Forza: Horizon

So what is Forza: Horizon?

Well if you know your racing games, you know Forza is…well, a racing game. But what’s the Horizon got to do with this? 

Are we constantly driving off into the Horizon like we can’t escape the end credits of some cheesy 80’s cop show? Are we the Horizon patiently waiting for the sun to stop cheekily poking its head over us before finally getting bored of its peek-a-boo style game and staying down to give the moon its chance? Or has Forza packed in this silly “racing” idea and become a science and nature game that predominantly airs on BBC at 3 in the morning? Well none of those of course although the first does bring back memories of Dessert Bus.

 No, the Horizon in question is a massive festival that has taken over an area that resembles all of the non-residential parts of America smashed together. Imagine the biggest festival you’ve ever been to, then multiply that by 100 and add cars racing through it. Seriously, even the guy who owns the Glastonbury field was apprehensive at first, whoever owns this small nation must be clinically insane!

Let’s get started. Game play: In all honesty, differs very little from most other driving games; triggers for acceleration, braking and reverse; analog sticks for camera use in both car and third-person camera and A for when you want to handbrake turn, pull a sweet Tokyo drift style… um… drift around that massive banking corner, and possibly even to pass first and win in such style almost demanding you brag about it on the chat room/message board thing that it constantly berates you with. That would be the case if it weren’t for the game interpreting your slight tap of the handbrake as you wanting to spin endlessly into a barrier while everyone else zips passed your overly cocky, now mangled, twat of an avatar. Oh and even if you do manage to pull it off, good luck acting all pompous through your Chat-pad because the uploading of anything was an arse, hitting maybe 10% of the time and leading to a fair bit of loading.

So, as you can tell, innovation isn’t Forza's strong suit. No, this game wears a very different suit, probably Armani or Hugo Boss. What I mean is the licensing. Now, in a game with cars, I am expecting some car brands to show up and Forza obviously provides this, but to an almost scary degree. The flash up of the manufacturer’s badge before the shot of the car, that lasts a little bit longer than you think it should, shows off the best angles of the logo and name just in case you missed it the first time, Blindy Mcgee. But that’s not all, while hurtling through the streets of wherever-the-hell-we-are town, you’ll be bombarded with brands, Oakley being the biggest offender but having its friends Bose and Goodyear close behind. The main problem is that when you’re going 120mph, trying to dodge both oncoming traffic and the slow arse N.P.C’s that choose to drive with due thought of the law (even though it’s become fender-crunchingly obvious that you aren’t welcome around these parts unless you travel everywhere in 5^th gear). You hardly see the bloody things! This is the opposite point of advertising, although it will work eventually when you plough right into an advert because you were trying to figure out what the last one said. 

In some of the loading screens, the game tells you about some of the bands “playing” at Horizon and it even does the Grand Theft Auto thing of letting you choose the radio station, but licensing music is OK. I’d rather listen to The Hives than the people that radio in to take up another 10 seconds of your time when you thought you might be able to drive again.

Sometimes it seems like the game wants to load more than it wants you to play it, or more like enjoy all the detail put into this tents and lights and the odd actual person but in its favor the loading times to load an entire world still skilfully drift in circles around Sonic 2006 and speed off with a powerful bellow of the engine. Speaking of lights, the lighting effects in Forza Horizon are pretty bad especially when the sun gets to the Horizon, the one off in the distant with the sun and shit not the one you’re at with raves and intelligent festival goers, choosing to stubbornly remain at whatever band they’re at instead of being smeared all over the road.

 As soon as that sun starts to goes down you just have to pray that the current track stays straight and you haven’t pushed the devilish A button recently, the helpful little arrows disappear and you’re left at the mercy of temporary blindness and a literal highway to crashing and failure. 

The story itself isn’t much to talk about, there are these “bosses” for lack of a better word that you race against in order to work your way up the ranks and gain different colored wrist bands. These “bosses” are just “celebrities” of the festival and the only people to get first names, now I’m not going to even pretend that I’ve finished the game because it’s one of those for me like FIFA. I play it when I’m taking breaks from playing other games or when I’m drunk, but the game keeps talking about one specific lucky first namer and I’m guessing he is the final boss in a sense but what I can guarantee is that in between where I currently reside in the game and that point the controls aren’t going to suddenly change. 

My final thought on Forza: Horizon is this; in other loading screen helpful hints, the game tells you about how you can change the difficulty of the racers in the options menu, and this annoys me. Why give someone the option to make a game easier if there isn’t really any difficulty curve? Driving games are pretty much skill and the parts that aren’t are luck but that randomness applies to all the NCP racers as well , for instance when you set off in a race the other drivers don’t take the same line every time, they will crash into each other and you. If you’re looking for baby’s first driving game, Mario karts are still being produced.