Forza Horizon 5

[16vCento]

Hopefully the new Test Drive will be more fun.

[Ascender]

Hopefully the new Test Drive will be more fun.

Test Drive! That's the other one I was thinking about. Fond memories of that on the Amiga - did the 3DO not do an update of that or was it Need for Speed which had the same sort of police chase/race vibe?

[Mito Man]

Test drive Unlimited and Unlimited 2 were modern updates for it. I remember being completely blown away by it as it had all of Hawaii’s big island and Ibiza (iirc) properly mapped out. It was the first racing game that had a proper lifestyle element such as buying properties to house your cars. You drove to car dealers to test drive and buy cars.
A proper experience.

[ZedLeg]

TDU 1 was good, TDU 2 was a mess though. I never finished it because I hit a game breaking bug.

[Mito Man]

Yes 1 was far better and I still remember the round the island race which took 40 minutes to complete.
2 ended up annoying me with its off road races, something which I still generally dislike in every racing game aside from dedicated rallying ones. Even in Horizon the off-road stuff is the least fun for me.

[ZedLeg]

I think the cross country and rally stuff is pretty well judged in FH tbh. Bashing across country in S class off roaders is great fun.

[16vCento]

Found a glitch, if you hold the brake and accelerator down whilst in drive in the I Pace, the power goes up and up and up to over 50000hp, when you release the brake it accelerates upto 170mph quicker than any other car I have

[16vCento]

Got upto 300000hp and let go of the brake, it did 330mph on that little drag strip

[Mito Man]

I'm impressed with how well this runs on my old Xbox One - not tempted to upgrade to the new one for now I guess. Does feel like you come across money and free cars less easily. Exactly the same as FH4 otherwise. Not sure I like Mexico that much, feels very generic so far. The dust storm shit can do one.

[integrale_evo]

Yep, I don’t really get why they thought it would be a great feature. Orange fog and weird lighting on the cars doesn’t add anything at all to the game

[ZedLeg]

I don't know how much better the graphics are on Series X but the sandstorms are pretty atmospheric imo.

I'm liking the inclusion of diesels in the engine swaps. Put a diesel engine and a 10 speed transmission in the GMC Jimmy and went bashing around the Baja dunes for a bit earlier.

[integrale_evo]

As mentioned in the gaming thread, I’ve been putting some hours into this now and remain very ‘meh’ about it.

Again in their gaming roundups a number of places are singing it’s praises, saying how amazing it is.

To me it still feels very much like a very large expansion pack rather than a new game, I’m on pc and run pretty much everything maxed out and it doesn’t strike me as anything groundbreaking. Sure the physical size allows some impressive views over the scenery, but nothing gta wasn’t doing years ago, and there were some pretty impressive views in fh4 in certain spots, but the usual close road borders mean a lot isn’t easily seen while driving.

If you stop and look around then sure, there’s less variety in vegetation and more simple geometry, but if you’re whizzing along at 100mph or concentrating on the driving it all gets a bit pointless pixel peepy. I popped back onto 4 after a session on 5 and didn’t feel short changed at all.

While the mountain does give some good views and an awesome switchback run, it’s also so steep it gets in the way of one of the fun parts of the games, where you do a straight line cross country blast from one side of the map to the other.

Sound on both e30 and e36 in far more realistic on fh4, despite much being made of the improved sound in 5. Most odd. Also found the cars had more of a metallic sheen, and you don’t get the almost cartoon like overblown smoke while drifting in 4. I know I’m a bit of a fanboy, but it’s a shame none of the fiat group are there. Sets itself as one of the ultimate driving games but no stratos / s4 / integrale seems a bit of a loss.

It seems they’ve dumbed down the drift zones too, in 4 most needed some practise and a few runs to get three stars but in 5 I seem to be able to do most of them first try and that’s without using a specially setup drift car.

Of course I’ll probably put many more hours on it, but once everything is don’t I’m not sure I’ll carry on playing it for as long as I did 4.

[Gwaredd]

I'm glad you posted that Harry, as even though I've not bought it yet, I thought pretty much the exact same thing from watching various YouTube videos of it. I even noticed the text and speedo graphics are the same as 4. It really is the same game with a lick of paint.

Other things that annoy me are the fact you still don't get a say in how your car launches at the start of a race. It just goes like FH4. I hate that. Let me decide the revs to launch at please!

And still no option for Police chases. YouTubers have been doing this ad-hoc for ages now. It looks great fun, so why not implement an official version?

Overall, it just looks like a lazy effort to me. I'll wait to see if it improves over time before buying.

[jamcg]

And still no option for Police chases. YouTubers have been doing this ad-hoc for ages now. It looks great fun, so why not implement an official version?

Possibly something trademarked in the ea sports owned need for speed series?

[integrale_evo]

Yeah, the instant start on races is really annoying, as is starting you in the same position every time even if you won the previous round of a championship.

I have noticed it now updates automatically, previous games on the pc at least you’ve had to go in and download the new version and it wouldn’t always tell you, you’d just start playing, wonder why it wouldn’t go online then have to go see if there was an update.

On fh5 there was a really annoying bug where it wouldn’t hide your mouse cursor, you had to manually put it to the right of the screen every time you started the game or used or knocked the mouse. At least now it hides itself as soon as you press a button on a controller. Nothing major, but just strikes you as pretty lazy.

[Mito Man]

I still think that the tyres in this whole series are stupid. It’s clear they’ve just tried to make the car class points system work but never put much thought into it. The way that a slick tyre is faster over any tyre below it (be it semi slicks or sport tyres) in any weather condition - even dirt always annoys me. And the way they work means that almost everything understeers on standard or sport tyres unless you do engine upgrades… but then you still have shit turn in.
I just end up sticking rally tyres on the cars which allow it as a good compromise.

[jamcg]

I still think that the tyres in this whole series are stupid. It’s clear they’ve just tried to make the car class points system work but never put much thought into it. The way that a slick tyre is faster over any tyre below it (be it semi slicks or sport tyres) in any weather condition - even dirt always annoys me. And the way they work means that almost everything understeers on standard or sport tyres unless you do engine upgrades… but then you still have shit turn in.
I just end up sticking rally tyres on the cars which allow it as a good compromise.

Formula for a fast car in horizon series of late:

4wd conversion
Jack up the suspension
Stick off road tyres on
Full POWER including v8 swap if available

Done.