Forza Horizon 4: Complete Review

With Forza Horizon 4 now at its end-of-life status it’s time to look back at the games life and consider whether the game was any good or was actually rather underwhelming.

So, let’s break this down into segments: gameplay, cars, map, soundtrack & miscellaneous

Gameplay

FH4’s whole gameplay and progression centres around the Festival Playlist and Forzathon, it’s what’s known as a Live Service game, relying on regular updates with new content rather than having a main campaign to work through and post game content afterwards to keep you playing and as a reward. Whilst it is good that we were getting batches of cars every 4 weeks for free and only requiring an hour or so’s game time, the issue though is that to access this you needed Wifi and some challenges required a paid Xbox Live Gold Membership which lets be fair, the kids/teens this game is fundamentally targeted aren’t going to be able pay for, effectively locking away content behind a paywall only adults can access which is also why I was against mass amounts of DLC (Downloadable Content) because it’s almost impossible for the average child to acquire all that content because they don’t have the required amount of disposable income. Rant aside, if you’re not a big online gamer or completionist there really isn’t much to encourage you to keep playing outside of being offered new cars for a bit of skilled driving.

But this game did introduce some new game modes outside of racing and stunts. The Eliminator. A survival mode where you find cars across the map race other drivers to eliminate them and steal their cars or get a better one instead. It’s a great idea, one issue. You need Xbox Live Gold Membership to play it, locking more content behind paywalls though the Playground Games have always been locked behind this paywall since Horizon 1 so it’s always been an issue just a much bigger one now. Where the exciting new content that’s supposed to keep people playing the game is only accessible to a portion of the audience, but what’s even more surprising is that less than 70% of players who have the game even bought a car from the Autoshow or completed a race, to put it bluntly less than 10% of people who have the game are actually playing and acquiring Achievements in the game.

Another important game mode to mention is Super7, this is the successor to the Bucket List challenges in Horizon 2 & 3 the difference being that instead of being a preset challenge, you make the challenges and other players play them. This mode was added quite late into FH4’s lifespan and was mostly used by players to grant access to cars that weren’t accessible yet by basically making a 30-minute test drive ‘challenge’. Super7 can be fun but is rather forgettable sadly even though there is the potential for a lot of creativity.

But some game mechanics that were introduced weren’t a good idea. Chiefly the purchasable houses and winnable clothes & horns. The houses replaced the Horizon Outposts, only now you have to buy them and more for bragging rights just because you can throw 20 million to buy Edinburgh Castle, they’re frankly a waste of money in the grand scheme of things. And the winnable clothes etc just made Wheelspins unfun because instead of being able to win exclusive cars and money you instead got an Arooga horn and beige trousers until you’d won most of them at which point you finally starting winning cars and cash like your supposed to. I’m fine with character customization and giving your car a funny horn sound, just keep them separate from the Wheelspins.

Cars

When first launched, Horizon 4’s roster of cars wasn’t anything to write home about but as time went on, we got a lot of cars that hadn’t been seen since Motorsport 4 & Horizon 1 like the Peugeot 207 Super 2000, BMW M3 GTS and Lamborghini Diablo GTR which were added through monthly updates in batches of 3 or 4 from day 1 until update 36 with the last car added being the Mexican built Vuhl 05RR. Overall, I was content with the overall roster of cars, but I felt this was the game where there were too many joke cars, cars like the Bubble Car, Peel P50, Ford Transit etc. The Formula Drift cars were rather samey, huge power, rear wheel drive and short gearing and the James Bond editions were rather redundant, the BMW Z8, Aston Martin DBS ’07 and Citroen 2CV were already in other Forza games and the Aston Martin DB5 was just a carbon copy of the regular version just in B class rather than C, lack of originality is what I’m getting at, where’s the Sunbeam Alpine or the BMW 750i? More iconic Bond cars that weren’t already in Forza, that’s what should have been included in the pack (The other cars in the pack were the AMC Hornet, Aston Martin V8 ’87, Aston Martin DBS ’69, Aston Martin DB10 & Jaguar CX-75). And considering this is supposed to be a simulator racing game I am conflicted about the inclusion of fantasy cars like the LEGO Speed Champion variants and Quartz Regalia from Final Fantasy.

When players like myself have criticised this, the developers have basically said “play Motorsport it’s a serious racing game, Horizon is casual” which explains why this game is targeted to Xbox Game Pass players. For those who don’t know, Game Pass is a paid membership that entitles you to a wide collection of games, so this also explains why so few players haven’t even played the equivalent to an hours’ worth of gameplay on Horizon 4, they’ve played 5 minutes and decided it’s not for them, so I highly doubt adding LEGO versions of the McLaren Senna and Bugatti Chiron is going to get these players back online. Though I fully commend the developers though for adding genuinely interesting new to Forza cars like the Citroen DS, Volkswagen I.D.R & Mercedes AMG Hammer Coupe to name a few, I’m also happy that Porsche’s were available in the base game rather than DLC as EA’s exclusivity licence had expired, VWs were back though Mitsubishi’s were added through DLC shortly after the game came out.

Of course I should also talk about the engine sounds. FH4 messed up so badly, I’ll go through a few main examples. The Ford GT ’05 (That’s the one Clarkson used to own) basically just has supercharger whine as an engine note despite the supercharger in real life mainly being background noise, the Ferrari GTC4 Lusso and Enzo seemingly have their engine sounds swapped and many more examples with cars like the Porsche Carrera GT & Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 sounding rather flat and dull. It honestly makes driving unfun because the noise is such a big part of driving the car and to go from say Horizon 3 to this is a major downgrade. That said, 2 cars now sound much realistic, those being the Bugatti Veyron Supersport and Pagani Zonda Cinque which do now sound a lot more like they do in real life. Horizon 5 has definitely improved as regards engine sounds, but it has plenty of issues with engine sounds as well.

Map

Choosing the United Kingdom as the location for Horizon 4 was an interesting pick because of our country’s prominence in the motoring world and prominent car culture. But compared to Horizon 3 which had a variety of terrains and locales, you had the outback, Surfers Paradise and the jungle whereas the UK map because it is in the UK doesn’t have any of that, Edinburgh just isn’t as nice as Surfers Paradise and the general terrain and setting is a lot more green, to put it bluntly and yet I don’t remember it really capturing the beauty of this country. There's a Slate Quarry and an abandoned railway station but that’s about it for standout areas in the main game, there’s a beach but they had one in the last game, the wind farm is great for photo’s but I guess the map is just a bit too quaint, though much like Horizon 3, there weren’t many nice race routes outside of the big Goliath races where you could earn a lot of money doing multiple laps. Though of course you could make custom routes if the ones in the base game weren’t to your liking. I did.

You could argue the Fortune Island and LEGO Speed Champions expansions add some interesting locations but, the LEGO expansion is a bit obvious with its locations like the desert, a pirate ship, an oval speedway etc. Fortune Island does have some interesting mountains, the dirt road on the cliffside is quite entertaining for races though the Needle Point road up and down the mountain is rather drawn out.

I think it was a bad idea to have Horizon 4 set in the UK as it was only ever going to disappoint coming out after a game like Horizon 3 which had so much variety. I guess Horizon 3 spoiled us more than anything as 1 & 2 didn’t have that much terrain variety but still memorable and interesting locations.

Soundtrack

Now my views on music are fundamentally opinions so I’ll say not so much the music in Horizon 4 was bad as it there wasn’t any tracks I enjoyed listening to. It’s the same in Horizon 5 but the complete opposite with the first 3, there are plenty of tracks from Horizon 1,2 & 3 in my Spotify playlist. Considering there are so many radio stations it’s a pity none had a decent selection of tracks to listen to, and its not like they can’t licence big name artists songs, Dua Lipa and New Order to name just 2 have had their songs featured in these games so why not get dedicated stations for specific decades? Also it’s not like there aren’t plenty of great driving songs that could be featured: Radar Love, Spybreak, Highway to Hell, Highway Star you name it, there is so much potential for great radio stations in Horizon, I just know it, oh and please get rid of Horizon Timeless FM, no one listens to Beethoven when racing at over 200 MPH or catching air on a rally stage.

Miscellaneous

Am I the only one who didn’t like that when you finish a race or go into the Start menu, your car goes into a limbo dimension, what was wrong with watching the other cars cross the finish line? The Showcase events were kind of interesting, racing the Flying Scotsman was cool, but the jet fighter race was poor because the early stage is full of tight corners and in all 3 versions the car you use, an Aston Martin Vulcan, Ferrari 812 Superfast & modded Lambo Countach spins all their power away in low-speed corners. The inclusion of drag racing events was nice as before you just had to organize a convoy and race down a runway. And of course, how could I not talk about Horizon 4 without mentioning the changing seasons, which was the whole selling point of this game, the UK in that respect was a good choice because of our varied seasons but pretty much everyone agreed winter was no fun at all, at least on tarmac that is. The changing season is an interesting idea but when boiled down it’s 3 weeks of dry weather and occasional rain with one week of endless snow.

 

Overall, Forza Horizon 4 wasn’t a very good game. It’s certainly not bad, but considering how great the last 3 games were, Horizon 4 was definitely a step back in regards to progression, setting and sounds. That said the creativity that’s been added through custom events and Super7 has allowed players to create interesting and unique routes and challenges which has only gone further in Horizon 5 with Event Lab Island, but I guess that only shows how great the dedicated players and creators. Maybe Microsoft need to do what SEGA did when they got Tyson Hesse and co to work on Sonic Mania and get some of these highly talented players on the creative team to come up with ideas for the next game.