I've been playing Forza since the very beginning (that's right kids, that means Forza 1 all the way back on the OG Xbox) and although I was skeptical after the demo I believe Horizon has delivered in a big way. I even think it's better than Forza 4 (gasp!). And that's coming from a hardcore racing sim fan.
First of all, if you honestly can't feel the Forza physics engine working under the hood in Horizon with all the assists off and your difficulty on expert (eliminates the hidden STM), then you have not played a Forza game. It isn't quite one-to-one, but it's pretty darn close considering the team has added an open world and an extra 60 or so driving surfaces. Only the most ardent players will be able to tell a difference, and even then it's barely perceptible. More importantly, Horizon feels precisely nothing like NFS or TDU or any other arcade racer for that matter. If you take a high-end car out in Horizon and drive it like a maniac with all the assists off and the difficulty on expert you are going to get nowhere fast. Sure, you can fling a D-class Civic around with little effort, but that's true to life. Normal cars are simple to drive. Super cars are not. This has always been reflected in the Forza games. I know my Forza, and Horizon drives like Forza. Saying otherwise is simply incorrect.
I do wish tuning had made an appearance, but I understand why it didn't make the cut this time. Turn 10 has said previously that they couldn't possibly add any other surfaces or weather effects for fear of ruining Forza's immaculate but fragile physics engine. Horizon manages to fit new surfaces in (pretty impressive in and of itself), but tuning would exponentially increase the variables that the game would have to process at any given second. The 360 is no spring chicken these days, and I strongly suspect that it wouldn't be able to compute the tuning differential variables without crushing the game's frame rate. Besides, only about 5% of the community on FM4 actually knew how to tune. Everyone else simply bought tuning setups. Not really that exciting unless you are chasing .00001 second differences on Laguna Seca. I'd like to see it added back in for the next Horizon because it does admittedly add some depth to the experience, but I can easily live without it until then.
As for the age argument... Well, you're wrong. I'm a grown man with a wife, a full-time job, and a plethora of "grown-up" responsibilities. I find Horizon's upbeat atmosphere to be wholly preferable to FM's sterile, lifeless feel. The story isn't meant to be taken seriously and all of the characters are ridiculously tongue-in-cheek. Seriously, listen to the lines of dialogue and the radio DJs; these people were designed as half-jokes meant to keep things light-hearted while still moving you forward. If you are attempting to take the story or characters seriously, you're doing it wrong. Ironically, I suspect that you are a kid (probably right on the cusp of adulthood, maybe 20 or so) who is so self-concious that you can't enjoy anything unless you can be serious and "grown-up" with it. Real grown-ups don't have that issue.
I like bright colors and lively music and, most importantly, I love driving. Horizon provides all of these things while still feeling like Forza at its core. I think the game is impossibly good considering what the dev team took on here, and I'm going to have a lot of trouble going back to the clinical grinding that used to be the hallmark of Forza Motorsport after being let off the leash to stretch to my automotive legs as I see fit. The series needed desperately to evolve (look at FM4s comparitively poor sales and the posts attacking it as "Forza 3.5" all over the internet if you need evidence of that), and I think Turn 10 and Playground moved the series in exactly the direction it needed to go. Demanding that a series never grow or evolve will eventually lead to its death. The devs made the right call here, and if their first step is any indication then I think we can expect some truly awesome stuff from them in the future.
Sorry you hate Horizon so much, hopefully one day you can stop being "serious" and enjoy a game that finally gives automotive masterpieces the playground they deserve. I, for one, am all in on this one.
Love,
A "serious" Forza fan
TL: DR version: OP is dead wrong, Horizon is amazing.
