Slimmed down open world Forza experience

User Rating: 6 | Forza Horizon X360
By jpnelson82 | Review Date:
IMMERSION: In Forza Horizon players take on the role of a nameless driver in the fictional Horizon festival. This fictional driver is never made a real character, nor are the bosses in the game. It's a shortcoming, but the primary focus of the game is racing, not the story. So, how effectively does the game accomplish this? The game creates the impression of driving the various cars through adjusting the physics, visual models, audio, and vibration. By adjusting settings, the vehicle physics can be adjusted to suit individual ability. The net result of which is cars drive in very similar ways. Those cars travel through a virtual world, which is visually fairly simple. Only the environment's interaction with the cars is stressed, e.g sunlight reflecting off paint, sensation of speed. 10/15, note that different settings for vehicle physics, virtual camera, audio, input device, etc; will affect immersion significantly.

DIFFICULTY: Fully adjustable, players can adjust a variety of settings to suit their preference. Using defaults can result in unexpectedly high spikes though. In general AI drivers are competent, but their behaviour does not suggest a desire to win the races. Boss characters are noticeable improvements to the typical AI scripting. 9.5/15, good options, some unexpected spikes can result in frustration.

LASTING APPEAL: Once players have completed the main campaign there is little reason to continue to play. Creating custom liveries may help extend the life of the game for some, but not all. Players may elect to restart on higher difficulty, but no compelling reason exists to do so. DLC adds to the freshness, but the base game runs out quickly after completion. 6/15

OVERALL: 8.5/15 A solid experience for a while. Definitely worth picking up for racing game fans and the forza-curious. Just do not expect to be booting up the game for an extended period.

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