THE REVIEWS Episode 57: Forza Horizon 4

Does the sequel live up to my expectations?

Man, Im having a migraine right now. My head hurts quite a lot. It feels like I’ve been through a whirlwind disaster, an earthquake, a tsunami, and then I hit my head on the floor and the wall…

…Okay, maybe I’m just talking nonsense. Long story short, my head still hurts from this damn migraine. However, I’m not gonna care about that and get to the main attention today. I’m gonna review Forza Horizon 4 today. Damn, it’s been around three years since I’ve reviewed the previous one. Before I get into the game, let’s go through some simple, basic information.

Forza Horizon 4 is the fourth instalment of the Forza Horizon games, and the eleventh one overall in the Forza series. It is an open world racing video game developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft Studios for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. Guess when it’s made? 2 October 2018. That is eleven days before my review on Forza Horizon 3. Now, I know what you’re gonna ask. Why the hell am I only reviewing this now? Good question. I wanted to play this game for a long time before I determine how bad or good it is. Just like FH3, it’s the same thing here, and I finally got to a conclusion.

This game sucks.

I have my reasons. I’m gonna go through every point of why I think this is a pretty shit game to me. I would talk about the good points, and then the bad points. Pretty straightforward, so let’s get started.

The first good thing about this is that there are various types of cars in this game, like Forza Horizon 3. I like driving the cars here as some of them are the really unique Raesr Tachyon, the Koenigsegg Jesko, and the Rimac Concept Two. They’re really awesome to drive in, and the interiors are very nice as usual.

You can create your own challenges using your OWN routes! This really takes ‘making your own challenge’ to the next level. You can even put obstacles along the way! How fun is that? A lot. With the Super7 addition, you can publish your own challenge for people to play! You can either create an easy route, or make players suffer. Personally, I’m a sadistic man, so I’d go with the latter option.

The season-changing mechanic is really special too. I don’t think I’ve seen any game like this, honestly. There are games in which their races have fixed seasons on it but this game is totally different. It changes the seasons real-time. Let’s say you’re playing in the summer season. At Thursday, 1430 GMT, there will be a cutscene to show that the season change from summer to autumn. It looks really cool and stylish, I’ll give it that.

Houses. I have never expected this in a racing game, but nonetheless I’ll accept it. It’s not that bad of a function, for it acts like a festival site. The designs are pretty good-looking too, and the scenery is beautiful. I rock with some of the radio stations in this game.

Now, onto the things I don’t like about this game.

The wheelspins. You’re gonna ask me, “Noah, why the hell are you complaining about the wheelspins? It’s free prizes! Cash and cars could be obtained through there!” But you forget that there are clothes, horns, and even POSES. Yes, because this game has customization of your own avatar, you can choose whatever shirt, pants, and shoes they could wear. Some of them are locked, and that means they can be earned through where? THE WHEELSPINS AND EVENTS. WHY THE HELL WOULD I WANT THE SHIRTS AND THE SHITTY ASS SHOES? I’m playing a racing game here, not a Barbie game.

Don’t even get me started on horns and poses. In which part of the game do you need the horns? Imma tell you: NOT A SINGLE FRICKIN TIME IN THIS GODDAMN GAME. Even if you are doing a free roam in your nice car, why would you press the horn? On the Xbox controller, you have to press the right analog button. There’s practically no other use for that button, so why the hell on earth would I even press that? And poses…oh my god, they’re awful and even more useless than the horns. They’re only used when you are in The Trial or in the AVATAR CUSTOMIZATION SCREEN. UTTERLY BULLSHIT. Why is this in the game at all? It has no use whatsoever other than to show off your avatar. Yeah, imagine proudly showing off your avatar in a racing game. RACING. GAME. And poses, huh? What am I playing now? Fortnite?

Now you’re gonna ask, “Why do you give so much shits about all of these? You can just not care about them since they make you angry, and just drive the cars.” How I wish I could just ignore these worthless items. However, they all have a similarity besides being useless. You know what it is? It’s that THEY ALL APPEAR IN THE FUCKING WHEELSPINS! Why the fuck would Playground Games ever think I would give two shits about getting these pointless stuff?! All I want is credits or cars, even if I got them before, not these things I won’t even use in this game! They can’t even be sold at all, so that technically means they’re not even valuable.

Just think about it. You finally got a Wheelspin after doing some tasks, and then you spin it, expecting cars and credits. Out of a sudden, you get a fucking jacket. You can’t sell it, you’re not gonna use it anyways, and it’ll just sit in your inventory forever, being nothing but a worthless piece of shit. These fucking stupid things should be able to be bought with credits, not put in a RNG wheel! This really makes it harder for me to actually earn credits, which is required in almost EVERYTHING IN THIS HORRIBLE GAME! Whoever thought that the clothings, horns, and poses are of value should just play the Sims instead of developing this game at all!

This is a personal thing, but I don’t like the map for Forza Horizon 4. Most of it are forests and trees. I usually love nature, taking strolls in a quiet park, and I’m thankful for the trees giving me oxygen. In this game though, the trees are pure pain, obstacles, and sons of bitches. Somehow, when I drive, there’s a 50% chance for me to hit the damn trees, and they’re all clustered together, making it hard for me to get out. It’s like the trees are magnets that attract my car over. To me, I’m more of a city person. I like seeing cities, like the city of Australia in Forza Horizon 3. I get it that there must be forests in the game, but don’t put it too much. It’ll take away the excitement I have for the game. But, like I said, it’s all me. You may like forests, and that’s fine too.

Onto the main thing that made me really dislike this game. The difficulty. I don’t know what Playground Games were thinking when they decided to make this game, but what the fuck is this? Why is this game so god damn hard? The opponents seem to be faster and smarter this time. They could trick or force you to a corner and make you fall back so hard you end up in last place.

I remember, when I played Forza Horizon 3, the opponents aren’t even that hard. As long as you get the gist of the track, and you bought upgrades for your car, you would win at least first or second. In this dung heap, the opponents just speed through you like you’re just dust. Even when you upgraded the car and tuned it to the best of your abilities, you still can land in second place, not even beating the first car! You have to memorize the map, have the skills, and then pray for your opponent to slow down so that you can pass them.

It’s even worse with Forzathon. Holy shit, the amount of work you need to do just for super wheelspins and cars are so off. The effort needed to be place is a lot. The requirements to pass these challenges are a pain in the ass, so good luck with this shit. The worst thing is the speed traps. Oh god, the speed traps. They’re ridiculously difficult, and spare no mercy at all. The 3 star scores are almost unachievable if you make the slightest mistake.

In Forzathon, the score you need to get for the seasonal objective is unbelievably high. I can’t just use my own Mosler MT900S and pass it, or not I’ll just rage. I have to use a very specific car with specific upgrades and a specific tune to at least get close to the score. Wanna know how I know that? I gave up on trying with my own car and just went to watch YouTube for tutorials. In winter season, the cars go absolutely nuts and become very hard to control. That’s when you can try and test your patience, or train it, whichever suits you best.

Isn’t this game about cars? Racing? So doesn’t it make sense if I’m able to use my own car to beat the challenges? What’s the point of using a specific car with a specific build to pass it? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having that 750+ cars in the damn game?! If you have to look through a tutorial to actually pass this bullshit most of the time, then this will become more like a fixed game where only required cars are able to finish. Why do they have to make this game so hard?! Why can’t it be like Forza Horizon 3, which is way much easier?! Why do Playground Games have to tone up the difficulty so high up?!

To me, this game is way worse than Forza Horizon 3. I don’t think there would be a way for this game to redeem itself, to me at least. This game has made me rage and be frustrated for a very long, long time it made me feel that doing homework is a better option. Fuck this game.