Many years have passed since I didn't play a good racer, I mean here the arcade genre, as on the simulator side we have Project Cars 2 and the rest. Forza Horizon 4 is the game that ate up my dozens of hours of gameplay in the last week. Personally, I'm the type who gets bored of a game after a few hours, so the fact that this game managed to keep my eyes on the monitor is an achievement!
Forza Horizon 4 is also the first game in the series that I play intensely, in the past I was an NFS fan and at that time I didn't feel the need to try anything else. But as NFS has been failing for a few years now, Forza Horizon 4 is like a breath of fresh air in the Arcade Racing category. Yes, I know there is The Crew 1 and 2, but unfortunately this series only convinced me that it is a pathetic copy of NFS World, which disappeared some time ago. I could say that Horizon 4 is what Test Drive Unlimited 2 was supposed to be from the beginning, a game in which I also lost tens of hours, even if it was full of problems. His problems were more in the difficult control of the cars and obviously he did not receive any improvement, after Atari closed everything, including the multiplayer servers.
So forza Horizon 4 being made by Microsoft, it will receive updates for at least another 2 years, just like it was with Horizon 3. Forza Horizon 4 is an open world racer that has a map of about 70KM square, so we have room to we walk until we get bored. The game keeps the formula adopted in Horizon 3. Basically the player is put in a location and has to participate in a racing festival. The landscape in the game is varied, we have straight roads, forests, mountains, cities and obviously pitless highways where we can accelerate with the car to the maximum. There are specially designed places on the map where you can jump by car to collect Skill Points, with which you can then unlock various perks or perks, on each car.
The game has several variants, the Standard one costs $ 60 in the Microsoft Store or you can get it for 40 Euros from G2A or Kinguin. In the Standard version we have over 400 cars, among which we find SUVs, vans, vans, buggies and almost everything that has four wheels, even some three-wheeled cars. The 3D models reproduce the cars very well and in detail, and Microsoft probably paid a lot of money for licenses. Each car can be tuned, although visually we don't have too many options, as there are in NFS, at the component level there are quite a lot, but the fun part comes after you install all the parts on the car and start the real tuning from ECU and others. components such as wheel pressure, suspension mode, aerodynamics, automatic transmission, differential and more. Therefore, even if you put the coolest parts, you can get even more performance, in addition you can optimize the car depending on what race you are going to do.
The game does not impose restrictions on the number of cars in the garage, so you can buy as many identical cars as you want and modify them as you like, making each car for a certain type of race, so you will not have to change the tuning before each race. After raising money and getting a new car, the first thing you will definitely do is this tuning, because stock cars are slow, or at least that's the feeling I was left with. Each car has its own driving style, so we have a different handling depending on traction, weight and what tires we have on it. In addition, the driving mode can be changed from the game settings. Here we can activate or deactivate various assistants, such as ABS, stabilization or traction control, we also have a normal driving mode and a simulation. The simulation is a bit strange, so I stayed normal. I often preferred to play with the stopped assistants, because there are moments when I felt that traction control slows you down, especially in curves. For those who are just starting to play, there is also assistance with steering and braking, the car driving partially partially, but so all the fun disappears. In online racing each player can participate with their preferred support settings.
To add a little uniqueness to your car, Forza Horizon 4 offers an extremely advanced vinyl and tattoo system, which will surely consume a lot of your time to create the desired design. If you don't have artistic talent, it's not a problem, you can easily download a ready-made drawing. The drawings are made by the community, and some of them are real works of art. But if you install such a vinyl, you should know that you can no longer make changes unless you remove it from the car.
The game offers us a lot of types of races in which we can participate: speed circuits, dirt, off-road, cross, drag and others. In addition to the Online mode, we obviously have a Story mode, and the way it is served to us is an intelligent one, based on scenarios, these being separated from the seasonal races, which change weekly. The scenarios are ten in number, and they make you a good man at all. In one scenario you have to do stunts, in another you have to be the driver of a vlogger, in another you have to test cars for rent, and these are just a few examples, and besides, each has a number of chapters, which take place in various locations on the entire map. In addition to these scenarios, there are various points of interest on the map where we have to perform various actions, for example Speed Trap, in which we must get as high a speed as possible on the predefined road segment, or in drift areas, where we have to get a score as high as possible.
Each race offers us several ways in which we can do it, such as Solo, PVP, Co-Op or Rival. In Solo mode we have Drivatar, that's what the players led by the game's AI are called. They have the names and cars of the real players. Before the start of each race or in the general settings of the game we can choose the performance level of the Drivatar. Here we can choose from New Racer to Unbeatable. In Unbeatable mode you will laugh a little, because you can go at 350KM / h with a super car, and the AI will overtake you with a weaker car, as if it were going at 500KM / h. Here I could say that Microsoft still has little work to do, because the same thing happens at lower levels of difficulty.
The dynamic weather in the game is divided into four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each season lasts 7 days, and with the arrival of a new one, the weather changes in the game and new events and races appear. So in winter we have races on a frozen lake, and the tuning of the cars we play with this season must be changed, because we have cold asphalt and snow, or in autumn when the ground is wet, we have to adapt our driving style and car tuning. This dynamic of the game is to be appreciated, practically cutting from monotony. Also in the game we have rain plus day and night cycle. We still need to get out of the car, like in GTA. This would be possible because we already have a staff that we create at the beginning of the game, and during this we can earn clothes and other accessories that we can wear. In addition to accessories, we can get various dance moves or lines that we can give in the game, during the races or in free roam.
In order to have access to the online game mode, you have to finish the prologue, which will practically go through the four seasons, but in the form of a story and interactive races. Once you're online and walking down the street, you can interact with the players next to you, and the HeadToHead option gives you the opportunity to challenge another player directly to a fast race. Online we also have a very strong event, called Forzaton, where all the players on the server participate. This Forzaton is like a meeting where everyone plays in the same team and has to complete various tasks and collect points to move on to the next event. Points earned after the event can be spent in the Forzaton Shop.
The game is cross-platform, so we have players that are on PC and Xbox at the same time. So far no one was able to send in the perfect solution, which is not strange. Obviously the problem can be from the poor internet of the other players. Co-Op races can be conducted with up to six players on the same team. In this chapter, Forza Horizon 4 earns me even more respect, because it makes the experience with friends even more fun. And in the future we could see competitions at Esports events in this way.
Another part of appreciation is related to where you go in a certain race. You don't have to go out first to get credits and influence points, it's important to finish the race. Once a race is over, it does not disappear from the map, no matter where you went, instead it will be marked with a laurel, so that it can be more easily identified. In the game any action can bring you points; even the exit from the road in the bushes or in the stone walls on the edge. Even if you destroy trees, you still get points. It sounds funny, but this scoring system will make you take a 4 × 4 car with which to go offroad just to make points to unlock perks on cars. Many players do this, so you should not be ashamed. Personally, I made a race through the Blueprints system, where I can collect money faster, after finding on Youtube a lot of people who practice this technique, it being obviously legal, because it is actually a race in which you lose 4-5 minutes. This system of Blueprints that allows players to create their own races and routes, adds a touch of freedom and thus can diversify the game, even if Microsoft does not add new races, you will always find community-made races. We can say that it is a kind of Steam Workshop. When we make a route, we can do it based on an already existing race, but here we have the possibility to set what types of cars can participate or what the weather will be like. There is an obvious limit, but this is only given by the length of the route, which can be a maximum of 67 km.
Shopping for cars is easier than I expected. Although Forza Horizon 4 has quite expensive DLC that gives you new cars and other things, existing cars are enough, and they can be bought with race credits. Credits are made in several ways, obviously through races, but also at the wheel of fortune, where we have two options, one that offers you a prize and another that offers you three prizes. Here, in addition to money, we can win cars, horn sounds, or clothing and accessories for the Driver. The chances of access to the wheels of luck can be obtained by advancing in level. Yes, the game has a level for each player. So we don't have insensitive micro-transactions like the ones in NFS. I'd rather give $ 50 and buy the Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Add-Ons Bundle, which includes VIP access and Car Pass, than give the money to NFS so I can play the lottery for car parts. So Microsoft's Note 10, because you're not as greedy as other game makers.
I liked to find in the game new car models but also older ones, plus there are a lot of manufacturers that I haven't even heard of, the game even offers us trucks with which to take to the streets of England. If you have cars in the garage that you want to get rid of in order to make extra money, they can be put up for auction. Also, if you want a certain car, you can search in the auction section, where someone is definitely selling the model that interests you. Auctions can be organized for a minimum of one hour and a maximum of 24 hours, during which time the car will disappear from the garage. Also at auctions you can set a starting price and an instant purchase price. In the game we also have Barn Cars, just like in Horizon 3 and 2. Here you have to discover the hidden barns, and inside there are abandoned cars, which once discovered you receive them in the garage. Personally, I bought the Treasure Map DLC which costs 3 euros, so get rid of the hassle of discovering the locations hidden on the map. Therefore 3 euros for another 15 cars, I say it's worth it.
The map also reveals locations for Bonus Boards and Beauty Spots. There are cars that you can earn by unlocking all the perks of another car. And the unlocked car comes with certain bonuses, for example you can get more influence points or double points while drifting. These cars are marked Forza Edition. Obviously these can also be purchased from the auction house. To access the Autoshow menu, garage or auctions, you need to go to one of your homes or go to Horizon Festival. The game provides you with several houses to buy, the advantage being the fast travel to get to various places faster.
To navigate through the game, without opening the map, the virtual assistant ANNA comes to our aid, which automatically indicates locations according to need, from the menu you can choose if you want to race or if you want to gain points of influence. From here you can stop the Head To Head interaction or you can see the new races of the season you are in. From the menu we have access to something interesting called Drone Mod, which allows us to walk freely around the car, practically from a drone. One that you can't raise too much unfortunately.
Up to 72 players can participate in one session online, so the server will not be invaded by thousands of players at the same time. In the list of players we can see the level of each and the car they are driving. From here we can also choose to make a convoy. One of the interesting races is called The Halo Experience Showcase. Maybe you already know by name what we will see here. Yes, it's basically like a Halo mission, where we're on an alien planet from which we have to escape because a bomb has been planted. During the mission we can hear Cortana driving a Warthog M12S. These Showcase races are totally different from a normal race. In one you compete with a train, in another with a plane etc…
The experience of online racing is unique, especially if you come across Russians who deliberately enter you and shout into the microphone while holding their lungs, as a result I have closed any audio communication with those in the game, long live Discord. It is to be appreciated that I have not yet coded, which would further ruin the online experience. Obviously they exist, but they are rare, and when caught they are banned immediately.
The cars are very well controlled from both the gamepad and the keyboard. Forza Horizon 4 manages to reconcile everyone, but I did not try the steering wheel, but because it is not a racing simulator, I will not try. On the optimization side, it can be said that it is excellent, and Microsoft has done something smart in the graphics settings. They have added an option that dynamically changes the quality of the visuals, so you have as many FPS as possible.
I tested the game on an AMD RX 590 with Ryzen 1800x but also on a Ryzen 1700 with GTX 1070 Ti. On the system with RX590 I tried with the dynamic settings on Ultra, and it worked flawlessly, while on GTX 1070 I manually put everything on Ultra. The only FPS drops I had when I made the captures with Shadowplay, which was set to Full HD with 30FPS and 40Mb / s. In some areas the game dropped below 60FPS, but I have to mention that from the nVidia control panel, I set everything to the maximum in the 3D settings manually, so I had Super Sampling 8x, 16x anisotropic and everything possible on and quality . These settings increase the quality of the game, beyond what the game already offers. The graphics in the game look great, even if some textures on the floor seem to be from the '80s, we are still in the era of DirectX12 and RayTracing, it would be interesting a more complex visual update, but maybe this will happen in the next game in 2 years . Otherwise the water and the effects that appear when walking through mud, snow, bushes or when breaking the stone fences on the side of the road are ok. Also the sound part is good, there is nothing to complain about. In the game we also have a radio with good music, but we can also listen to music on Spotify. Overall I can honestly say that this game will receive the first place in the arcade racing category in 2018. Otherwise we will play Fallout 76 and BF5. We see which of them is more interested and which deserves the next review.