Why aren't there more games that are as relentlessly pleasant as the Forza Horizon series? There should be.

There are a lot of things to like about the Forza Horizon series, including the cutting edge graphics, massive maps with a seemingly limitless number of things to do, and rock solid arcade racing gameplay.

The thing that stands out to me as most different about the series, though, is that it's the most pleasant AAA game series ever made, as far as I can tell. In Forza Horizon there is competition but there is virtually no conflict outside of that. Your driver isn't trying to run from corrupt cops or win enough money to save his dying daughter or do anything except win races, do cool stunts, and party 24/7. This makes the game basically stress free, especially when you're not focused on winning a race or challenge. It's a joy to just go out there and explore, and it's constantly rewarding, showering you with cars and new activities and radio stations telling you how awesome you are and remarking on your exploits.

This, as it turns out, is a lot of fun!

It's also extremely rare in gaming, especially big budget gaming.

The vast majority of games have you in some grim conflict, murdering people to stay alive or barely surviving impossible odds. Even something like Sunset Overdrive, which is bright and goofy, technically takes place in the post-apocalypse where almost everyone in the city has been zombified and you are splattering their left over bodies. Katamari Damacy is funny and bright and colorful, and has no enemies, but it can get tough at points and the King of the Cosmos yells at you if you underperform.

Why don't other companies make bright, frothy, games like Forza Horizon? Such things exist in other media. There's happy music, happy books, happy TV shows and movies. Yes you need some kind of conflict for media that's narrative driven, but Forza Horizon manages this by having you compete against people in a friendly manner, or try to accomplish visually exciting tasks like surveying a volcano or racing a train even though there's no real danger. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to do something similar in other genres but there are very few games that are as downright celebratory and outright happy as this series.

It really seems like an underserved slice of the market. Nintendo comes closest, but even in Mario you have Bowser kidnapping the princess and horror themed enemies and areas. Splatoon is a bright game about squidkids having paint fights but it has a dark post-apocalyptic story underlying it. And those games have a kiddy aesthetic while Forza Horizon is joyous but clearly pitched primarily at adults.

I just want more games where I can drive a parade float through a gorgeous party at night with fireworks going off and then jump it into a canyon while people cheer. Instead most games are about grim death and knifing people in the throat.

Video games can be anything and create any world imaginable. Why are so many of them violent and dark?

I think Animal Crossing New Horizons does this better than Forza.

It's just a bit tiring that I'm constantly being talked to as if I'm some sort of racing superstar, while I'm actually pretty bad at most of the things the game throws at me. I love the Forza Horizon series, but the positivity and enthusiasm from its characters often feels somewhat dishonest.

The only coming up game that I'm guessing will take a lot of inspiration from the Forza Horizon series is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown because it's going to be another open-world driving game.

I can admit that Forza Horizon is an excellent open-world driving game series that features tons of luxury cars, off-road vehicles and a lot of things that players can do.

@warpr: Animal Crossing is comfortable but not pleasant all the time. New Horizons gets closer with the elimination of Mr. Reseti, but even then you have animals who get mad at you, animals who leave your island, animals that are having a bad day or are just generally sour. This helps make the game more poignant and feel more real, but it also keeps the atmosphere from being quite so frothy and happy. You can log into Animal Crossing and have a downer experience if your favorite animal is leaving or whatever, and especially if you've been not logging in for a bit. Not in Horizon.

I don't see the "you're a racing superstar" stuff as any different from games that talk about what a badass you are when you finally just barely beat a boss after dying to them 20 times. It's just the storyline and it's better than all the games that call you a bum and a loser even after you've just stopped some impossible threat (which used to happen a lot more than it does these days.) I mean even if you flop spectacularly in a fight in Arkham City and get killed the thugs are still terrified of Batman. This is no different. And considering the percentage of races you DO win and all the stuff you do even if you don't win them all etc... you still would be a superstar in real life. Pobody's nerfect!

Forza Horizon and Animal Crossing series are both totally different kinds of games because one is an open-world arcade-style driving game while the other one is a social-simulation game so it's an invalid comparison.

The OP question was why aren't there more relentlessly pleasant games, not more relentlessly pleasant open world driving games. Its a completely valid comparison.

Pretty much any movie that is "unendingly cheery" has some aspect of it that's kinda dark. Humanity is strange like that, as soon as something 100% pure and happy and wonderful comes along, we're automatically a little suspicious. When something shitty happens, though, we're just like "yeah that's life".

Anyway, I think you should play Astroneer. Forza Horizon is a lot of fun but its constant barrage of music, challenge, loud engine noises, and pop ups everywhere isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think "happy, calm, peaceful place". That's Astroneer. Or Satisfactory. Or good old Minecraft. Or Factorio on peaceful mode.

I whole heartedly agree with the OP - the one thing that I immediately picked up on when playing forza horizion 5 was just how cheery it was, but not in a saccharin way - it actually put a smile on my face and made me think, man the developers of this game must actually enjoy their job. It's just a pleasant place to be and explore.

Personally, I think a driving festival is pretty grim. Think of the ecological damage. The wasted money. The property damage. Man's continue lack of awareness of it's ruining in service of meeting it's sick pleasure. Truly, there is no greater horror.

@justin258: That's not true. There are lots of movies that definitely do the "dark undercurrent in a cheerful world" thing, just like there are with games, but there are also movies that are basically happy throughout. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The 40 Year Old Virgin. Coming to America. Yes there are some conflicts in these movies and a few characters who are not super nice, but even those elements are often misunderstandings more than any real darkness, and they are necessities for a media that's as narrative driven as cinema (conventional movie structure requires dramatic tension). Music, which doesn't have that same requirement, is often even more purely joyous, and depending on the genre games don't have the dramatic tension requirements of cinema.

Forza isn't calm or peaceful, it's celebratory. A parade isn't calm or peaceful either, but that doesn't mean it's not pleasant. I think Minecraft in survival mode has a lot of very dark elements (people legitimately get scared by the exploding creepers) and can be a lot more stressful than Horizon.

I have to disagree. I am disappointed that FH5 didn't delve into some of the socio-political issues of Mexico, such as cartels and police corruption.

Just kidding, I agree with your post. Forza has always been a celebration of cars. There are plenty of games that are "violent and dark". No need to shoehorn that into every game.

As long as the experience doesn't involve playing with other people online.

I just wish it'd let me drive during the first forever instead of ceaselessly yapping at me overly-excited voices.

Fully agreed, even if I found Horizon 4 to be even too positive to my liking. Still, a couple of games come to mind. Shenmue for example, while there is personal conflict at the heart of it, life goes on. Folks are sympathetic to Ryo but his quest doesn't really concern them. And Ryo is not in any kind of a hurry to avenge his father because it's not going to bring him back. So often his quest is simply to go talk to some people and see what you can find out, and if you don't find anything there is always another day.

Then of course there are the Leisure Suit Larry games. While Larry comes off as a creep by modern standards and some of the humor it a product of its time, it is so much fun to play a game where your only objective is to get laid. Well, you do foil a supervillain's plan for world domination at the end of Larry 2 so maybe that doesn't count.

@geirr: It definitely has an overly chatty onboarding period, which is true of a lot of games.

@apewins: I think Shenmue definitely has a dark core and I don't actually think it's particularly lighthearted or what I'd call 'pleasant.' It has a calm vibe and it shows the mundanity of every day life but that involves driving a forklift or whatever. I'd call it more meditative in the way it forces you to adapt to its pace, but it's built around parental murder, which is pretty dark IMO.

Leisure Suit Larry comes closer, though obviously with less universal appeal. I think that you could make an argument for the Monkey Island games as well, because though they obviously have violence and stuff in them they are just so goofy that it never comes off as dark or threatening. A fair number of older adventure games had this kind of tone, but it seems like they died out and modern adventure games are much more likely to focus on horror for whatever reason.

I was originally going to write about Moonglow Bay, and how it handles a Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley day/night cycle without the pressure of abiding by any of it since you can sleep whenever and fish whenever and none of the villagers pressure you into doing their chores... but then I just remembered how the game starts and the story can be pretty sad in the beginning.

But the actual act of playing it is a joy. Everyone is so positive and constantly praising you and your cooking/fishing. I really just wanted a place to tell people to check out Moonglow Bay.

It's been a long time since I've seen Coming to America, but there's definitely a serious idea behind all of the jokes and corny humor and Eddie Murphy's bad accent. The whole movie is centered around the idea of a man so rich and powerful that he has incredible difficulty understanding anything about average Joe's life, especially in poor areas of American cities. Yes, a lot of the joke is that Eddie Murphy's character is a funny foreigner, but - as I recall the movie - there's a lot there about being uber-rich as well.

Why don't other companies make bright, frothy, games like Forza Horizon? Such things exist in other media.

Are you looking for a specific kind of "bright, frothy" game? You mentioned "celebratory", so does something like Fall Guys count? Do you mean something aimed at adults, or at least older teenagers and up? If so, then... I don't know of much that's really aimed sqaurely at an older crowd that is also very cheery or happy go lucky or whatever. Usually something made for a whole family can just pull double-duty.

I think there are a lot of reasons for this, anyway. One of the more interesting thoughts can be seen in this very comment section.

I love the Forza Horizon series, but the positivity and enthusiasm from its characters often feels somewhat dishonest.

Humanity is strange like that, as soon as something 100% pure and happy and wonderful comes along, we're automatically a little suspicious. When something shitty happens, though, we're just like "yeah that's life".

Fully agreed, even if I found Horizon 4 to be even too positive to my liking.

"too positive to my liking", "somewhat dishonest", and from my own comment, "yeah that's life". Are some people just automatically suspicious of something trying to be as positive and earnest and upbeat as Forza Horizon, such that they can only take so much of it before they go back to their melodramatic, thematically dark stuff? There's a comment in The Matrix that the machines built a perfect life for the humans to exist in virtually, but they rejected it - it was too perfect.

For my own part, I don't think Horizon's atmosphere has ever been dishonest, but I can only take so much loud bubblegum pop everything before I have to move on to something calm. I've played every Forza Horizon except 3 and 5, 5's on the to-play list, I love playing them, I can't do any more than like thirty or forty hours of gametime. It doesn't necessarily bring me feelings of unending positivity and fun when thinking about the series. I mentioned Astroneer above, and several other games, because those games do make me feel all warm and happy inside, rather unendingly if my decade on-off Minecraft addiction is any indication, even if in some way it's just repetitive work, and even if Satisfactory/Factorio have some pretty bleak commentary hiding just under the surface. Forza Horizon has never done that for me. It eventually becomes a bit of a sensory overload.

I just remembered that Riders Republic came out recently, and I am pretty sure that is the exact vibe they were trying to go for in that game. I did not spend any time with it though.

@justin258: I don't think there's any real darkness in Coming to America. Yes there's the concept that Akeem needs to grow up, but he's just portrayed as slightly spoiled. There's also the conflict with Semmi and the break up with Lisa that add a little dramatic tension, but the stakes are not serious. Akeem just needs some maturity and he is joyous and happy for the majority of the movie. The squabbles with Semmi and Lisa are obviously going to get resolved. It's mostly just a happy movie about happy people without too many troubles.

I think Fall Guys does sort of count as a similar vibe except obviously more violent and with the element of real competition with most players in a given match obviously losing. There's definitely a similarity in the bright and gaudy visuals and upbeatness though.

Not every game is going to be for everybody, and obviously there will be people who find the brightness of Forza Horizon 5 to be irritating for various reasons. I'm not saying every game should be like that or that it has universal appeal. I'm saying that I feel like it's an underused aesthetic especially in AAA games. You might prefer a calmer and more peaceful environment to get you into a Zen state and obviously I'm not going to argue that's wrong. I just think there are a ton of games that offer that kind of thing in various forms, while celebratory games are much rarer.

The first thing that popped into my mind is Sable. The game looks and sound gorgeous and there are no fail states. The people in that world are just nice weirdos and the game itself is about being free and finding purpose. I suppose the climbing could be mechanically frustrating but I was always happy just to float on to something else or try again when I feel.

Can you define "celebratory" a little better? I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but it seems to me like you've muddied, a bit, what you're looking for. Do you specifically mean a super-energetic party atmosphere? The descriptors you're using bring that to mind, but you brought up Katamari Damacy which is energetic but not really "party" or "festival"-ish. Does Guitar Hero or Rock Band fit what you're looking for? Mario Kart? Burnout Paradise? Smash Bros.? Overcooked? Mount Your Friends? A Hat In Time? Rocket League? You don't seem to be looking for competition, but... I mean... Forza Horizon 5 is loaded with competition. It doesn't feel like it because it showers you with praise at every possible moment and never highlights your losses, but... it's still about beating that high score and crossing the finish line first.

If "bright and gaudy and upbeat and energetic" are what you're looking for, then I feel like there's a lot to find.

@justin258: I'm not "looking" for anything. I'm more commenting that it's strange that Forza Horizon is rare in its positivity by AAA game standards and it shouldn't be as unusual. Most of the other comparable games people have mentioned have been indies or very old. Games just aren't cheerful all that often.

If I were to define what I mean it would probably be extremely energetic and positive. I think Burnout Paradise comes pretty close, but it's trying to be "edgy" in a way that Horizon isn't and it's kind of violent in its own way. Rocket League has the same issue as Fall Guys in that it's built around competition. Forza Horizon does have multiplayer racing (including its own Battle Royale) if you want, but it has a ton of other non-competitive or even co-operative. Fall Guys and Rocket League are always somewhat stressful because you're playing against other people and there has to be a winner and a loser. That undercuts the positivity because it's not fun to lose over and over. In Forza Horizon you can just go hunt for XP boards or turn down the difficulty and dominate races if you want, or practice your danger jumps and speed zones etc... There's a lot of very low stress content that those other games don't have. It's actually not all about beating that high score and crossing the finish line first. The game has beauty spots (in prior iterations) and barn finds to locate and lots of random open world activities that you can spend hours on. Or you can just farm XP by powersliding your car around in a field, which a lot of people do.

I think that Rock Band and Fuser and other Harmonix games often do capture a similar atmosphere, though again because those games have fail states you can get booed and insulted in a way that you can't in Forza Horizon.

It's a positive, energetic, but also welcoming and stress free vibe that's rare in video games. It's not unique, but its unusual. Meanwhile gaming has literally dozens of recent AAA games where you're like a lone survivor chopping up zombies or other people, or a soldier shooting other soldiers in the face.

Part of this is a reaction to having spent October almost exclusively playing horror themed games and seeing just how many of those there are, while games that are celebratory in atmosphere are actually pretty rare, especially in the modern AAA space.

That Sega blue sky era, baby.

I keep thinking about Trackmania as being very pleasant, but i guess you could argue that it's not AAA.

This very enjoyable blog BRG wrote on this very forum a few months ago still sits in the back of my head whenever i think about Trackmania. There aren't many rock climbing games out there!

Personally, Gabriel Knight 3 is my pleasant game. Sure it features child kidnapping , religious themes and spooky vampires, but playing that game feels like taking a vacation to a sleepy french town. You get to ride your bike around the place, you get to chase a mystery, you get to hang out with hotel guests. There's a tour + guide. And it's actually a real place to boot! Some people are straight up going to Rennes-le-chateau as some sort of Gabriel Knight pilgrimage

Forza really does this well. It clicked for me in a race when I realized if I was doing well, they gave me points for running a really smoothe line, and if I was screwing up they were still giving me points for breaking things and "drifting", which I totally meant to do. They basically throw points at you no matter how you play, and it really discourages looking for a solved <Best Way> to do things.

I agree completely that Forza Horizon is a wonderful joyous experience.

I think the Skate series is similar in that respect (security guards are the exception, but their just doing their job.)

Forza is a celebration of cars, skate is a celebration of skating.

A lot of sport franchises are similar, but they're kind of they're own thing.

Yoku's Island Express comes to mind as a joyous game, but I haven't played it in a long while so may have forgotten some darker element in that game.

@topcat88: Yoku's Island Express has kind of a dark story if you think about it. It's a pleasant locale to be sure, but the actual story being told is full of danger and darkness like most games.

The difference with Forza Horizon is that it's purely positive. The most negativity you get is some friendly challenge from someone who might think they're a better driver than you but unlike in almost every other game isn't nasty or mean about it (I think the first game did have some of that, but certainly not the latest few.) Other than that literally everyone wants to be your friend or fan or whatever.

Boku No Natsuyasumi is a franchise about a kid on vacation just exploring whatever town he's staying in. It's incredibly chill and charming with no negative or dark aspects that I can recall.