first impressions?

Bought the game today. Played it for about 6 hours straight. The physics are pretty decent for an open world game and I love just driving around. The car customization is pretty good and I love the barn finding experience. I love the fact that I can just sit down and start having a good time by just driving around and doing burnouts and drifting in housing plans :sly: Not as serious as FM or GT games but a ton of fun!
 
So I booted up the game today, hopped in my "robin's egg blue" MX-5 with a modest RENESIS swap, and set off down the road...and it felt so right. :cool:

Its like the old Forza 1 and 2 replays where their benchmark. Really unforgivable, but also a small issue, still enjoy it.
I forgot about that, back in FM2. Horizon's replays are a near-total dud for me, but they still work great for positioning photos.

I've learned that Rewind makes an effective "instant replay" for free roam (duh). You don't even have to leave it on. You can turn it on, rewind, see the replay, and then turn it off before you even return to driving. :)
 
Well, I'm about 20 hours into it, and honestly I just want to delete it off my HDD, and move on.

Pretty visuals here and there, but just doesn't have the refinement and polish of FM4, which makes sense somewhat, since PG handled the majority of development.

My main gripes:

* Engine sound detail not as rich as FM4
* 30 fps racing.. arrrgh, abomination!!
* Dumbed down physics model, feels far too basic, even more so than FM3
* Dumbed down cosmetic damage
* No tuning
* No real sense of achievement
* Not really an open world setting, but an open road one (oh well..)
* Night driving exciting at first, but then the 20 feet drawing distance gets annoying (no option to toggle hi/low beam)
* Terrible, dated and tacky looking tire/dirt smoke effects. A game that looks rather impressive in some areas, should at least focus on special effects a little
* Overall sound design not that impressive; wind noise, road noise, tire screeching effects, sliding on dirt sound effects...sounds like you're popping corn in the microwave when you're driving on dirt! Poor design!
* On a whole, game feels very limited and dated, at least based on what I've experienced with previous Forza games
* Open road setting is interesting, and can be fun at times, but marred by a serious lack of polish
 
I rented and played Horizon for about 4 hours last night. Messed around with vinyls for about 2 hours. So far I am enjoying Horizon. I will post my open minded positive and negative feedback for the game like I do with all games.

First Impressions.

I have always been a huge fan of T10 since the first Forza. So I am always looking forward to their games. I went into this knowing its their first attempt at an open world racing game.

The physics are amazing and thats the main focus of Horizon is to intigrate great physics in an open world game. They nailed it for sure. The physics are not quite as sim as F4 but not as arcade as other open world games. Its a nice balanced combination of both worlds. While there are no tuning options, you can swap a wide variety of parts to improve the performance of your car.

The vinyl system is 100% there from Forza 4 just with a different user interface. The game even loads your vinyls from F4 directly from your hard drive. You cant load entire car paint jobs but you can load all your vinyl groups from F4.

The graphics are really good. Scenery graphics are hit and miss but the cars look great. Obviously toned down from the F4 graphics but still look really good. Day night cycle is really nice especially when you see your headlights and dash lights turning on. Also seeing the sunrise is a nice touch while cruising around. No weather effects at all.

The co-op can be fun but overall is a bit disappointing. While you are in the co-op mode you can not get money for drifting, oncoming traffic, near misses, damage or anything else. You can only get money by completing co-op objectives. I believe there are about 15 co-op objectives. Draft someone for a certain amount of time, trade paint, drive from point A to point B. But while you are doing that, you can not make money. Plus, you can not get barn finds together at the same time. You can be sitting right next to your friend while he gets a barn find, but you cant get it. I believe this it tied into your rank but I am not sure. Regardless, you cant go cruising to find them together at the same time. Then once you unlock it, you have to go back to the single player to pick the car. Then come back to the co-op to drive your new car.

For those that argued until they were blue in the face about the map not being 63 sq miles, they are incorrect. It is indeed only very close to 63 sq miles. To top that off, you can unlock EVERY road in the game within 2-3 hours. I had 2 friends in my party last night that were just cruising around and within 1 hour my friend had half the roads unlocked. Another hour later, 90%. Half an hour after that 99%. The map is very very tiny. About 1/3 the size of Burnout Paradise. Which is fine because I knew it would be small. But some people were in denial about how small the map is. I will post more about this in the map size thread.

Overall Horizon does seem to be focused on a more laid back generation of gamers in a good way. Its much much more forgiving in many ways and that takes the edge off at time and adds more of a fun factor to the game. If you are in the middle of a drift and spin out, you are not punished. You can even bump some walls or AI and stil maintain your combos. Very generous which will reduce frustration for many people new to the series. Those expecting a massive full free roaming TDU2 experience might be disappointed. But if you go into Horizon expecting a more laid back casual Forza experience in an open world environment, you will enjoy it. 👍

Yezzir, aa'second that! A game for the serious sim fan it is not.

Cheers you guys, enjoy it while you can!
 
I finally bought Horizon on boxing day and have put about 10-15 hours into it. My first impression was pretty much just sheer amazement. My overall impression is that it has by far exceeded my expectations. I didn't think there would be any modifications or conversions and I thought there would be less freedom. I think this is a really good game, and I havn't even started to play online yet.

(Plus they even included a Corolla DX in with the traffic cars (same car I drive in real life)). I was so excited to finally see a 7th gen Corolla in a game.
 
Muffler upgrades have never helped the engine audio in Forza. Which has been mentioned for a long time. The only few options you have are usually headers, larger cam, full lightweight conversion. Those 3 help the most. Mufflers never do anything. Or get a convertible, those always sound the best. If we could roll the windows down that would help too like in other games.

Check your audio settings and sound system bro! Muffler upgrades DO make an audible difference, more so in FM4 no doubt.
 
I enjoy the actual racing quite a bit. With the AI set at the hardest and steering on simulation it fits my skills perfectly. I like a game where I'm not absolutely sure of winning every time and these game are kind of rare on consoles.

The game presentation is not really polished. As mentioned, the replays just suck. I'm not really into the storyline and the Dirt menus feels like a by-product and they are. These days you really feel that they don't care that much for these details 'cause they know people will buy the game anyway.

But my conclusion is that the game is fun and enjoyable where it counts. Great title with a lot of potential for the future. Just need polishing...
 
I bought the game the day after it came out. Finally yesterday I put it in the Xbox. I found it was right up my alley. I didn't have to race I could just loaf around and view the scenery.

So for the time I spent in it, before going back to FM4, I thought it was alright.

Would I say it was awesome?? I'll give that a definite MAYBE.

Disclaimer *This is in my humble opinion*
 
Back