Forza Horizon 4 Season Change: A Stinging Summer Corvette

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

This article was published by Gary Slater (@AudiMan2011) on January 14th, 2021 in the Forza Horizon 4 category.

 

It's cool how you can easily "fix" what I -personally- believe is the #1 stylistic flaw of the C8, with just some rear wheel spacers, a slightly lowered suspension and some concave shaped wheels. It's a really cool car!




That rear sits so much better. It now looks like the mid-engine super car that it is.

 

You can say it’s a stylistic flaw but they are likely saving some aggression for the Z06 version. Yes, the Corvette now has mid-mounted engine but the Stingray is still a sportscar aimed at daily practicality.

The “supercar bargain” of the C8 Stingray has been exaggerated in my opinion. The transmission has been tuned in favor of bonkers accleration from a standstill, and the Acura NSX reaches top speed territory with greater ease. On the other hand, I’m sure the Z06 will give the F8 Tributo and 911 Turbo S some even competition.

 

The Showcase event with the motorcross bikes is spectacularly annoying. You see the game rubber-banding the bikes at at least two separate points in the run: firstly when you enter the quarry, and then again when you do the third big jump into the pond at the house.

The result of this is that the race resets as you round the left-hander after the house. The only significant part of the race then is you coming down the hill to the finish. In the Nomad, you just need to manage the pace so you stay on the track.

By this time you've dropped "Red", then "Yellow" and "Purple" take each other out to the right. "Blue" then says "I guess it's up to me then" (or something like that), then sweeps from left of the track, over to the right, then back to the left. The bikes do not vary their course based on your position on the road, and PG has bestowed upon them an inhuman amount of weight. On four successive runs, "Blue" hit my car and either knocked me off line (by 2-3 car widths) or outright spun me out.

So it's almost a lottery as to whether you have the exact right pace to be able to avoid the bike crossing your line twice in that last 300-400 metres.

And that means you have to re-run the race several times, each time listening to the spectacularly banal "radio banter" of the bikers.

It's my least-favourite Showcase event by far.

 

@GilesGuthrie it's funny how variable the showcases are. The one with the "We have [Avro Vulcan] at home" knock-off is one of my favourite things in a game ever (probably because I got to see a real Vulcan pulling off moves very similar to those in the game), I get distracted from driving every time because I'm watching the jet instead of the road and it's so loud that I miss my shifts when it flies low over the road.

But then you've got the awful dirt bike one. The Flying Scotsman one is OK at best, I quite like the hovercraft one, the Halo one was OK the first hundred times I did it...

 

I think the flight one is the best, because it's the least RNG-based. And I get what you mean about being distracted watching the plane! The train one is also good, for the same reasons.

The hovercraft one is decent - you just have to watch out not to hit it. Although, I can understand my day getting ruined by hitting a massive hovercraft much more easily than with the bikes! I find the Halo one really easy, and as a game franchise cross-pollination exercise, it's not too bad. HOO-RAH!

 

All of the showcase events in the Horizon series have always been pretty heavily rubber-banded to the point where only the end matters, they're just normally a bit more subtle about it, and usually don't have corners too close to the end to give them time to adjust the AI pace. The train and hovercraft will both noticeably slow down if you get a bad run out of the last corner to let you past, and earlier in the event will also rocket boost past if you're getting ahead of where it needs to be by the next checkpoint (hence the hovercraft being good at punting fast drivers off the road due to the crossovers in the paths). The motocross event really breaks both the illusion of a real race and the ability of the rubber-band to let the player win.

It is still possible to fail showcases of course, as the rubber band only stretches so far - back in FH1 I'd swapped in FM4's grip levels and they all became totally unwinnable as slowing down enough for the final corners meant I couldn't catch back up to where it expects a decent player to be.

 

They all feel totally contrived to me...in that the race does not matter at all until the final few hundred meters. I'm almost certain that the opponents are just scripted animations rather than any physics based things. I like the train one, but none of the rest.

 

Yes, the showcase events are definitely scripted. Specially the Vulcan one. I've spun out during the race and made a lot of mistakes since it's easy to get distracted, and no matter what, you still win. I don't believe they are all like this though. The train one you can definitely lose, as well as the Halo one, which is more of a time attack. I agree with the dirt bike one. It is a pain, specially since the Nomad is really finicky at the downhill section. Not sure if it's tuned, but it does feel pretty awful.

 

Definitely the one I have been waiting on! And I agree about the lowering and rims, many owners are doing those mods.

 

Spun that stupid Ariel (good lord it has to be the worst handling car in the game) and still won the motocross showcase event. They are so fake.

 

Anyone else feel the C8 is super colour sensitive, possibly more so than others in game? Matte Black doesn't seem to go black enough to offset the slightly plastic paint effect? I know they're composite panels, but they're usually finished with some sort of paint depth.

The stripe thing annoyed me as well. They should really be adding paintable zones to all new cars by now rather than doing it half-heartedly with vinyls.

 

Would like to paint it, but this game is broken past 3 months. Can't paint, load designs or tunes, sell on auction house, download gift cars.