Forza Horizon 4 Review – Season’s Bleetings
What is it? The next massive open-world, do-anything, drive-everything car racing adventure. Now set in Britain, with changing seasons!– Reviewed on Xbox One. Also available on PC and Xbox One X
Pros: Hundreds of cars that feel great to drive, incredible graphics and sound, tons to do, great seamless online systems, dynamic seasons with events.
Cons: Long initial load-in, errr… we’ll get back to you on this one. The sheep look at me funny sometimes.
Verdict: Incredible, fun and gorgeous
When I first loaded into Forza Horizon 4, I was enchanted by its impressive intro and seasons but couldn’t shake that it didn’t feel like much of a jump from FH3. In fact, it didn’t feel like the Britain setting was quite as interesting either. I was, as you guessed by now, pretty wrong at the time. Britain may not have the variety of FH3’s version of Australia, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much the world changes with the seasons. Cruising around in winter properly for the first time had me unable to believe I was in the same areas from just a short while ago. So the game looks great as is to be expected (and I’m not even playing it on PC or the Xbox One X) and the game still hasn’t lost its touch for great music and excellent sound design. New features change things up a bit, and one that’s notable is the loss of bucket list challenges in exchange for a fun little stunt driver story mode, proper drifting challenges and some fun throwbacks to the cars in gaming history.
“Hey, we put up a great gallery of pics from the photo mode and you should really check it out!”
Where it’s really changed is when you eventually get into Horizon Life, and how your career is sort of seamlessly integrated with the online systems, allowing you to also effortlessly connect with friends and go do races or challenges together – it’s a damn good time online. Once there, seasons are locked to everyone and change every week, with each season providing limited challenges and even events. It’s just such a breath of life into the formula, and is set to bring players back now and then for a long time to come. Lest you forget, let me just also remind you that this game still has hundreds of cars, car upgrading, painting and design modes, tuning modes, auction houses, wheelspins, customisable characters, racing modes that span various disciplines, barn finds, photo mode, galleries, blueprints, drift modes and… just like, even more. It’s incredible. Oh, it also finally includes a steering-wheel free dash-cam view that I’ve been begging for for ages, which allow you to still enjoy the car interiors and feeling of being behind the wheel without feeling like you’re sitting in the back seat and rolling all over the place. It’s great, try it.
What’s best is that the game is incredibly generous with credits, unlockable clothing and cars. Before you know it you’ve got a few houses, dozens of great cars and a character that looks like David Bowie dancing to YMCA after race victories. It nearly made me want to forgive Forza Motorsport 7. Nearly.
