Forza Horizon 3 Review
Forza Horizon is the little brother of Microsoft’s big flagship racer Forza Motorsport, except the little brother is starting to turn into the man of the house. Turn 10 develop the main series Forza Motorsport. This is a racing sim, essentially Microsoft’s answer back to Gran Turismo. Bizarre Creations, the developers behind my favourite racing game of all time, PGR4, departed from Microsoft and joined Activision to make a racing game that massively flopped called BLUR. This lead to the closure of Bizarre creations.
It was sad news until Microsoft decided to pick them back up to form into a new studio called Playground Games. On the other side of the pond, EA had their own studio problems with many of the Criterion developers leaving. Some came to Playground Games. On top of that, some ex DIRT developers from Codemasters came to Playground Games too. This studio was really starting to sound like a racing game super studio with some of the most creative racing developers merged into one team.
Microsoft placed Playground Games onto a new franchise… A spin off of Forza Motorsport… A different take on racing. Playground Games decided to make an open world racer called Forza Horizon. This was sounding promising.
The first Forza Horizon game was an interesting take gameplay wise and had the perfect balance between arcade and sim. PG used some of the great work that Turn 10 have done with Forza Motorsport as a template, and then sprayed their creativity onto it. The game was good, but didn’t quite reach the level of being game of the year kind of material.
The second Forza Horizon was a huge improvement and you could already see how much PG had learned and improved. Forza Horizon 2 nailed the gameplay, cars, and feel. It was a great game. Definitely a must get at the time if you was a racing fan. However, the game did get repetitive, the design of the main game and the open world it’s self started to look and feel very much the same. Set in southern France and Northern Italy, the game’s map mostly consisted of villages and countryside and the lack of variety stopped the game from being truly spectacular in my opinion. It was still a very good game though don’t get me wrong, and you could really see the potential for the franchise.
If we see another improvement leap as we did from the first game to the second Forza Horizon, we could seriously be onto a huge winner. So, does Forza Horizon 3 cross the finish line to be a top racer, or does this stall from being a top contender?
It was sad news until Microsoft decided to pick them back up to form into a new studio called Playground Games. On the other side of the pond, EA had their own studio problems with many of the Criterion developers leaving. Some came to Playground Games. On top of that, some ex DIRT developers from Codemasters came to Playground Games too. This studio was really starting to sound like a racing game super studio with some of the most creative racing developers merged into one team.
Microsoft placed Playground Games onto a new franchise… A spin off of Forza Motorsport… A different take on racing. Playground Games decided to make an open world racer called Forza Horizon. This was sounding promising.
The first Forza Horizon game was an interesting take gameplay wise and had the perfect balance between arcade and sim. PG used some of the great work that Turn 10 have done with Forza Motorsport as a template, and then sprayed their creativity onto it. The game was good, but didn’t quite reach the level of being game of the year kind of material.
The second Forza Horizon was a huge improvement and you could already see how much PG had learned and improved. Forza Horizon 2 nailed the gameplay, cars, and feel. It was a great game. Definitely a must get at the time if you was a racing fan. However, the game did get repetitive, the design of the main game and the open world it’s self started to look and feel very much the same. Set in southern France and Northern Italy, the game’s map mostly consisted of villages and countryside and the lack of variety stopped the game from being truly spectacular in my opinion. It was still a very good game though don’t get me wrong, and you could really see the potential for the franchise.
If we see another improvement leap as we did from the first game to the second Forza Horizon, we could seriously be onto a huge winner. So, does Forza Horizon 3 cross the finish line to be a top racer, or does this stall from being a top contender?
Forza Horizon 3 sets you off in sunny Australia. Instantly you get a good feeling about what the fuss was about with this game and I was attracted to its charm straight away. The gorgeous graphics, the sheer variety of environments and the fantastic music yet again with several genres impressed me.
The game has several radio stations consisting of several bangers that cater towards different music genres. There are even radio stations based around real record labels, such as the Australian label Future Classic and the UK Drum and Bass label Hospital Records returning from FH2, which by the way is one of my favourite record labels.
The game’s music has something for everyone, from a selection of Drum and Bass, Liquid Drum and Bass, Indie, Rock and House. The only weak point of the music was the Hip Hop, everything else was spot on for music. Some of my favourite artists are on the game, nice to know that the developers have great taste in music. Of course a game based around music festivals has to have great music.
The graphics really add to the charm of the world and at times it is breath taking. It’s actually very impressive that an Xbox One, a machine that’s been criticised for being underpowered, could achieve graphics like this. This is the perfect example of Console resource optimisation.
The game has several radio stations consisting of several bangers that cater towards different music genres. There are even radio stations based around real record labels, such as the Australian label Future Classic and the UK Drum and Bass label Hospital Records returning from FH2, which by the way is one of my favourite record labels.
The game’s music has something for everyone, from a selection of Drum and Bass, Liquid Drum and Bass, Indie, Rock and House. The only weak point of the music was the Hip Hop, everything else was spot on for music. Some of my favourite artists are on the game, nice to know that the developers have great taste in music. Of course a game based around music festivals has to have great music.
The graphics really add to the charm of the world and at times it is breath taking. It’s actually very impressive that an Xbox One, a machine that’s been criticised for being underpowered, could achieve graphics like this. This is the perfect example of Console resource optimisation.
The game can be slightly cheesy at times, but what I like about the game is, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and doesn’t try to have this overdone generic racing storyline that many open world racers have tried to do.
Something that let down previous Forza horizon games was the open world. For me an open world racer needs… well… a good interesting open world. This game has just that, the open world this time is fantastic. You have the rainforests of Australia, you have the Outback desert, a coastal urban city and countryside plains in between. The open world is awesome and really is the main charm of this game.
Forza Horizon has the fantastic features and mechanics from the Forza Motorsport games. The fantastic car models from FM are there, the gameplay has this FM feel but tuned to be more fun and arcadey making the gameplay excellent in my opinion. Something almost every open world racer I have played has really suffered from is the gameplay. The gameplay has always either lacked depth or just been absolute garbage. The car handling in FH feels perfect and how cars handle in the rain is even better. The game feels realistic but still feels fun and accessible.
It has the ridiculous depth to the car customisations from FM, that’s for both the performance and visual customisation. In fact you can even import custom car vinyls from FM6 into FH3. Want a Pokemon car? You’ve got it. Want a police car? You’ve got it. There really is anything you can paint to your car and it’s very impressive to see the designs that the community have made.
I tell people who haven’t heard of Forza Horizon or don’t know much of it that it’s like Need For Speed Underground, remember those glory days? Well take the highlights from NFSU, throw in a touch of Forza and then slap a music festival theme in Australia and you have FH3.
Something that let down previous Forza horizon games was the open world. For me an open world racer needs… well… a good interesting open world. This game has just that, the open world this time is fantastic. You have the rainforests of Australia, you have the Outback desert, a coastal urban city and countryside plains in between. The open world is awesome and really is the main charm of this game.
Forza Horizon has the fantastic features and mechanics from the Forza Motorsport games. The fantastic car models from FM are there, the gameplay has this FM feel but tuned to be more fun and arcadey making the gameplay excellent in my opinion. Something almost every open world racer I have played has really suffered from is the gameplay. The gameplay has always either lacked depth or just been absolute garbage. The car handling in FH feels perfect and how cars handle in the rain is even better. The game feels realistic but still feels fun and accessible.
It has the ridiculous depth to the car customisations from FM, that’s for both the performance and visual customisation. In fact you can even import custom car vinyls from FM6 into FH3. Want a Pokemon car? You’ve got it. Want a police car? You’ve got it. There really is anything you can paint to your car and it’s very impressive to see the designs that the community have made.
I tell people who haven’t heard of Forza Horizon or don’t know much of it that it’s like Need For Speed Underground, remember those glory days? Well take the highlights from NFSU, throw in a touch of Forza and then slap a music festival theme in Australia and you have FH3.
I still wish the city had a little more depth to it and was closer to that PGR city feel, but you can definitely tell that the game has been made by ex PGR devs overall. In fact you can tell that the game has been made by ex DIRT devs and ex Burnout devs. There are plenty of off road events and the gameplay suddenly has that lightweight kind of Codemasters car handling feel to it. There are also plenty of stunts and drift events, very reminiscent of burnout paradise.
Then we have bucket challenges, a very welcome new feature to FH2 returns in FH3. I love them, again it has that sort of PGR kudus challenge with at a touch of burnout paradise events to it. It is essentially a challenge in a car you find with a set objective and setting. For example one will be set at night time in a Nissan GTR in the city and will require you to drift a certain amount of times in a time limit. Another one will be reach a destination in a certain amount of time, but oh some of these are epic. Like the one where you’re driving a Halo Warthog in a jungle and the Halo theme song is playing.
Then we have bucket challenges, a very welcome new feature to FH2 returns in FH3. I love them, again it has that sort of PGR kudus challenge with at a touch of burnout paradise events to it. It is essentially a challenge in a car you find with a set objective and setting. For example one will be set at night time in a Nissan GTR in the city and will require you to drift a certain amount of times in a time limit. Another one will be reach a destination in a certain amount of time, but oh some of these are epic. Like the one where you’re driving a Halo Warthog in a jungle and the Halo theme song is playing.
That’s the thing I love about this game too, it’s the small attentions to detail in the game, the little touches to the radio stations, to the cars and events that just make me love this game. Watching the clouds move and how the dynamic weather rolls in is an example of a little touch that I was impressed with. You can really tell a lot of love and care and creative fun was put into the game.
The showcases although are scripted, are cool entertaining movie kind of moments that I like. The game’s setting is about setting up music festivals all around Australia with the objective of gaining more fans by doing crazy things in cars and winning races so that you can bring in more fans to the festivals eventually allowing you to expand.
It is quite gimmicky, and it would have been cool if you could properly customise your festival and actually see real differences when you expand your festival. Signing radio stations to festivals is a cool idea at first, until you realise that you’re inevitably going to sign them all anyway. Regardless, I think with a bit more thought put into it, this building your own festival idea, could have a lot of potential in a future Forza Horizon game.
Events and races are scattered and with the game giving so much freedom on what to do to progress, it leaves the game feeling a bit disorganised and random. You progress through gaining fans. That's a great system that works with races, however I don't really like that the other events aka "PR stunts" are tied to the fan system and only rewards you with that.
The showcases although are scripted, are cool entertaining movie kind of moments that I like. The game’s setting is about setting up music festivals all around Australia with the objective of gaining more fans by doing crazy things in cars and winning races so that you can bring in more fans to the festivals eventually allowing you to expand.
It is quite gimmicky, and it would have been cool if you could properly customise your festival and actually see real differences when you expand your festival. Signing radio stations to festivals is a cool idea at first, until you realise that you’re inevitably going to sign them all anyway. Regardless, I think with a bit more thought put into it, this building your own festival idea, could have a lot of potential in a future Forza Horizon game.
Events and races are scattered and with the game giving so much freedom on what to do to progress, it leaves the game feeling a bit disorganised and random. You progress through gaining fans. That's a great system that works with races, however I don't really like that the other events aka "PR stunts" are tied to the fan system and only rewards you with that.
Speed traps for example are tied to this and the aim is to get 3 stars. The more stars the more fans you win. The problem with this is throughout the game, you will be buying various different types of cars for various different races. Inevitably this means that you won't be driving a 200mph+ supercar all the time. However because of the nature of the PR stunts mostly the speed traps, it means that you will only be able to reach your potential on these by using your best car, aka a 200mph + supercar. This basically rules out the desire to drive around in slower exotic cars and slower cars merely only serve its purpose for slower racing events.
Even then you have the freedom to play the whole game through just super cars, which takes away the real purpose of other cars.
The fan system rewards you for simply taking part in events and because of that, the game has less emphasis on winning things and is more about just participating in things. Of course winning progresses you faster but you don't really feel like you are truly rewarded for winning races and championships.
Forza horizon 2's main game was a little too linear and forza horizon 3 is too open. FH2 had you taking part in championships on where it wanted you to take part in, you had to win a certain amount of championships essentially to beat the game. Here in FH3 it's just about taking part in as many events as possible to qualify for showcases to beat the main game. There needs to be a middle ground in my opinion. I think this is the only drawback that playground games haven’t quite figured out yet. The perfect formula of the main game progression is still yet to be unleashed by playground games.
Even then you have the freedom to play the whole game through just super cars, which takes away the real purpose of other cars.
The fan system rewards you for simply taking part in events and because of that, the game has less emphasis on winning things and is more about just participating in things. Of course winning progresses you faster but you don't really feel like you are truly rewarded for winning races and championships.
Forza horizon 2's main game was a little too linear and forza horizon 3 is too open. FH2 had you taking part in championships on where it wanted you to take part in, you had to win a certain amount of championships essentially to beat the game. Here in FH3 it's just about taking part in as many events as possible to qualify for showcases to beat the main game. There needs to be a middle ground in my opinion. I think this is the only drawback that playground games haven’t quite figured out yet. The perfect formula of the main game progression is still yet to be unleashed by playground games.
Regardless of some of the slight issues, the game is still fantastic and it is a feel good racer, a racer to put you in a better mood, and it’s a great game that is not too cheesy or gimmicky, it’s actually got real quality and content under the hood. I for one recommend this game to anyone that likes cars, you will enjoy it if you’re a hardcore racer and you will enjoy it if you like casual racers like NFS. It is a racing game for everyone, and that’s what I love about it. Well provided you own an Xbox One or a powerful PC. This is possibly one of the best racing games I have played in years and I’m sure it will be a contender for game of the year.