Forza Horizon 4

The best open world game of 2018, literally everything is a pleasure to do without any of the numerous events and collectibles feeling like a chore. As a driving simulation it's tight as hell with gorgeous environments you actively want to explore and see in different seasonal contexts and the game just has such a chill, ingratiating vibe that you never get that sense of being overwhelmed and intimidated by the ridiculous amount of content.

You can also paint anime ladies on your car and visit historical monuments while dabbing in a chicken outfit.

Platform Played: Steamdeck

Back in the day… actually, further back than that. Back when I was a kid, I fucking loved driving games. Vroom on the Amiga was probably my first, then Stunt Car Racer and on and on, I played them all. Playing V-Rally with my sister is a strong memory I have from my early teens, amongst a thousand other driving games I played. One day, as we all know, Gran Turismo came out and changed driving games forever. Suddenly, picking a car and racing it round a track wasn’t enough; you needed to mod it and grind your way through a thousand races and licence tests. Well, that isn’t fair, Gran Turismo was an absolute game changer but let’s be honest, the racing sim genre hasn’t really progressed since then has it? Gran Turismo 7 or what ever is still exactly the same game.

But you cannot denial to quality nor the appeal of the series, nor can you deny the sales. Microsoft needed Gran Turismo on the Xbox to compete with the PlayStation, but Sony are not one to share games, so Microsoft had to make their own Gran Turismo, but with Blackjack and hookers. Forza Motorsport was that game and fucking hell, if only it did have blackjack and hookers. Its Gran Turismo: Xbox Edition, only it lacks the fun ‘Japanese-ness’ of its inspiration. It is a great sim though to be fair, and the series is very good. Its… a racing sim. You pick cars and race them. Somewhere along the line though, people noticed a gap in the market; not everyone wanted a po faced sim; some people wanted to have some arcade fun.

Enter Forza Horizon. It looks like a sim, but its much more fun because it handles like Project Gotham Racing. I never played the first 3 games, but I bought this one when I got my Steamdeck because it had been a while since I’d played any games at all, never mind a driving game and why not? Forza Horizon 4 is a very good game. I cannot fault its driving model which is incredibly customisable and always fun to play. It massively reminds me of Project Gotham 3 actually in terms of how it feels to drive each car. It looks great and runs very smoothly on the Steamdeck (Amazing piece of kit). Alas… it has some problems.

The first offender in terms of problems is the tedious talking in between races. I don’t need Sean Bean telling me about a driving stunt thanks, I’d much rather just be doing the stunt itself. There is too much time spent in not driving cars, and honestly it doesn’t seem that bad at first, but its so fucking tedious when it happens constantly. Then of course, in game advertising. At one point a huge video plays detailing all of the available DLC. It even shows up on the word map whether you buy it or not. Now, I paid £18 for this game, so I clicked on the DLC to see how much it was. It was £75 for the lot. Seventy fucking Five quid for extras for a game I paid less than twenty quid for. Absolute madness and the fact its part of the fucking map regardless is a complete and utter joke.

Ah… the map. Forza Motorsport 4 is open world. It’s a very impressive open world, comprised of loads of places I have been to a thousand times in real life. Its fun driving around Bowness or Edinburgh and seeing places you recognizing, at first at least but here is the problem with open world driving games, and it’s the same problem with all open world games; you have to drive around the fucking thing to get to the actual races and it is so fucking tedious after a while. Just let me race the fucking cars for fuck sake, I don’t need to drive to the start point. Then of course, the tracks them selves; they are made up of the real streets in game and… I don’t find them that interesting. Driving in the countryside on a near straight road isn’t quite as fun as driving around Spa or Silverstone.

It’s a shame, because the driving is fun and the game is gorgeous, but its just so fucking boring having to drive around the map looking for stuff. Add in the fucking talking in between races and the in-your-face DLC and the experience is severely lacking. Its not all bad though if I am honest; at its best, during a race, usually a rally of some sort, the game is spectacular. The driving model is great and like I have said, it looks amazing. And again, this is just the opinion of one man; your mileage may vary, but for me, the negatives add up over time to the point I don’t really want to play this as the thought of the tedious talking and driving between races just leaves me uninterested.

Gets a bad rep, but map is good. Simple and accounts for many playstyles, which is vital for a game model like this. That helps the seasons stand out too. I also found the more intrusive elements suspiciously charming, though fell through under scrutiny. A by-the-book driftclub circuit in Edinburgh practically writes itself, but never exactly rocked my world. On the other hand, slogging through their fascination with cars from better games was painful, but hearing the zoomer VA call out "very long easy right" while I'm driving the Lancia from Sega Rally was spot on! Constant tug of war experience.

That's why, far from the best Horizon entry, this is not even the best racing game of 2018, but those special moments kept happening when I bit down, which is why I played FH4 hundreds of hours more than those other games. It's proven to be the most reliable contemporary racer and reminds me why I consider driving a luxury. But mostly, any arcade racer succeeding in personality despite of all the DJs sucking ass is worthy of praise in my book.

Luckily England also made the Essential Mix!

The game is begging for blue shells.

It's great, but no Mario Kart😉

One step forward, one step back. The upgrades to the UI make progression more fun and dynamic than ever, and slowly making the map less restrictive gives the world a sense of life and freedom. But the map itself feels pretty uninspired, lacking real setpieces, and the game is simply more unstable than ever, with crashes and hitches due to its insistence on a persistent online setting. Still, many hours of fun were had.

Lots of content, constant updates (as of writing), if you love cars or racing games you'd be crazy not to pick this up. This game isn't perfect by any means but it comes way closer than any of the competition.

Edit May 2021: Dialing back my rating from a 4.5 to a 3.5. There's still loads of content and steady updates, which I severely appreciate, but the amount of FOMO is getting disappointing. There's a heavy emphasis on 'do the new championships each week so you don't miss out on these exclusive rare cars' which is a bit annoying if you're someone like me with a job and not a lot of time to dedicate to games each week. Besides that, FH4 has the most unsatisfying progression i've ever encountered in a racing game. No working, doing your best with races to get money so you can save up and get that sweet Lamborghini. Nah, in a couple of hours you'll have the rarest, most expensive cars thrown in your lap by a wheelspin and in a week you'll have a garage of 400 cars where you can only remember 20 of. It doesn't feel like you're collecting cars, owning them, building a bond with them, which is always my favorite part of an open-world racer like this,

However negative that sounds, you still have to give the game and the devs credit for supporting the game for years, adding exquisitely detailed cars each month for free among many other things like the Super 7 system and the Eliminator event.