Forza Horizon 4 thoughts/hype/questions...

Unsurprising, but welcome news for me from the Microsoft presser was the Forza Horizon 4 announcement. The Horizon games have all been some degree of excellent, so this is a surefire purchase for me. A few things stand out to me.

• Location - There had been rumors of the England setting from some eagle-eyed folks scouring Forza code, and honestly, my reaction there was a little "meh" overall at first. However, the UK setting is a different ballgame entirely. The idea of exploring virtual Scotland in particular is rad. I'm fully prepared to pour a nice Balvenie and blaze by some castles at unreasonable speeds.
• Changing seasons - This is pretty damn cool. Snowy/Fall England is a hell of a lot more promising than just standard/rainy England. I got some Rallisport Challenge 2 vibes from the trailer, which is a very good thing. I'm a little curious to see what kind of "cycle" this stuff is on, as the visuals have the potential (at least for me) to either have me maybe play less in environments less aesthetically appealing to me and play longer when I see something I like. I hope the seasons rotate fairly quickly, realism be damned. The rapid weather changes in Forza 7 were both silly and visually awesome, so I'm cool if they stick with that. Perhaps change the season each week? I don't know; but I hope they get it right.
• Actual players everywhere - Hmm.... The Drivatar thing in previous games felt a little stale, but I'm a bit concerned with the potential issues of a shared online world. Unless you allow them to join your game, there has to be some kind of "disallow collision" default so random jackwagons can't just go around plowing into everyone, right? I don't really want to be spammed by cars basically texting me constantly, either. Having played (and loved) the previous Horizon games as largely single player experiences, I'm not really looking for a car MMO at all. This will need some customization options in terms of your view. I don't particularly want to see everyone's dumb username above their car, and if you can disallow messaging and hide some of the custom liveries, all the better. It's going to spoil my experience a bit if I'm peacefully cruising through the beautiful Highlands and xxbluntsmoka420xx crashes into a wall at 230 mph in some hideously painted car and spams me some message. That said, there's some potential for some Far Cry-esque random dumb shit happening and spicing things up amusingly due to actual players driving around in ways drivatars never have.
• Destruction - Stone walls in that trailer were hilariously exploding everywhere. Visually, that's fun as hell and probably better from a gameplay standpoint to keep things moving at a fast/arcadey pace, which is arguably where the Horizon games are at their best, but it's pretty ridiculous. Still, I'm okay with it as long as it's consistent. One of the mini-gripes I've had with the series is that sometimes it's been hard to tell what trees you could plow right through, what trees would slow you up, and what would stop you dead in your tracks. Part of me hopes all the stone walls just confetti explode every time just to simplify this.

Overall, I'm really excited. I have a few reservations over the online, um, "experience", but most of the changes they're making here are promising developments, and just the idea of more Forza Horizon is enough to get me pumped. Take my money.

@notnert427:

Actual players everywhere - Hmm.... The Drivatar thing in previous games felt a little stale, but I'm a bit concerned with the potential issues of a shared online world. Unless you allow them to join your game, there has to be some kind of "disallow collision" default so random jackwagons can't just go around plowing into everyone, right? I don't really want to be spammed by cars basically texting me constantly, either. Having played (and loved) the previous Horizon games as largely single player experiences, I'm not really looking for a car MMO at all. This will need some customization options in terms of your view. I don't particularly want to see everyone's dumb username above their car, and if you can disallow messaging and hide some of the custom liveries, all the better. It's going to spoil my experience a bit if I'm peacefully cruising through the beautiful Highlands and xxbluntsmoka420xx crashes into a wall at 230 mph in some hideously painted car and spams me some message. That said, there's some potential for some Far Cry-esque random dumb shit happening and spicing things up amusingly due to actual players driving around in ways drivatars never have.

Other players not in your party will ghost on contact and you can play totally offline and not see anyone at all.

It looked so damn good. I think we all expect it to be another solid game, which is why not many are discussing it as some huge announcement, but the setting is kind of a big deal to me as an Englishman. The dinky low walls, classic architecture, and iconic countryside views will be a great departure from golden Aussie sands and the other bright and bubbly biomes of the series. I can't wait.

I hope it's not ridiculously expensive this time. I waited like a year for the third one to go down to the $40 mark.

Rad.

I just wanna know if the weeb skins I downloaded in Horizon 3 will transfer over. Whoever made the Ryuubi Gentoku theme for that 98 Supra is my new best friend.

I love Forza physics in an open world, but I'm tired of the whole festival business. I'm curious to know what the new open-ended campaign is about.

The main question for me is the PC port quality, Horizon 3 released in a horrible state, several months of patching eventually got it to a decent place but even now the game won't run on certain processors.
Otherwise i am very into the idea of playing a new Horizon, and as a resident of England i love checking out the latest in hedge technology.

The seasons are so cool, it really elevates the play area into having a lot more variation.. and even then I already adored Horizon games for their variation. I am really excited for this, and the multiplayer aspect seems like where they always wanted the drivatars to be at. Because they just felt weird and a stand in for actually having an online world.

Are they doing the TDU thing where you can buy houses? It seemd like they kept showing cars leaving driveways. My assumption is that if you leave your car somewhere that's where it will be when you play again.

I doubt it. They had some "car meet" locations in previous Forza Horizon games that were occasionally driveways and served as fast travel locations that were "spawn points" of a sort you'd load into if you had fully quit out of the game from a random nearby spot the last time you played it. I'm guessing that's what that was, as I think they would have touted a "home" feature were it in the game.

I'm excited about the location. Scotland and the greater Edinburgh area is gorgeous. I hope that they do it justice. It would be so cool if they you could jump off the top Arthur's Seat. The rest of the game seems fine.

I do wonder if this will be one big open area like the other ones or separate smaller areas. As living in the UK just outside Edinburgh i dont see how they will manage to connect Edinburgh to what looked like parts of england without it feeling weird or taking hours to go between them.

They've always taken some liberties with that stuff and have consistently pulled it off well, so I expect the same here. It's not going to be to scale or even realistic, but they'll feature some real-world locales they want to highlight across the U.K. and shorten gaps between them with, say, non-specific farmland featuring general architectural/geographic touches befitting the area. I'm confident they'll get the "feel" right once again.

It'll be this. Minus Fred, of course. He's in prison.

My most major complaint about FH3 was the weird way they structured finding races. I'd love to see a checklist of events I can browse through in this one to jump straight to a race or event, but I get that eliminates the most appealing part of the game too in its open world element. Really excited for this, as I am all Forza games. 450 cars too. That's pretty cool!

I’m so into this game, Horizon 3 has used up more than 90% of my Xbox One S time since I got it last year so I’m really excited about the improvements. Really excited about the U.K. setting, it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing environmental details that are more familiar to me. Liking the change to multiplayer open world too, that’s going to make things feel a lot more vibrant. Just want to hear more about the soundtrack now - though really all I need to know is that there’s tracks from the new CHVRCHES album Love Is Dead on Horizon Pulse. Horizon Pulse without CHVRCHES would, at this stage, essentially be a crime.

I'll get this at or near launch and sink the customary 40+ hours into it that I sunk into 2 and 3.

It's a solid game and a worthy successor to 3.

I went from PC back to Xbox because of Game Pass on this one and even on a launch console it's solid.

I had my doubts of a Forza game taking place in GB. But i think it's there best open world yet, the rolly hills and small city landscape makes it pretty interesting road wise.I really like there version of the Scottish highlands, well made.

Also when it comes to there music choice i tend to stick to Hospital Records, most of the other music is just old, I really like M83 but those songs are like 10 years old and that MGMT Soulwax remix is up there to, it's a amazing song from 2007... I get it electronic music these days sucks with your typical EDM made for the masses song but there still some good stuff out there you just need to do a bit more digging.

Picked it up this past weekend and played a bunch on Sunday. I think I'm lvl 25 ish?

It seems decent. More of the same I'd say. Soundtrack hasn't been as good for me. I'm not a big music person, and I don't really seek new stuff out, so games like this are where I often discover new stuff I like. So far it's only been one song that I got hooked on: Makoto - Wading Through Crowds. Not a fan of all the stupid clothing/emote stuff because the WheelSpins are fun yet are clogged up with all that junk now and all I really want are more cars and money.. to buy more cars. Is there any real reason for the new houses? Weather is whatever.

But yea, overall it's more of the same Forza stuff. I say it every year and it's my biggest complaint with the Turn 10 games but, they haven't really evolved them. They just keep pumping a slightly altered version every year. Their lighting engine is still no where near the GT games so all the cars have a weird, toy-ish look to them. Many of the car models continue to be carry overs from entries long ago and it shows. They haven't expanded the tuning/modification stuff since Forza 2 really.

Still, its a good time waster if you like just driving around and doing races when you're bored.

Mentioned this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here:

I kind of wish this had been Forza Horizon 3. The jump from 2 to this game feels enormous, but the jump from 3 to 4 seems so iterative. They're just inching past their own concepts at this point. You can see them struggling to give events new wrinkles in an effort to make them feel new.

I really enjoy the game. It has top-of-class driving feel and, truly, it looks gorgeous, even on base hardware. But it's hard to shake the feeling that this is what Horizon 3 could have been, and would have felt like more of a leap for it.

I have found driving around to be a lot of fun - it's the first game since Burnout Paradise that I really enjoy just driving around in aimlessly

I think a problem for me personally was that the Subaru you get right off the bat if you pick it can get most things done well so I didn't really change cars to begin with.

Also some things I hate - NOT BEING ABLE TO SKIP THEIR TOTALLY STUPID VOICE ACTED MOMENTS. If it's covering loads I would much rather just sit there with nothing going on they are so bad.

Also the fact that you can't sell cars back once you've got them unless it's in the auction house really annoys me. You just have so many useless cars sitting around by a couple of hours in.

Also very small gripe but I don't like the body kits - they may make the cars better but they look baaad. Wish there was a way to apply the effects and not have to look at them.

Overall I am really enjoying it though - the last FH game I played was actually the first one - I got the second one briefly but didn't connect to it at all so this has been really awesome

This is my first Horizon game and I am absolutely loving it. Only thing I don't like is how ridiculous the prices of the houses are if you aren't a VIP member. I'm playing through game pass on PC which is awesome, but seems like they really try to get you to be a VIP player. Spinning the wheel is kinda fun and I don't mind getting new clothing items until it happens 5 times in a row when all I want is credits.

Still a great game.

@cjduke: What is the benefit of buying the houses? I've probably not paid attention to something and missed the point

@corvak: game pass gives you access on pc as well. If you already have game pass you should be able to just download from the windows store.

Some offer perks--for instance, the house I've set as "Home" provides me double the Forzathon payouts--but you can also use them as spots to upgrade and customize your car and character. That comes in handy, considering fast traveling back to the festival can cost upwards of 9,000 credits a pop.

The 'shared online world' was enough to make me ignore this game, the first Forza game I have not decided to buy. It's a shame they are abandoning single-player in favor of annoying multiplayer.

I guess I would say, they aren't? There is as much single player content in Horizon 4 as there has been in any previous installment, if not more. There just happens to be this additive multiplayer experience, also. The game gives you the ability to opt out of the shared open world if you choose.

@inevpatoria: Well it turns out that I have been paying such little attention that I didn't even know it cost cash to fast travel back to the festival ...

@bonbonetti: The 'shared online world' just means you can see other players driving around on your map. They can't drive into you or mess you up in anyway. You can participate in forzathon live every hour and its all teamwork stuff no competition. People in your game can start any of the exhibition races or even the story chapters and offer invites to everyone to do them competitively or cooperatively. Its not bothersome at all. Besides doing forzathon live events and competing in team races that I matched into I have played the rest of the game single player. Honestly the entire game is single player if you want it to be.

Yeah I've been saving up for the double forzathon points house and its taking forever. Granted I bought cars, but still, I haven't spent credits in 8+ hours saving up the 5 million. I guess I got pretty unlucky on some super wheel spins. There's also a 10 million and a 15 million credit house, even with double credits from being a VIP member that seems like a lot and I know one of those unlocks a barn find.