Honestly, how hard could it be?
A million years ago, if you wanted to play a good racing game you would play Gran Turismo (GT) on the Playstation 1. Then the original X-Box was released and they developed their own simulation racing game called Forza Motorsports. The game was well recieved and off we went! there was finally an alternative to GT on a different system. I missed the first one but I did hop onto the series with Forza 2 and Forza 4. I enjoyed Forza 2 immensely but Forza 4 had the Top Gear Test track, and voice over by Jeremy Clarkson. It was the best feeling taking a car around the Top Gear test track that I’d seen on the TV show a million times. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to driving around that track.
A few months ago I saw that Forza Horizon 3 was finally on sale so I picked it up and for the most part I really enjoy it. Forza Horizon is a lot more arcadey than the regular Motorsport series. It takes place in “Australia” and is completely open world. You drive around between festival locations and engage in races, sprints, photo ops, bucket lists and stunts. It’s got a fairly wide range of racing activities for you to engage in if you feel so inclined. The more races you win, the more fans you get, and the more fans you get the more festival locations you can unlock and upgrade.
Zoom Zoom Baby!
I still get blown away with how beautiful modern console games look, and I’m not doing anything special, I’m playing it on a 6 year old 62in, 1080p plasma TV. the game just looks really good.
I HATE HEIGHTS.
It seems as though Microsoft wanted to get as much random pop culture stuff into the game as possible. I was driving along the beach looking for a marker on the map and at the mouth of a cave I saw a Warthog from the venerable Halo series, and would you know, there was a race with it!
Boy was that squirrely to drive.
Half the fun is trying to take cool photos.
“Hey Grif, Chupathingy! How about that? I like it. Gotta ring to it!”
There is some definitely goofy stuff in it, they thought it was a good idea to include a Reliant Robin in it because………….reasons.
………..But why?
And in their infinite wisdom they decided to let people modify the car, so I put a high revving motorcycle engine in it and got the kind of results you’d expect.
That car is only good for going in a straight line, you can see how dented that car was and that’s just from me attempting to take a slow, wide turn and ending up a tree or in a gully, it was madness. They did include something from Top Gear, there might be more, I’m pretty far into the game and haven’t come across anything else yet. I was looking through the Horizon store at what was available to purchase or get for free and came across this beauty:
“Look at it this way. You will be the first person ever to go to the North Pole, who didn’t want to be there!”
It’s the Hilux from the Top Gear Polar special! The first people (I think) to drive to the North Pole, and one person who didn’t want to go! I upgraded the tires and added a stonking V8 to it and took it off some sand dunes for a good laugh. If you want to really see what madness is like get in a Group B Delta Integrale and go off those dunes at 100+ MPH, it’s a hoot!
Overall I enjoy the game, the environments are varied enough, the race types offer a good variety of difficulties. I only have one real complaint about the game and it’s the music. There are a ton of channels but it feels like they only have 5 or 6 songs and the radio announcer says the same exact thing. If I have to hear the radio lady talk about whoever did the 300 foot skid in front of her booth I will have to just shut off the music entirely and turn on Spotify. It’s so obvious it really takes you out of the game. BUT other than that I really enjoy the game and am surprised at how much time I’ve put into it.
Right now I’m playing Terraria again and am 15 hours into a new character and it’s the farthest I’ve gotten in the game. Good times all around!