4 Seasons on the Horizon! Forza Horizon 4 Review

Introduction

What happens when you take a successful racing series off the tracks and into the open world? Well you get a series that can easily make a name of its own. With the fourth release in the series it's time to wonder, can it still bring something new and will it still be interesting? Well then let's find out.

Senna by McLaren, The star of the game

Gameplay/Features

So the easy part. You got a racing series that focuses on track racing and a good engine. You take that and give them to a studio that know what they're doing and bam! you got Forza Horizon. While the driving feels identical to Forza Motorsport 7, the things you do are totally different. But wait... It feel identical to a track racing series, wouldn't that do bad to a game that is supposed to be as arcade-ish as possible? Well yeah but with all the tweaks you can do to the way a car drives it can either feel pretty realistic or quite close to an arcade racer. Okay probably some of you already knew that so we should probably go on with what is new in this release...

Winter night drifting

So after visiting the continent where everything tries to kill you, the Horizon Festival moved to Britain presenting a more traditional and idyllic land to get your car dirty. The biggest thing in the game are Seasons. Every week the seasons change, allowing you to race around the game world in spring,summer,autumn and winter, which is quite interesting. Some places might be blocked off over the lake but during the winter you can get to them. Anyway probably you heard that before in other reviews so let's focus on the interesting part of this system. The world changes each season and brings a weather of it's own which can influence your driving but what is also interesting and new is that the temperature also affects your driving so expect your car to handle different if the weather in-game is colder, even though the asphalt is just as dry. A nice touch I might say... Not to mention that after going through the introductory bit of the story you also start having seasonal events which are only available while the season lasts.

The Beast waiting for it's prey.

So what about events? Races? well with the new UI things are a bit easier to read and you got your progress split into different categories. For example you have the Road Racing Series, Cross Country Series, Dirt Racing, Street Scene and also progress on tuning,exploration, Speed Trap Hero, Skills, different online activities, etc. Also now instead of just having drivatars around the map you are put into server clusters with other players so every player you encounter really is the player not just his drivatar, which is nice and luckily you can't bump into each other in the open world, to prevent annoyances. Then you got #FORZATHON which is back but under a different way. If previously you had periodical rewards with fixed challenges now you get challenges to complete which rewards you with points you can spend in the #FORZATHON Shop and every hour you have a live Forzathon even where multiple players can join and have fun. And let's not forget about Playground Games( not the game developer)! They also make a presence in Forza Horizon 4 which again gives you the opportunity to do something else rather than racing, events like Flag Rush, Infected or King.

Gotta take down those little cars.... wait what was I supposed to be doing?

And do we have enough cars to race? Sure, there are over 450 cars to choose from and tune to your liking. Sure there are fewer cars than in the Motorsport series but for an open world game, it's a good start. The cars all look gorgeous and as a nice touch there are plenty of British classics to remind you that the game is set in Britain. Honestly it is refreshing to see that the game kept to the classic way of upgrading your car with parts and with everything unlocked as long as you got the cash for the parts (which is not a lot by the way) instead of going through the grind-fest that Need For Speed and The Crew series adopted so only this can keep you busy for hours. Of course you also have the option to buy homes now, 12 of them, each offering small bonuses, being the places where you go to modify your car and character. They just replace the multiple festival locations of the previous game, despite the hype. But the cutest little thing is now you have multiple clothing options for your character.

Wheeeeeeee!!!

Graphics & Audio

I'll keep it simple here, The game looks simply A-mazing! And is very optimized, I play it at 4k with all the details cranked up to maximum except for AA, which is kinda useless in my opinion at 4k and except for tidy bits then and now when loading a new piece of the map it stay at 59-60fps. The game has a fps limit that is dependant on your display. If you Have a 60hz display you'll be limited at 30-60fps but if you have a 144hz display you can set your limit to 144hz,72hz or lower. The landscape, the asphalt, the dirt road, they all look top notch, even the water on the car when raining or after going through water. You can even mow down fields if you feel like a farmer. Buuuut there were 2 tiny things that I found of lower quality. While behind the steering wheel, the rain effects on the window look quite low quality and the preset system that gradually makes your car dirty is a bit too obvious when getting dirt on the car, looking absolutely the same each and every time and mostly like a paint.

My complaint with dirt can be noticed here.

As for the sound department.. Well the cars sound quite authentic, at least the one I could try and have also heard how they sound in real life. The ambient is okay, top notch, the voice acting feels a bit forced but after all it's a racing game, not a story focused game. Horizon Bass Arena, Pulse, Hospital Records Radio and Timeless return from Forza Horizon 3 and now we also have Xcess radio and the option to livestream music directly from Hospital Records online radio, which for me is a nice touch.

Wrap-up

Taking a break on the side of the road, hoping for a cop to chase me...but the cop never came

While the series was already great, the 4th release only made sure it can keep the lead in open world racing games. If you have an xbox one or windows 10 I'd say this game is an absolute buy, even though the Windows 10 store is easy to hate. You got 4 seasons, plenty of cars, the possibility to easily play with strangers or your friends, tuning to your heart's desire. What more could you ask? Well you probably said cops, but even so the game is great.

Overall Score 9.125/10

•     Graphics 8.5/10
•     Audio 10/10
•     Features 9/10
•     Gameplay 9/10

Game details:

Developer: Playground Games
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Windows, Xbox One
Release Date: Oct. 4, 2018
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Launch Price: 59.99 Eur for Standard Edition