A Look at Forza Horizon 5: likes, dislikes and what needs improving

 

Forza Horizon has always been one of my favourite franchises as it takes the freedom of the open road and combines it with the content of a simulation racer. But I’ve generally been rather unsatisfied with the franchise’s offerings over the past few years and the latest offering, Horizon 5 feels lacking in multiple area’s. So let’s break the game down with what’s good and what needs changing.

First off, the map is fantastic. Horizon 4’s UK map was fairly dull likely down to the location not having varied types of terrain being in the UK. Whereas Horizon 5’s Mexico map is more like Horizon 3’s map where we have a jungle, a desert, a volcano, beaches, and mountains as well. The variety is also coupled to a well-designed map with plenty of long straights and winding roads that encourage driving just for the sake of driving, and that I like.

Next the custom events are a welcome addition. I have never approved of the change from Horizon 1 to 2 in that events don’t require cars from specific makes, body styles, periods or countries etc. But the custom events feature fixes that. I like being able to specify classes for cars and create unique event setups that aren’t already available but that said, the fact custom events are limited to 50 cars isn’t great especially when working with over 740 cars in total.

Also, whilst not perfect, the improved engine notes are a welcome addition. For some reason, cars that had perfectly fine engine notes such as the Noble M600 then ended up with a completely different one that sounded nothing like the real thing back in Horizon 4. Same goes for the Ferrari Enzo too, and honestly it made the game far less enjoyable. But I am delighted to say that the developers have fixed a good chunk of cars engine notes such as the previously mentioned cars, my only complaint is that with some cars there is still engine note copy and pasting such as with both the McLaren F1 & Jaguar XJR-15 and there also seems to be a lot of what can only be described as wind noise, but apart from that, it’s a definite improvement over the last game.

Finally, the consistent amount of updates the game receives does help keep the game alive despite the lack of a proper campaign (more on that later) and I feel getting 4 new cars for free every month is better than paying £7.99 for the Italian Exotics pack and the only car I wanted was the #63 Lamborghini Huracan.

But let’s get on with what needs improving:

The roster of cars whilst big and varied isn’t not brilliant. Sure there are some unique and interesting cars like the Jaguar XJR-15, Renault 4 and Ford Focus WRC but my main complaint is that the 2010’s era really suffers from recency bias with some cars getting way too many models compared to others, the Lamborghini Huracan has 6 models compared to its predecessor the Gallardo’s 2 and why do we need the Ford Ranger from both 2017 & 2019? By comparison, the 2000’s feels heavily underrepresented with what feels like a very slimmed down selection despite getting consistent additions throughout Horizon 4’s lifecycle and a good amount of those getting added to this game. What’s more the developers need to stop recycling cars from FH4 and have them in the base game from day 1 and focus on adding cars new to the franchise or that have not been seen for several games. Whilst I know that every car is someone’s favourite, I still feel that cars like the Morris Minor Traveller serve little purpose other than as filler joke cars, I have nothing against historically relevant cars like the Beetle or Mini but who honestly asked for the Ford Anglia to be added over something like the RUF CTR Yellowbird?

Second is the radio. Whilst I know my preference in music is a matter of taste, I feel despite there being several radio stations featuring different music styles, barely any of them except Block Party are worth tuning into. I enjoy listening to music when driving both in game and in real life but very few feel like “driving songs” if that makes any sense. Ideally there should be dedicated stations for periods in music from say 70s to now along with “Best of” collections for each previous FH game. And it’s not like the games haven’t featured big name artists and groups before like New Order & Dua Lipa.

But the biggest problem is the lack of a proper single-player campaign. The main gameplay is making it into the Horizon Hall of Fame which is essentially an online leaderboard showing how many Accolades you’ve collected through completing races and objectives. It’s pretty dull. Horizon 1 by comparison, got it right first time by having a similar setup to the Pokémon games with you starting from the ground up to become champion, completing races to earn points and progress through the story, it was simple yet effective. I get that this formula would be boring by now had it been used for every game which is why now is the time to reimplement it for the next game instead of having a majority of the game focus on Forzathon updates and unfocussed gameplay where the racing isn’t really the most important part of it which has led to a lot of players leaving the game as it’s essentially become stale not to mention that the mostly mediocre updates don’t help in bringing back players. A proper campaign provides replay value and would be far more engaging and encourage completion and that I think is what older fans want.

Overall, whilst Forza Horizon 5 is a good game, there is plenty of room for improvement in regards to the gameplay and the content that is included. I hope more effort is made next time.