Welcome to Colorado and go flat out to participate in the Horizon Festival in the first spin-off from the Forza series, Forza: Horizon. Created by Playground Games, Forza: Horizon break its serious closed track, racing simulator root to an open world arcade racing game. Is it a just a poor attempt to jump on arcade racing market? Or could it be a new standard on arcade racing genre?
The Car Collection (9/10)
+ pretty large collection for an arcade racing game
+ enough variety, from the classic VW Beetle to the beast Hennessy Venom
+ except for the dealership on the game, you can also find various classics and legendary cars from barns scattered around the big world of Colorado
+ some of the cars are very special cars like Eagle Speedster, Bugatti Veyron Supersport and Lamborghini Sesto Elemento
- some famous cars are cast out for DLC purpose, including Nissan 370Z, VW Golf GTI, and Ferrari 458 Italia
The Gameplay (9/10)
+ great handling and car grip physics that stay in the right position between simulation and arcade
+ various options to tune the difficulty, you can easily tune the abs, brake assist, esp, traction control, racing line assist, and the flashback feature
+ quite challenging AI, even on normal difficulty
+ there are quite a lot of variety of racing modes
+ car modification is quite deep although it still not as awesome as NFS: Underground 2
+ decorating your car with 1000 layers of vinyl is amazingly awesome with pretty easy to use control
+ tons of collectibles and side missions (street racing and pr stunts are the best)
- there are no other offline mode except for career mode
- no split screen (i really hate this trend on racing game lately)
- car damage is only cosmetic
- crashing your car won't cost you a lot. You can crash your SRT Viper to oncoming traffic in 155 mph and all you get is awful crash animation that looks like two marshmallows colliding.
- you still can't look down when using headcam
The Graphics (9.5/10)
+ superbly amazing and detailed re imagining of Colorado.
+ smooth 30 fps framerate, yes it's not 60 fps like Forza Motorsport but it still great
+ beautifully rendered car, each one of them. both exterior and interior
+ great particle and lightning effect
+ amazing real time transition from day to night
+ nice damage model
- ugly hand animation when using flappy paddle gear, it looks like the driver just twisting their hand and magically the gear change
- just like other Forza games, the replay is still awkward
The Sound (9.5/10)
+ awesome music collection. There are three radio station that separate the music into three genre, rock, electro, and eclectic indie, so you can choose which one that suits your taste. Of course you can easily turn off the radio if none of the music please you.
+ awesome sound from the cars, from the crunchy roar of boxer engine to the orchestra of bass from 426 engine block
VERDICT (9.1/10)
Forza: Horizon is a great racing game. A nice spin-off that Turn 10 and Microsoft really need to continue. Highly recommended