horizon after.

Given they might need to move people around to get Fable out the door, it might happen naturally.

@thepanzini: Fable might influence Horizon 6, especially in quest design or whatever, but one thing to remember is that Forza Horizon 5 is insanely popular, did well with critics, and has arguably been Microsoft's best performing franchise over the last 10 years. The Horizon games come out, do well with the audience, get critical and award acclaim, and never generate any negative controversy except for some microtransaction grumbling. Compare that to everything else by MS and you can make an argument that they won't want to change up the formula too much. If it ain't broke don't fix it, especially when it's the only major franchise you have that performs this reliably.

We'll have to see I guess, but if I had to put money on it I would bet that 6 is very much like 5 with some small changes in the formula to keep things fresh (like the change in how unlocking events works that they made in 5) and, of course, a new even more gorgeous and detailed map.

@bigsocrates: Defo H6 will be more of the same.

I much preferred the Lego expansion over the Hot Wheels expansion. I don't understand why the the orange roads are so wide? In actual hot wheels they fit exactly one car, obviously that wouldn't be much fun in the game -- but they seem to be wider than "normal" roads in the game?

It is a bit disappointing that they don't have any other new ideas, hopefully expansion two is something more exciting.

I think the reason they went back to Hot Wheels is because it ties into their recent track building stuff. Super 7 came late in FH4 and the Event Lab in FH5 expands on that in interesting ways. I'm curious how this expansion builds on that.

I'm excited about this. Hot Wheels in FH3 was my favorite part of the game, and this one looks way bigger and more intracate.

I totally agree with you about this!

Yep, I preferred Lego to Hot Wheels during my childhood and I can absolutely tell why the orange tracks are so wide? because the contestants can easily race on the track without always colliding with their opponents.

I hope Lego Expansion will be able to return in Forza Horizon 6.

@gtxforza: I thought you preferred realistic racing to the arcadey stuff so I'm curious as to why your favorite part of FH3 was the part that had the smallest connection to actual racing. Forza Horizon is Simcade to begin with but the Hot Wheels stuff is closer to flat out arcade style.

I actually still like arcade-style racers as they make me feel relaxed after spending several hours on realistic racing games, for what I can see the difference between Hot Wheels and Lego in terms of toy marketing.

• Most Hot Wheels products are mainly aimed at young boys while there are some collectible cars that are meant for adults to collect such as Hot Wheels 1/64 scale Premium, 1/43 scale Elite and 1/18 Elite diecast models.
• Meanwhile, each Lego theme has its target audience such as Speed Champions, Star Wars, etc. Most of them are actually suited for any age of builder and collector to own.

P.S I really loved Hot Wheels Expansion for Forza Horizon 3 since I loved playing with Hot Wheels toys in my childhood along with the Trackmania series on PC.

I kind of need to go back to the base game (which I bought at full price). After 10 hours I just kind of felt that there was either not many more new experiences in store and probably way too many things that I didn't want to do. Just a huge amount of map icons that I found overwhelming.

The map has good filter options, which for me was good enough to not make it overwhelming.

I generally just filter on a single type of activity that I am in the mood for at that moment, and filter on "new" so you don't see any stuff you've already completed.

Obviously that isn't going to help if you don't care for any of the activity types.

Personally I just hate drifting in these games (because I'm bad at it) but "completed" more or less everything else (where completed to me means I got a single star or better on the race, challenge, whatever).