Unpopular Opinion - Forza Horizon 4 is a Huge Disappointment

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I've seen that tutorial complaint in several places, and I don't really get it. The first trip through all four seasons isn't all "tutorial" - yes, it introduces you to the game's various mechanics, races, and so on; but aside from these quick sidebars, you're essentially thrown into series races and other events pretty quickly.

You're doing your first road races within five minutes. Then your first "story" chapter right after that, then dirt races, and so on. Occasionally it tugs your shirt to show you something, or blather about how things work (and I wish you could skip through this stuff ANY time it happens), but you're generally just going through events.

Yes.

People mistake the first 6ish hours as the tutorial when it's essentially the full, structured singleplayer experience. Once you've qualified for "Horizon Life", you've progressed through the story of the game.
 
Yes.

People mistake the first 6ish hours as the tutorial when it's essentially the full, structured singleplayer experience. Once you've qualified for "Horizon Life", you've progressed through the story of the game.
I disagree and would argue that Horizon Stories qualify as additional narrative content.
 
Your comments are way too reasonable for this thread judging by its title and would probably have been better off on the grumble page instead.

We are also in the UK! Where are the UK dudes with brown hair/ginger hair/bald hair with no option for beards!! or Girls with tattoos and all year round tans even in the winter seasons! :)
Big hoopy earrings and hair in a bun or unevenly dyed so it looks like a pint of Guinness :lol:
 
To the OP:

Each to his own I guess. To me the FH games grow bigger and better with each iteration so FH4 is for me (like many others) also the best game. It has the best graphics (on X1X at least, not sure what you play on) and the richest content.

When I compare the base games of the 4 games then to me it’s the simple chronological order: FH1 < FH2 < FH3 < FH4. However, for pure atmosphere to me the older games hold something special as well. I think FH1 has the most immersive story and FH2 has the most interesting map location. FH3 is special as well in retrospect with the rainforest, the outback and the skyscrapers of Surfer’s Paradise.

I really like how for FH4 Playground did not create a modern skyscraper city again, that would be rather boring. I like the historical Britain focus a lot. Not because I prefer that over a modern city, but because it gives diversity. I’m sure we will see skyscrapers return for a future iteration of the franchise once again.

Comparing the 4 games on some topics, always from best to worse:

Graphics: 4 3 2 1
Features: 4 3 2 1
Storyline: 1 2 4 3
Map theme: 2 1 3 4
Map technicality: 4 2 1 3
Car handling: 2 4 1 3
Manufacturers: 2 3 4 1
Car diversity: 4 3 2 1
 
I got FH4 on xbox game pass free trial so far and I'm really enjoying it. The car handling seems a big improvement over the FH3 demo I played, but that could be down to much better FFB in FH4. I wish every arcade game had car handling like it. I can't really fault the graphics in either, they look great on PC at least.

I don't usually play online games but I didn't feel the need to switch to offline while playing this. Yesterday I had no internet so I had to play offline mode and have to say the game was quite annoying and not as enjoyable. The offline avatar cars can crash into you and always seem to be hanging around near by in big groups and are a real pain in the arse. They drive like maniacs and almost always happen to be driving right into your path. Then when they crash into you they will keep driving into you rather than trying to go around.

I Haven't owned any Forza games before, FH3 demo didn't really tempt me to buy, but the FH4 demo made me want the game. Mostly because the FFB was ok and being able to use multiple USB devices let me use my sim rig to play. The new cockpit view with no steering wheel in FH4 is a huge plus, I get distracted easily by steering wheels being visible in games and it's especially bad when the steering wheel has hands and it doesn't match the real life rotation.
I do find it slightly annoying that even though this is set in the UK, most of the cars have the steering wheel on the wrong side, even on British cars.
 
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Can I say that apart from the car list and 60fps graphics option on the FH4, each FH3 and FH4 got their own set of positives and negatives which makes both unique?
 
I think the game is alright (come free with xbox one s 1tb). I feel it's more of the same as fh3. I do like some of the missions and the Laracer game cars. I dont feel largely excited to play fh4 compared to the others, but there is enough to keep me playing. I hope there's a better 2nd expansion on the horizon.
 
More of the same sums up my feelings about this game pretty well.

Except for the fact that the game's regressed in some ways. Online is awful right now, engine sounds have somehow dropped immensely in quality, and of course losing Toyota and Mitsubishi was a big blow for me.
 
I feel as though Horizon needs a proper competitor in this segment to get a better game, it's an upgrade over the previous but it isn't a big step up of the previous version, seasons is an okay feature but winter is tedious imo. A bigger map size or integrated expansions in the map would be what I think the game needs to aim towards in the next game, the map is filled with things but I feel they could do more on the size.

This is not to say this game isn't great, because it is. No other game in this kind of genre comes close.
 
Bugs have made me grow weary of this game. It's like I can't play more than 5 minutes without encountering some kind of bug.
If it isn't sound freezing, it's the entire game freezing and crashing. Online may as well not exist, team adventure never seems to be able to start, and on the rare occasion an event pops up to join, it's only 1-4 players.
Forzathons... I don't know what to say, I can't see what all the challenges are, so it's constant back and forth checking what the next task is, assuming that it's even registering what I'm doing, and Forzathon live got stale after the first 5-10 times I did it.

And last but not least it feels like half of the game is based around enjoying bad weather....which anyone who's owned a nice car in real life knows is generally the opposite of true. Sure, trucks and stuff can be fun in bad conditions romping around, but I'm not a trucker, and I don't understand the Jeep thing.

I like sports cars, racing, and driving in nice weather, a lot of which can't be done sometimes or even most of the time.

A few fixes and it's got everything I want, but those fixes don't seem to be a priority. It's been out 3 months and most of the bugs or bad online things either haven't been addressed, or have gotten worse with every update.

But hey, they sure got the paid DLC pushed out. :/

Edit: Almost forgot, the amount of strange cars chosen to be "locked" behind wheelspins, etc. I mean I kind of enjoy having some cars locked and such, it's nice to feel like having something is an accomplishment, but there seems to be around 100 cars locked away, and it feels like a computer just randomly selected them too. There's nothing special to most people about most of them, take the 04 Subaru for example. Totally common, and they have 5 other STi's. Unless you're an STi nut, you probably don't particularly care about this exact version, besides wanting "everything unlocked".
I thought locked cars were supposed to be desirable, not just randomly picked normal cars tens of thousands have been made in real life.
 
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I think a competitor would be a good thing, especially if it was more competition focused and less extreme. It'll never happen, but Gran Turismo open world would be a more measured approach, one I'd welcome.
 
It's strange how this game has turned out from a technical standpoint. FH2 and FH3 were solid and made the earliest builds of FM7 look amateurish. In the mean time FM7 improved to the point where FH4 doesn't have the upper hand. I didn't expect this at all.
 
Car pass/DLC cars is one of disappointment for me.

There is no dissatisfaction with remaster car. There are still many cars deleted for FM5. It is pleasing that the wonderful heritage of FM4/FH1 will be regularly added in this way.
However, too many variant cars are newly added in FH4.
For example, McLaren 650S Spider and BMW i8 Spider are not remastered cars.

I disliked DLC of FM7. However, these DLCs were all new cars. They have not added Cherokee Convertible or Land Rover Convertible.
Regardless of liking or disliking the car being added, there was pleasure and surprise that what kind of cars are added each month.
However, FH4 has no such thing.
"What kind of variant will be added this month?"
This is my feel of now.
Anger for their lazy work.
And already the car for car pass is probably completed mostly. I'm sure the other variant will be added next month, and we also sigh.
Will the 488 Spider be added next month? Or 911 convertible? :yuck:
 
At least the convertibles are still a step above the one-off SEMA mods pretending to be original cars, like Deberti and Guntherwerks.
I do not think so.
These cars have better visuals and improved performance for cars that can only fit the ugly Forza spoiler.
There is no such change in the convertible.
The upgrade has almost no change and the performance is declining.
 
The two things which I dislike about Forza horizon 4 is how:
1) they never carried over all the car sounds from Forza Horizon 3.

I bought the McLaren F1 recentley hoping it would've had the same V12 rumble from Forza Horizon 3 but mine sounds like a new Lamborghini V12 with custom exhaust.


2) Clothing items dominating wheelspins. It is rare for me to get any nice cars from the wheelspins. I still waiting for a McLaren F1 GT to come to me in a wheelspin
 
The two things which I dislike about Forza horizon 4 is how:
1) they never carried over all the car sounds from Forza Horizon 3.

I bought the McLaren F1 recentley hoping it would've had the same V12 rumble from Forza Horizon 3 but mine sounds like a new Lamborghini V12 with custom exhaust.


2) Clothing items dominating wheelspins. It is rare for me to get any nice cars from the wheelspins. I still waiting for a McLaren F1 GT to come to me in a wheelspin
The F1's sound was almost completely wrong in FH3. FH4 brings it more in line with how it was pre-FH3, and in line with how other games do it.
 
i just want them to fix the laggy menus. I don't routinely encounter any other bugs in the game, but it seems like the menu delays are getting worse (especially when pulling up your garage or the autoshow). I'll end up sitting there for 10+ seconds, waiting for it to show me my cars.

The occasional audio bug with the engine noises etc. is certainly not ideal, but doesn't really substantially impact my experience either. But constantly sitting there waiting for menus to come up sure does.
 
IMO there are too many cars in Forza Horizon. It sounds stupid but the map is not enough big and technique to appreciate all these cars. Forza Horizon 3 and 4 are like Uncarted games, the first hours are amazing but as soon as the solo mode is done, I can't find the replayability. (FH2 is the best one for me).
At the end, the game is great so there is not too much to complain but Forza Horizon as a franchise starts to feel like a copy and paste recipe. The game is too easy, too generous, too much. I remember how special it was to win a prize car or to buy a car in the first GTs, today in Forza and GT, I have hundreds of cars and they represent nothing in terms of feelings, they simply don't feel special to me.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...d-forza-horizon-4-remains-generous-to-a-fault
 
The F1's sound was almost completely wrong in FH3. FH4 brings it more in line with how it was pre-FH3, and in line with how other games do it.
Oh okay. I still not drive my F1 much in this game since the sound dissapoints me. If it had the V12 bellow down at low rpms still where I like to cruise at low rpms when I am not pushing the car to its limit I would not have let this car sit in the garage all the time.
 
Incidentally I had a really good little late night Christmas Eve team adventure marathon, everything worked without a hitch all night.
 
I have all four horizons on my xbox. There is NO WAY fh2 likes better than fh3, not to mention fh4. After playing 3 it's hard to play 1 and 2. You can literally see polygons around the edges of ALL CARS. Please look again.

Does he really have fh3? And if so is he playing it on tv of antiquity?

The fact he mentioned its online as a critique is laughable. Its one of the best parts of the game. I cant count how many times. I was just cruising and bumped into a convoy of 8 or more cars just cruising. Never gets old!
 
So, I decided that people had taken my review out of context, so in this post I'll both be giving context to my older posts and giving a new review completely.

OLDER POSTS
Online mode: While FH4's online mode may be good, an online-only game isn't. Also, from what I can see, there is no private online free roam, like how you could get your mates together online and just play by yourselfs, but I may be wrong: I've never played the game online properly with friends because I don't have any friends on Xbox and I have no interest in paying another subscription. Also, I only really enjoy single-player. I don't find online games fun.
"FH2/3 have better graphics": Bad eyesight, got glasses. FH4 still isn't that impressive visually though. GTS and to an extent The Crew 2 look a lot better.
"Graphics design": @ImaRobot This was worded badly. A simpler way to put it is this: you can give Minecraft advanced lighting and 4K textures but in the end it'll still look like Minecraft.

A NEW REVIEW
FH4 is both a good and bad game. Technically it's brilliant. It has loads of cars, a nice location, and it's very polished. But despite this, I don't like it anywhere near as much as the first two games. It has no soul, and when you've done everything, very boring. I remember a YouTuber (I think he was called CraptasticJack) talking about how NFS 2015 and some other racing games were 'games' that FH3 was a 'product'. The same applies here.

Meanwhile, The Crew 2's reviews were bad, yet I like it more than FH4. A lot more. I'd even say that it's my favourite racing game this generation. The big difference is that, despite its flaws, the game has a personality. And, more crucially, it's fun. It doesn't feel like game that was meant to make a lot of money, like FH4. It's an actual game.

So, in the end, Forza Horizon 4 is a really good game I don't like. TC2 is a terrible game that I really like.

Oh, if you're asking: I didn't renew my Xbox Game Pass. Instead, I bought the Ultimate Edition.
 
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So, I decided that people had taken my review out of context, so in this post I'll both be giving context to my older posts and giving a new review completely.

We didn't take your review out of context. We poked holes in your terrible points, including the asinine thought that somehow

FH4 still isn't that impressive visually though. GTS and to an extent The Crew 2 look a lot better.

OK, maybe I can give you GTS, but GTS isn't doing any of the heavy lifting that FH4 is doing when you consider that the game is one of the best displays of graphics in the genre, and without a doubt on consoles right now when you consider that the game is running full seasons. The Crew 2 looks terrible when you compare it to FH4, in that context. I have bad eyesight, and glasses, and yet I can see the graphical fidelity that FH4 has on the Xbox One X and PC in comparison with the competition. Yet you seem to think that a game using a last generation engine and looks worse then the current gen one in the Xbox 360 version of FH2 is a better looking game? Come on.

So you basically come back after months to try and explain your points, only to reveal that you're a fan of TC2, and dig yourself a deeper hole then you had before. Like...what was the point in coming back to this?
 
Absolutely no one took your review out of context. What it was taken at was face value.

Online mode: While FH4's online mode may be good, an online-only game isn't
Well than, its a good thing this game isn't, right? However, I myself think the PVP aspect of this game is terrible, due to the lack of cooperation from the userbase

"FH2/3 have better graphics": Bad eyesight, got glasses. FH4 still isn't that impressive visually though. GTS and to an extent The Crew 2 look a lot better.
GTS will obviously look better, they been leading the industry for quite some time. It's just that that lead seems to be getting smaller and smaller as time goes by and that's good for everyone.

As for The Crew 2, I do agree that it has its moments, but the overall look of the game gets pretty dreary, especially when you start looking at the actual game world. I don't deny that it can have some pretty instances, but they seem hit and miss. The thing I hate the most about that game is the terrible AA implemented, that becomes horrendously apparent while using photomode. The game itself was fun, particularly the airplanes, but the driving physics in that game are absolutely terrible. I would say it's close to NFS2015 levels of bad.

Graphics design": @ImaRobot This was worded badly. A simpler way to put it is this: you can give Minecraft advanced lighting and 4K textures but in the end it'll still look like Minecraft.
This still makes absolutely no sense. I didn’t and still don’t get that comparison.

FH4 is both a good and bad game. Technically it's brilliant. It has loads of cars, a nice location, and it's very polished. But despite this, I don't like it anywhere near as much as the first two games. It has no soul, and when you've done everything, very boring. I remember a YouTuber (I think he was called CraptasticJack) talking about how NFS 2015 and some other racing games were 'games' that FH3 was a 'product'. The same applies here.
I don't understand how NFS2015 and "some other racing games"(which are?) are any more a game than Forza. All of these games have literally nothing to do when you beat it, and if that's you're reasoning for it being a "product" than I'm going to have to disagree. What else are they offering in the post-game that isn't offered in this game?

Meanwhile, The Crew 2's reviews were bad, yet I like it more than FH4. A lot more. I'd even say that it's my favourite racing game this generation. The big difference is that, despite its flaws, the game has a personality. And, more crucially, it's fun. It doesn't feel like game that was meant to make a lot of money, like FH4. It's an actual game.
Please expand on "it's an actual game." Everything you're posting on is an actual game.
 
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I remember a YouTuber (I think he was called CraptasticJack) talking about how NFS 2015 and some other racing games were 'games' that FH3 was a 'product'. The same applies here.

The more recent NFS games felt more like a "product" compared to the Forza franchise due to the minimal improvement to the previous iteration, while NFS PB has a downgrade on the visual and a shove in loot box in attempt to rake in more money.

The big difference is that, despite its flaws, the game has a personality. And, more crucially, it's fun. It doesn't feel like game that was meant to make a lot of money, like FH4. It's an actual game.

What personality did you see in TC2? More explanation will be nice.

From my 100 hours in TC2, the game had way better first impression compared to the first game but the good impression quickly fades off after 10 hours into it. The campaign felt ridiculously short, the new addition of planes were more annoying than fun for me and the boats isn't that great either. Also there just isn't enough on races for cars, despite having a huge map it felt way under use.

With the legal/festive focus atmosphere in TC2, it felt a lot more like Ivory Tower tries to imitate FH more. While TC1 has more of NFS atmosphere but it felt more unique and the racing genre is really lacking of choice when it comes to illegal street racing.

I enjoyed quite a few bad or flawed games but TC2 is just too similar to TC1 while lacks the charm from it.
 
I respect all the opinions here, but some of them are really weird. Saying that Forza isn't visually impresive is ********. I own all the racing games(outside crew 2 but still played it on pc) and play them on the strongest platform or pc maxed out. There is no game that comes close visually, yes other games do somethings better like GTS: PBR/materials and awesome lighting or Driveclubs weather, but the overall package is much better than anything out there. Here is the list of a not technically imrepessive game (all gameplay)
- 4K textures
- Highest quality car model in game (on below FV)
- Dashboard light illuminates cockpit and player face
- One of the best lighting with GI and different seasons atmospheric lightings
- Fully tessallated sand, snow and mud reacting to cars and drone
- High quality shadows
- Dynamic shadows from street lights and other ligths from the world
- Dynamic shadows from the player car
- Dynamic cloud shadows
- One of the most impressive vegetation (mostly 3d outside few branches on top) captured color accurately that react to light and fully destructible
- High quailty reflections
- Real time interior reflection
- High quality motion blur with high samples
- Impressive PBR
- one of the best dirt/snow build op on car
- High quality particles that react to light
- Real 4K HDR captured skies with northern light and lightning
- High quality water with dynamic waves that reacts to object and cars
- Dynamic weather snow, rain and fog
- Dynamic ice on cars (if you stay still for 10min your car start to freeze)
- 100+ crowds fully 3d with animations
- High quality driver model with SSR on hands
- Even the gaddamn animals react to seasons, like sheeps getting more wool in winter :lol:
- Crisp image quality
 
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