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Last year, I got a used copy of Forza Horizon 2 for the 360. I had been eagerly awaiting it for the entirety of the month. And then it came. And then I played it. I liked it a lot. One of my favourite in the series and one of my favourite games of all time. However, there's one big thing that always bugged me: FH2-360 was a good game that never got the love it deserved.
PART 1 - HONEY I SHRUNK THE CAR LIST
Not long before launch - when most people had already bought the game - Turn 10 quickly announced that FH2-360 would receive no DLC. Oh dear. All these people who have just bought this game have been told that it would receive no post-launch support. That caused quite a stir and probably hurt sales. OK, definitely hurt sales. The car list also included a lot of cars that were from FH1 and FM4 and not FM5 and the Xbox One version. This was done simply to get to the advertised 200 cars. It was nice because some of those cars have never reappeared in the series and it seemed like a 'best of' Forza, but bad because they were filling the car list with cars from older games. Sumo Digital did try to fix the lack of cars and DLC, though - several DLC cars from the Xbox One were in the 360 version from the start and let's not forget the Fast And Furious expansion, which actually fixed some problems of the original 360 version, such as the lack of the docks. Yes, they did this by removing the golf course, but you can't drive on it anyway in the 360 version, so no matter.
PART 2 - NICE GRAPHICS YOU'VE GOT THERE, TOO BAD ABOUT THE BUGS
I don't care what people say. Horizon 2 on the 360 is a good-looking game. The graphics are a huge upgrade from the first and still hold up today (the YouTube comparisons make the 360 version look really bad because of the compression). The only problem is that while it looks really good when - let's say - you're driving down the coast from Nice to Castelletto but as soon as you see a field with no vegetation on it you completely forget about that. The thing is, the world is simply too big for the game to work well. Having a smaller map - like only the bit in Italy - so it's about the size of FH1's, you could get a much better looking game. There's also some problems in the world itself. Some roads just end out of nowhere and some roads are visible, but not driveable (I think there is one near the north-east of the map). And then there are the bugs. Picture this: you're driving your Bugatti Veyron at top speed and then, out of nowhere, it jumps into the air and crashes. Those are the sort of glitches in this game. And the sad thing is they were never fixed. The game only had one update that was most likely for Fast And Furious. That's quite sad.
PART 3 - A CAREER MODE THAT WAS BETTER?
Many people say that FH2's career mode is very similar to FH1's. That's just wrong. They're completely different. But strangely, on of the things Sumo did right was the career. In fact, I'd say they did it better than Playground Games. It's close enough to the Xbox One version so they don't seem like different games but it's far enough that the career mode isn't as mind-numbing as the Xbox One version.
You see, the Xbox One version makes you choose where to take the road trip. You drive there and do the races. Repeat.
While the 360 version does make you drive to the location, the game chooses where you're going. And, amazingly, it makes it 100% better. Yes. Really.
However, there is one big problem. The lack of wheelspins and the lack of money from events make this game a huge grind. Not nice.
PART 4 - WHAT FH2-360 SHOULD HAVE BEEN
So, what do I think? Well, the map should have been smaller. And there should have been less barn finds, with the removed cars from those barn finds being added directly to the Autoshow. Advertising the game differently could have benefited it as well. Rain might also have been possible if the game was downsized a bit (TDU2 did it and quite well at that).
CONCLUSION - FORZA HORIZON 2, THE CASH GRAB THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BRILLIANT
Hell, if Sumo tried hard enough, it could have been (technically) better than the One version. But they didn't. So what we got was the shell of a great game, filled up with misadvertising (I know it isn't advertising, but the clips on the start screen are from the Xbox One - they even show rain - and the cutscenes are also from the One version), a lack of content and bugs. But you know what? FH2 on the 360 is still a great game, no matter what anybody says. And, unlike the Xbox One version, you can still buy it (bar the Fast And Furios DLC). So, would I? Yes, actually.
I feel that if Sumo were given a bigger budget and more time and resources, as well as not having to work on LittleBigPlanet 3 at the same time and being able to support the game post-launch, they could have given the Xbox 360 a last hurrah and made the final encore something to remember. Plus, they could have been able to say to Microsoft that they can still make a good game on older hardware. But because of how Microsoft and Turn 10 work, that would have never happened.
PART 1 - HONEY I SHRUNK THE CAR LIST
Not long before launch - when most people had already bought the game - Turn 10 quickly announced that FH2-360 would receive no DLC. Oh dear. All these people who have just bought this game have been told that it would receive no post-launch support. That caused quite a stir and probably hurt sales. OK, definitely hurt sales. The car list also included a lot of cars that were from FH1 and FM4 and not FM5 and the Xbox One version. This was done simply to get to the advertised 200 cars. It was nice because some of those cars have never reappeared in the series and it seemed like a 'best of' Forza, but bad because they were filling the car list with cars from older games. Sumo Digital did try to fix the lack of cars and DLC, though - several DLC cars from the Xbox One were in the 360 version from the start and let's not forget the Fast And Furious expansion, which actually fixed some problems of the original 360 version, such as the lack of the docks. Yes, they did this by removing the golf course, but you can't drive on it anyway in the 360 version, so no matter.
PART 2 - NICE GRAPHICS YOU'VE GOT THERE, TOO BAD ABOUT THE BUGS
I don't care what people say. Horizon 2 on the 360 is a good-looking game. The graphics are a huge upgrade from the first and still hold up today (the YouTube comparisons make the 360 version look really bad because of the compression). The only problem is that while it looks really good when - let's say - you're driving down the coast from Nice to Castelletto but as soon as you see a field with no vegetation on it you completely forget about that. The thing is, the world is simply too big for the game to work well. Having a smaller map - like only the bit in Italy - so it's about the size of FH1's, you could get a much better looking game. There's also some problems in the world itself. Some roads just end out of nowhere and some roads are visible, but not driveable (I think there is one near the north-east of the map). And then there are the bugs. Picture this: you're driving your Bugatti Veyron at top speed and then, out of nowhere, it jumps into the air and crashes. Those are the sort of glitches in this game. And the sad thing is they were never fixed. The game only had one update that was most likely for Fast And Furious. That's quite sad.
PART 3 - A CAREER MODE THAT WAS BETTER?
Many people say that FH2's career mode is very similar to FH1's. That's just wrong. They're completely different. But strangely, on of the things Sumo did right was the career. In fact, I'd say they did it better than Playground Games. It's close enough to the Xbox One version so they don't seem like different games but it's far enough that the career mode isn't as mind-numbing as the Xbox One version.
You see, the Xbox One version makes you choose where to take the road trip. You drive there and do the races. Repeat.
While the 360 version does make you drive to the location, the game chooses where you're going. And, amazingly, it makes it 100% better. Yes. Really.
However, there is one big problem. The lack of wheelspins and the lack of money from events make this game a huge grind. Not nice.
PART 4 - WHAT FH2-360 SHOULD HAVE BEEN
So, what do I think? Well, the map should have been smaller. And there should have been less barn finds, with the removed cars from those barn finds being added directly to the Autoshow. Advertising the game differently could have benefited it as well. Rain might also have been possible if the game was downsized a bit (TDU2 did it and quite well at that).
CONCLUSION - FORZA HORIZON 2, THE CASH GRAB THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BRILLIANT
Hell, if Sumo tried hard enough, it could have been (technically) better than the One version. But they didn't. So what we got was the shell of a great game, filled up with misadvertising (I know it isn't advertising, but the clips on the start screen are from the Xbox One - they even show rain - and the cutscenes are also from the One version), a lack of content and bugs. But you know what? FH2 on the 360 is still a great game, no matter what anybody says. And, unlike the Xbox One version, you can still buy it (bar the Fast And Furios DLC). So, would I? Yes, actually.
I feel that if Sumo were given a bigger budget and more time and resources, as well as not having to work on LittleBigPlanet 3 at the same time and being able to support the game post-launch, they could have given the Xbox 360 a last hurrah and made the final encore something to remember. Plus, they could have been able to say to Microsoft that they can still make a good game on older hardware. But because of how Microsoft and Turn 10 work, that would have never happened.
Maybe in a couple of years, when we can hack and mod the Xbox 360 like we can to the PS2, we could try and make a better version of FH2-360. I'd like that.