Forza Horizon 5

9.5

It’s really hard not to give this a higher score, because it may just be the best feeling racer I have ever played. The handling, graphics and sound are leagues above everyone else and the variety is off the charts. It would have been even more amazing if Forza Horizon 4 didn’t already up the ante in all those ways. It’s still a fantastic experience, even if it’s not as fresh as FH4 or FH3 for that matter. It’s not my favorite world in the series, but it’s got a great diversity and I think the story progression was the right move. It needs a lot of work still but I actually felt some goals to move toward, which has been a struggle at times in the series. The commodity feel and overwhelming sense of things to do is my biggest gripe with the game and if they could work on progression even more, I would raise this even higher. It’s got problems, but the actual racing part is out of this world good.

Edit: Yea maybe this is actually one of, if not the best racer I have ever played.

I don't play a ton of racing games, certainly not with any regularity. When I do, I usually steer towards either more fantastical Sci-Fi themed racers for their unique mechanics, or to kart racers for easy-going fun. I have never bought a Forza game before, so why this one?

First, the visuals. Forza Horizon 5's environments are staggering in scale and shockingly detailed. This is one of few games in these early days of the latest console generation to genuinely feel like a leap forward, without just looking like, "oh, they put a bunch of fine particle effects on all the gunshots and spells and things to make you see how 4K it is". Racing games have always been relatively easy to make look good; you only really need one camera angle, so culling unnecessary geometry was always pretty doable. Everything moves so fast in racing games that they could look pretty good even without a lot of detail. The unnaturally aerodynamic shapes of a lot of cars reflect light in such abstract ways that even "cheap" shaders can look close enough to reality. Spending enough time with this game can break the illusion somewhat, destruction physics aren't terribly advanced, human characters are a bit uncanny, and the pop-in and culling is more effective in some areas than others, but it's generally a shockingly visually appealing game.

Second, I suppose, could be the marketing. I hesitate to say that the marketing for this game was really all that much more effective than prior entries, and I'm the kind of person who watches almost every E3 press conference anyway. I wasn't exactly out of the loop, and comparing the trailers for previous Forza Horizon games didn't really reveal any major deviations from the formula. I had to dig into the actual E3 showcases to find the moment that sold me. The gameplay showcase for Forza Horizon 4 spent a lot of time dwelling on social features and weather systems; the showcase for Horizon 5 started similarly, but more importantly, showed off giant bowling pins and cars plowing through piñatas. None of the Horizon games' marketing had ever really managed to communicate to me that this sub-series is "The Fun One". Even the Horizon 2 trailer to the tune of "Prisencolinensinainciusol" just made me think "this is a silly trailer for a normal car game".

Third is the particulars, the cars, the setting. The Baja, and the Toyota T100 Baja trophy truck. The first racing game I ever played was Offroad Challenge on the N64, so nostalgia for the racing portrayed in that game was definitely a factor in why I found this particular game demanding my attention.

Here's a segue: Attention isn't the only thing this game demanded from me! Forza Horizon 5 is a big game, over a hundred gigabytes. When I saw that number, I installed it to one of my hard drives without a second thought. This was a mistake. Barely 30 seconds into the game I was greeted with a message that that game had run out of streaming bandwidth. Basically, if you aren't playing this game off an SSD, it seems you're limited to more or less minimum settings. And of course, the game is a huge install, meaning moving that data to an SSD takes some time; not enough time to be a terrible inconvenience, but enough to put a damper on a busy night. Not to mention that my PC has a somewhat significant CPU bottleneck, scraping the game's minimum requirements, meaning that even though my GPU can make the game look really pretty and run smoothly, sometimes when I'm hurtling down the highway at 200 miles an hour the game might hesitate to load a few hills in the distance. On rare, occasions, it might even completely lock up for a few seconds while it loads in new areas. The game is scalable enough to run on an Xbox One, sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't demanding.

The single best thing about the gameplay is the way that it feels. I had played only one Forza game prior to this, Motorsport 6: Apex, the free-to-play windows version. I didn't gel with the game's free to play model, I didn't have much fun just doing lap races, and at the time I had an even worse computer that really didn't let the game's visuals shine. However, there was definitely one major positive takeaway: playing a Forza game with an Xbox One controller kinda rocks. It might not have the detail of "HD rumble", it might not have the tactile resistance of adaptive triggers, but the Xbox One controller's trigger vibrations add a ton to the experience of a driving game whenever you're braking or driving on rough terrain. Motorsport has this, but it felt restricted, like I wasn't allowed to appreciate the parts of it that I liked. Motorsport is like eating at a fancy restaurant on a half-hour lunch break. Horizon gives you time to savor every bite, and offers dessert on the house.

The worst thing about Forza Horizon is its structure. Not its level design, mind you, that part is great. I mean the events, the stories, the goals that it gives you. The hollow eyed, mush-faced homunculi that help you open barn doors to find rotted out rust buckets, their voices with all the phony charisma of a girl selling dietary supplements on Instagram. The insistence that the statue you just photographed is some great discovery even though its positioned in plain sight, because that's just how conveyance works in games. The fact that every string of story missions gets weirdly cut off until you accumulate enough accolade points to reach the hall of fame. I drift around corners, it feels great, but I imagine what it would be like to drive like this as part of some kind of heist. I charge down the highway to emotionally overcharged pop music, imagining I'm driving back to the hometown the singer cries out about, but I'm really just trying to 3-star this speed trap.

That's not to say that I never felt emotions while playing this game, its just that it had less to do with the content of the game itself. As games turn more to live service models, as Fortnite becomes the baseline, as static objects and works of art are supplanted by perpetually shifting virtual parties, even a single player experience becomes intertwined with the internet, and private entertainment is mixed with the real humans occasionally glimpsed on the other side. I've joked before that my Steam friends list consists of virtually every male acquaintance I've known since middle school. You can't possibly keep in touch with every single friend you've ever made. By the time I was in college I got used to seeing the names of people I hadn't seen in a decade every time I booted up Counter Strike. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me; thanks to the magic of the internet, I know some of these people are streamers now. Forza Horizon 5 doesn't pull from that friends list though, it pulls from Xbox Live. So, here I am, racing by myself against the usernames of half a dozen people I haven't spoken to in almost half a decade, listening to those same loaded pop songs, debating with myself whether I have some awkward phone calls to make.

Forza Horizon 5 is a shiny new toy, and even though there's no shortage of things to do in it, I don't think it's going to be a game that I find it hard to move on from. Whether because its online component is personally awkward, because its content structure isn't as satisfying as its base mechanics, or because its "automotive fantasy" isn't particularly powerful when I know a winter-time emergency car repair is about to drain what little savings I have yet again, right on schedule, there's not much reason to play with this toy for too much longer, and the visual spectacle on display will surely be better applied to a more interesting concept sometime later this console generation.

I love the Forza Horizon series first and foremost. This is all coming from a place of respect to the developers, designers,and whoever else worked on the game. The game itself is one probably one of the best games of 2021, possibly leading into 2022. However, there are some gripes that really ruin my experience and enjoyment of the game. Let me just list a few of my primary issues:

1. PC compatibility, and issues with RAM usage on the Steam version.
So, usually I don't buy Forza. I would normally get it on Game Pass, but this time around I received it as a gift through steam. Should be all fine right? Well, on first install everything seemed fine. (Note that these next technical issues are NOT from my PC hardware. I meet the ideal requirements for FH5.) Until.. I get into the menu. I try to load in, but no dice. My game crashes every time. Okay, so maybe my download corrupted. Nope. another 50 minutes later after a fresh install, and I'm back in the same situation. So I try ONE more time. It works, but it seems I also missed a crucial thing. I need a SSD for this game.
Jump to a week later, and got a shiny new 2 TB SSD. I re download the game expecting a FLAWLESS experience, but here is where I am plagued even today. The game uses TOO much memory. Seems like an easy fix right? Maybe I don't have enough ram maybe? Nah. I'm perfectly fine with 16 GB over here. It's JUST the game that decides to load in that much memory at once. Possibly it's a memory leak, but I still haven't found a fix, and updates haven't helped either. 16 GB should not be the minimum for maxed out settings yet. I'm not even running the game at 4k.

2. The Story
So I know it's a racing game. The story shouldn't be the main focus for a game like this. However, when you make events, challenges and even a few cars locked behind story events don't you think it should be DECENT?? All I get from this game from when on the rare occasion I load in the game (lol) is just some people talking and it's generally not engaging or even slightly exciting. It's just people talking to you about Mexico. I know Mexico has a lot going for it, but this didn't really explain or help that. If Microsoft or Playground can fix those crashes and bugs, I'll probably update the story section as I can go through it.

3. The fucking leaderboards
This game has possibly some of the worst cheating I've seen on a top selling steam game. Every time I do a stunt jump, I am always amazed to see those scores. Not because they're amazing to see but because they're so outrageously fake and cheated. You have people running around with speed hacks, maxed out accounts and the devs have done little or nothing to remedy this shit. It's legitimately bringing players away from the game. If they do nothing it's going to kill most of the playerbase.

In short, I think that this one of the best games to play gameplay wise. However, the game has crucial things holding it back, like the bugged level of detail, seemingly random crashes, memory leaks, cheaters, and that mediocre story since they wanna emphasize it so much. I want to see this game succeed for years to come, but at this point, I cannot justify playing online or playing it on PC.

This game has some of the best driving mechanics in any game I have ever played it is incredibly satisfying in such a way I have never experienced before and I am absolutely in love with it. I think the map is absolutely wonderful it might be my favourite in the series but the 3rd game's map is a serious challenge to top so I'll say it's neck and neck for now. I think all the events are pretty satisfactory they're about on par with the other games in terms of how fun they are and the spectacle they provide I don't think they over-do it but they also don't disappoint. The variety of cars in this game is super nice although I would've liked to see more normal cars sprinkled in here and there I can't say I'm dissatisfied with the options within this game. Visual customization still isn't that great although there are some new widebody kits and accessories here but the tuning is better than ever with more parts and options than in previous games which is very nice. The general racing events feel more watered down than before which is a bit of a shame but I still enjoy the courses provided here there's enough variety to keep from getting stale, especially in the online races. We'll get to that later. I like the soundtrack that appears in this game I think this is a more consistently interesting and engaging set of songs than in 4 but I wouldn't say it's my favourite soundtrack thus far in the series. Admittedly I usually play with my own music so it isn't really much of a factor but it's still something of note. The sound effects are greatly improved over the garbage sound effects that appeared in 4 and the graphics in this game, while a bit subtle in their improvements, look absolutely stunning and keep me immersed in the game when it isn't being a janky mess.

I guess we'll talk about the negatives now. The "story" aspect of this game is pretty annoying and honestly really boring, especially compared to previous games in the series, although I think this aspect has come to be expected and it's pretty easy to tune out once things get going. The unskippable cutscenes can be irritating though I really wish they'd just let us skip this shit and get to the game. On a more negative note this game is a technical mess and honestly a lot of it feels pretty half baked at best. Beginning with the notorious visual bugs such as texture pop-in and horribly inconsistent rendering of the world and objects that harkens back to the early days of 3's PC port, which is not even remotely a good thing. The greatly improved engine sound sometimes seem to not matter at all as they can take upwards of 5 minutes sometimes to load in fully and tend to be a bit buggy when switching engine components that affect the sound of the car. While the performance is generally surprisingly good for a modern PC port on launch, the microstutters and sometimes full second lockups can be really tedious, especially in online where I've been held in place while the game "caught up" and let me continue driving which would lose me multiple places and has happened multiple times now.

Speaking of online, this might be the worst online component to any AAA game I have ever played and I'm not even remotely exaggerating. This game's online is atrocious and the developers should be ashamed to have released it in this state. You can't choose what race type or race class, let alone any other basic options, when searching for a game you are at the mercy of RNG with the matchmaking system and there isn't even a ranked mode. On top of that you have to hope and pray that you can actually get into a lobby without disconnecting, then you have to hope that it hasn't queued you up in the middle of an ongoing race at the end of a series so that you don't get booted back to the beginning of this hellish cycle. This is unjustifiably bad for the premiere racing series of a major video game console, let alone one that actually had pretty good multiplayer at one point.

This game has the framework to be the best arcade racer of all time and sometimes it really does live up to that when everything works together. Sadly that isn't the case frequently enough and I end up just frustrated and disappointed when playing this game. I really hope they get their shit together and fix these issues but seeing how they handled a lot of 4's problems I'm not gonna hold my breath.

It's another Horizon game. Second best map in the series, but not the best progression in the series, all other criticisms are moot for what I play these games for, other than the online being total ass.