Unfinished: Forza Horizon 5 (10/10/2021)

Perfect way to kick off this Monday

The new Bronco design is so very ugly.

"...Haze is a little underwhelming." - Jeff Gerstmann

A good looking game so far!

You look beautiful Jeff

Livin' that Ms. Pacman life.

I expected Jeff to wear an orange bow, but this is nice too.

This was going to be a day one purchase for me but considering how similar it is to FH4 and the amount of stuff left to do for me in that game, I think I'll save my money for now.

Peak "little girl dad" hair there with the bow.

@vitz: Game Pass.

I was super curious if they would refer to the storm as a haboob. A missed opportunity to court the 12 year olds...

And to answer Jeff's question, yes, getting caught in one of these storms can reduce your visibility to 10 feet or less. I've been caught driving in a few milder ones in AZ and it is scary to suddenly not see any of your surroundings, much less street lights and car lights. Get off the road as quick as you can.

I'm a huge fan of Forza games, but this really looks like DLC for 4. Other than the assets there seems to be nothing radically different... even the topography of the world, except for the plant and tree asset swap, for the most part seems the same. Like at 30:45 in this video could be a screen shot from 4.

I know this is only a small potion of the entire game, but I was expecting a unique feel. Like different ways to earn credits or some sort of system changes.

I also wonder how much the Series X exclusive game drought from last year, and the need for Game Pass games influenced development on this. Feels like they just wanted this out quickly.

Looks great, but I agree with Jeff that it seems incredibly similar to 3 and 4. If I was pressed I wouldn't be sure it wasn't DLC for one of the last games. Maybe some of the graphical upgrades will make it obvious at 4K 60 when it's in my hands.

With Game Pass, it's a no brainer though. Even iterative updates or DLC for previous games become an easy "yes please"

Without having watched this, even if it's similar to FH4 I'm still probably gonna play the fuck out of it.

E: Was hoping he was gonna play using the fightstick. :(

The Forza Horizon gamers quickly became my favorite racer, the first game coincidentally set in my home state helped quite a bit.

I loved FH4 so much, it set the bar quite high and this looks to be more of the same. I cannot wait for November, and I am glad they skipped the regular Forza this cycle.

Yeah tear up them UNESCO World Heritage sites

Ahhhhh yes, are we finally ripping nice phat tyre smoke on the consoles with the new generation!

Forza Horizon 4 might be a top 5 open world game for me (you heard me!). I will Game Pass the crap out of this one.

This is one of the games Xbox fans should be excited about. Glad its also coming to PC.

Why is the video limited to 360p? Or is this just a me problem?

@greenbergmd: me, too! Looks grainy.

@beggary: I was able to DL straight from the website and get a 1080p version. Some maybe a Youtube issue?

@greenbergmd:

Not just a you problem.

360p is rough

YouTube takes a while to process HD versions of video uploads. Just watch it here using the GB player.

Genuinely interested in this as someone who hasn't played them before. Looks fun and I like the setting!

i started getting into these maybe last year. I played through a chunk of 2 then moved on to 3. I was a little surprised that it was so similar to 2, UI and all. But I'm fine with it. I didn't 100% 2, i had my fill of the map and races. I'm close to that with 3 and about ready to move on to 4. I don't have a forever game right now but this series kind of fills that slot for me.

As the visuals on these games get better and better, the fact that the world is completely devoid of all life is increasingly bigger and bigger issue for me. It's just so creepily empty - no wildlife, no pedestrians, no insect swarms, no dust or loose leaves shaking up when you crash into static trees, there's not even a single bird in the sky (at least FH4 had sheep). It's open-world uncanny valley.

@nillock: And yet they took an extra year for this new Forza Horizon game. Every single other FH had a 2 year cycle.

I'm a big fan of the Forza franchise, but am having a hard time getting excited for this one. It really does just look like more of the same with almost nothing new. I'll play it since it's on Game Pass, but I don't see much of a hook to keep me interested for that long.

Youtube rendering bein' funky. This has been up for five hours and I can still only watch it in 360p.

A thing Jeff didn't really get to is that the campaign structure is actually pretty different this time around. It's kinda like the LEGO DLC for FH4 honestly.

You complete a list of accolades by doing all kinds of stuff, like winning races, taking pictures of certain cars, completing danger signs/speedtraps/etc, sharing paintjobs, collecting complete manufacturer sets of cars, etc. those earn you Accolade Points. When you earn enough points, you upgrade the different parts of the festival, unlocking new features, new events, and new Horizon Adventure chapters, like one where you go explore some old ruins to find a new festival site. You choose the parts of the festival you want to upgrade, meaning you can choose to focus on unlocking lots of cross-country racing, or street racing, or the skill events, etc.

@bogard: Yah and since the ChewieBomb app is still out of commission I had to use my TVs browser ..ugh

It's just so much like Forza Horizon 4 that I am probably not going to get it.

@jeff Have you tried that Cruis'n Blast game for the Switch? I've heard some people talking it up and there's so few arcade racers out there anymore.

The new Jeff (OLED Model) looks cool!

Man I tried and tried but watching Jeff lately just makes me even more depressed than I am already. Not saying he has to love every game but just mumbling over a bad audio mix is too frustrating to watch (and listen to) for me. And it’s been happening a ton recently, the Audio seems to be all over the place these days.

Jeff drives like my mom

Thirty people probably already said it but Cruis'n Blast and Hot Wheels Unleashed just came out. Both really fun arcade racers. That said I can't wait for Horizon 5 next month. Probably my most anticipated game even with Elden Ring and Halo Infinite on the Horizon. I felt like the UK setting of Horizon 4 got stale pretty quick even though I have over 100 hours in that game. Now I tend to go back and play Horizon 3 when I get the urge because the terrain in that game was much more varied.

@madmatt213: It's almost as if something really cataclysmic happened between this and the last forza to impede game development in some fashion... 🤔🤔🤔

Another "fondle your naughty bits via a ton of hollow prattle voice-overs" game.

Please sleep Jeff.

Good lord the writing and tone seems so pandering here.

@goosemunch: I felt the same about 4 and was the main reason I dropped it. Played for a couple hours and it just felt lifeless. All the fidelity in the world can’t account for style or vision. At least the settings is interesting this time.

Exactly. For $60 I wouldn't be excited, way too similar to FH4. For a Game Pass game, super excited to run in a new part of the world.

I believe the decision to skip Motorsport in favour of another Horizon is more likely due to how popular Horizon has gotten but also how much less popular the Motorsport ones have been as of late. I just don't think it would have been the right call to maintain the usual cadence. The last few years have seen a slew of racers that compete in that sim-style genre.

Between the F1 games, Project Cars (1/2) and Assetto Corsa Competizione, you have progressively more sim-heavy games that appeal more and more to that slice of deluded race fan, myself included.What puts me off of Motorsport these days would be the rubberbanding (both in AI and multiplayer) and the lack of a proper penalty system. Think of any real track you know. Now think of a line of immovable barriers added from the apex of a corner back to where the barriers usually are. That's been the solution to stomp out blatant corner cutting. It's... messy.

So I think this extra time to find a new approach hopefully pays off. No other sim/simcade comes as close to looking as good as Forza does. Even the roster of tracks on the older Motorsports were great too. So, here's to hoping.

Probably couldn't tell this and four apart by looking at the gameplay...that said, while I didn't end up playing the previous game for *that* many hours in the end, I'm still gonna give this one a whirl (cause Game Pass, obviously!) to bring some color to this time of the year.

wow.... this game... I thought NFS HEAT was cringe... now this is cringe...

Excited to play this game, and hopefully do so with my friends, but I couldn't get them into 4, and I see basically nothing new here other than maybe more off-roading?

Best looking game this generation, so far.

Maybe Flight Simulator broke me in some ways, but some of the distant terrains looks... not great?

da car games

sorry could not resist

>goes and plays GTA Online like an idiot

I have played all of the Forza games, except FH2, and do not recall any rubberbanding AI in the main-line Forza games, and may have only experienced a slight rubberbanding in FH. It may have been how I had the drivatar difficulty set, but in general, if I managed to have a clean race and stay ahead, I won. The only time the AI caught up to me was if I made mistakes. In general, this was also my experience in the FH games. The only possible AI issue I could think of is with FH4's Fortune Island. Sometimes, on the cross country races, the AI seemed to be so fast that I could not catch up, no matter how clean my laps were. Although, this would not be considered rubberbanding.