Review by Dorian Bartecki
Let me begin by saying that YES Forza Horizon 3 is amazing and I believe you should play it now if you love racing games it is worth every penny. But as with anything I do have my share of complaints and things I believe could have been done better. So lets begin!
STORY
There is no story here, in this game you are the GUY/GIRL and you are a boss this lovely festival. It reminds me of EA Skate 3 where you have your own skate company, both are a 3rd game in the series coincidence???
So the point of the game is simple keep racing gain fans and expand you festival, make it the greatest festival that world has even seen.
I don’t exactly expect a deep story from this game but something more exciting would have been more welcome.
It is nice that you can choose where do you want to build your next festival and the popularity of your choice compared to other players who played this game is a nice little feature.
This games showcase events are the way of progressing in the game, every now and then after you complete races/championships and other little things you’ll get to upgrade your festival and after a couple upgrade you’ll get a showcase event and then you unlock a new festival location.
The “last race” is a showcase event but it wasn’t a challenge and after I’ve done it I was like “ow, so that’s how this game ends?” I didn’t even think that was what I was working towards or that this is the gonna be my last event. It left confused and a little disappointed.
Like I said I don’t expect a deep story but in Forza Horizon 1 I was working towards defeating a guy who thought he was a king (Darius Flynt) when it finally came time to face him, the race was long and it felt like I could lose at any time because the game story hyped him and he genuinely seemed like a threat, it felt liek any mistake I would make during this race would end in a restart. It was simple but effective and that is simply missing here.
You start by choosing who you are a Dude or Dudette, your choice has no effect on anything it’s only here to make the player feel more like they’re in the game but the lifeless face features and somewhat generic avatars to choose from it seems pointless.
The game also features a name/nickname system but it’s used so rarely in the games dialogue that it feels pointless and budget waste! Because of this feature the game no longer features international DUBs (Forza Horizon 1 & 2 had a Polish dub) Subtitles and menus are still translated to multiple languages but not the dialogue…
It’s not a game breaker but because the name feature is so pointless it is an unnecessary/unexpected change. I know I’m in the minority who cares get over it.
GRAPHICS
The game is visually stunning running at steady 30fps 99.9% of the time on Xbox One, it truly is a work of art, you will be taking pictures of you car against the gorgeous surroundings every 5 secs. I know I did!
The sky in this game is something worth mentioning as it is the ACTUALL Australian sky, the game developers playground send a few dudes to Australia with 4k cameras and they’ve filmed it for days, then they came back and put most of in the game. The end result is just majestic.
The cars also look stunning while the liveries up-close tend to look pixelated but that’s a nitpick. Most cars look way better without them anyway.
There are few graphical gripes I have, the rendering of trees and shadows in the rain forest is a seizure inducing trip, I don’t fully blame the devs for that, with the amount of trees in this forest and the technology it was just inevitable.
I did encounter a few frame-rate hiccups but they were so minor it’s a joke to mention them but I thought I would.
The water splashes and smoke could be more impressive but I have no major complaints all I’m saying is that there are games that have done each of those a little better but at the same time they were offering a different experience.
Cars themselves are all detailed and beautiful to look at and drive. The only car that I really care about in any racing game is a Mazda RX-8 2003, this game sadly doesn’t feature that car but it does have the 2011 model which is just a good but not as good. Fortunately they’ve fixed the livery bug that plagued Horizon 2 on my mazda rx8 the left side of the card had this weird dent that would change the shape of any livery place on there.
Making liveries is still time consuming and most of the time i end up with a medio-core livery on my car… Sure I can download other people liveries but you can’t edit them or add anything on top of them which is annoying… I know why but still just block uploading feature on edited downloaded liveries simple as that. Not every one is talented and some people who are make weird design choices that could easily be fixed, but you can’t do that.
MUSIC/SOUND
Let’s begin with the music it is great you get a choice of almost any genre, I can’t comment on the GROOVE MUSIC feature sadly, but the music you get from the radio station in game is great. The radio presenters are funny even if some are a bit dull like the guy from “Future Classics”, my favourite as usual was Scott Tyler “Bass Arena” I always switched to him when the game progressed to hear his super excited and funny delivery of the news.
But sadly there lie a few issues with the radio stations, first one would be that you have to unlock radio stations… and what is even worse you get a choice at the beginning of the game, and you get to choose 2 radio stations but only out of 4 available, the features 8 radio stations but you only unlock more radios stations as you upgrade your festival locations, I just think this is retarded…
If you like Drum and Bass, forget about it, play the game for a couple hours maybe then we’ll give you some D’n’B. I think this was a stupid decision.
Also another issue is but that an issue you can’t avoid in game design is that you don’t get to listen to all the radio announcements from all the presenters as they only do them once and if you enter an event or you were listening to another radio you miss out on the thing. It is a nitpick I know but I bothers me, so yeah.
The voice acting in this game is okay, I already mentioned the lack of international dubbing, Warren is the only guy that enjoyed listening to in game, I love listening to when he talks about barnfind cars, the guy knows his stuff it awesome.
ANNA is the GPS in this game and it is annoying and boring… that’s all I have to say, I’ll be driving and enjoying myself when ANNA suddenly decides to mention something about a bucket list challenge nearby, I DON’T CARE!!! I just wanna drive and not get interrupted.
The woman who’s name I don’t remember, she is another person you will hear talk a lot as she helps you with the Festival, she does all the behind the scenes stuff. Everytime you do a drift challenge or speed trap she’ll say something sadly her lines repeat very quickly and become annoying.
Skill songs are nice feature where your XP multiplier doubles when doing stunts while free riding.
Now let’s forget about humans and focus on the thing that is the most important here and that is CARS. And what is there to say here they sound just as you’d expect them to, just good I have nothing to complain about here.
GAMEPLAY
Now here is where it all matters, the gameplay and it’s another one of those things where it plays as you’d expect it to, the cars drive beautifully, every car feels different and it is a joy to drive around mindlessly for hours.
Sadly the improved car selection screen from Forza 6 is no where to be seen here instead we get the old and long car selection screen, sure there are filters and bumper manufacture skips but still…
The gameplay is more arcade that sim, but at the same time it is as close to sim as you’ll get in terms of balancing fun and realism. Turn off all the assists and get ready for another challenge if you’re using an xbox controller…
I genuinely hate xbox one triggers, they’re too soft, every time I feel like I’m pressing them half way down the game is telling me i am not… and it is infuriating. Driving the really fact cars requires you to start them slowly and gently otherwise they’ll slide all over the place and since I can’t really get the feel for the triggers, I get annoyed quickly and go back to driving slower cars. I don’t blame the devs I blame Microsoft, xbox 360 controller had great triggers just saying.
The game features a lot of races and side events like bucket list challenges, speed traps and drift challenges. They all require different types of car to get 3 stars.
But here is a question why do I have to unlock speed cameras??? I didn’t have to in the previous games. And I just hate I ‘ve driven down a certain road and I would have found and done the speed trap but no I have to unlock it and then go back to it and do it again but for the first time, I’ll allow unlocking drift challenges but speed traps? Eh I digress.
The Showcase events are fun but don’t last long and it fells like they are rigged, while you can lose at them it is harder than winning them. That said I enjoyed them. They genuinely provided me with thrills and excitement I expected from such events.
The street races are back but they don’t feel any different from the festival races. It doesn’t have that taboo feel that the first game had. Plus when you win a Midnight Race you get the rivals car but while it looks like you get his version with all the mods, you don’t you just get a plain version of his car, but the picture that shows after you win the race shows the tuned version so it is misleading and disappointing.
There map in Horizon 3 is huge although the map makes it looks small, it does feature more open road location than suburban or city locations. And just like with Horizon 2 I think the whole open world is fine, but why is there so much empty space with nothing but grass and trees… There is beach in the Surfers Paradise district but you can ride on it. Why? I can ride on other beaches.
I’ll admit it is fun to just drive around anywhere but I often just skip the road and drive nowhere in the end to feel like I’m missing the point.
Also whenever you do an 1 on 1 race you can cheat by cutting through the field as the ai will stick to the road. Quick win.
The water in the game is a nice addition, there’s plenty of it, but it always feels to shallow. You enter it expecting something else and come out satisfied but confused/dissapointed at the same time.
After doing a couple hundred races you’ll start to race the same tracks and it can become quite boring and repetitive. I gave up on trying to do every race in the game as there is just a little bit too much of the same races.
Bucket list challenges are fun and interesting, I can’t say they are very creative. But I did have fun doing them, also in this game you get to make your own bucket list challenges and share them with the world. I didn’t use this feature that much, since I still have lots to complete in the actual game but I like any creative feature like that.
I just wish you could create you own races with checkpoints, but instead you can create custom events and championships, which creates infinite possibilities for custom races which is great.
There is plenty of collectibles in the game some are hidden in very interesting location that require skill to get them, I still have collected all of them as like I said they require skill and patience which I don’t always have.
FUTURE-PROOF?
The game does work without internet connection so that’s good, but the game already has dlc and patches released for it so yeah.
But the game you get on disc is fully functional without all of that. And you should be able to enjoy it in the future if your xbox one will still work in 10 years for example.
CONCLUSION
Forza Horizon 3 is fun game and huge game but it is not without it’s flaws, unlocking radio station and speed traps is ridiculous. There is too much open terrain with nothing to do on it, not being able to edit downloaded liveries in a bummer but it’s been for years. There isn’t much variety in races, the game features a pointless name system and it’s final race is underwhelming to say the least, and not being able to create custom races is a bit of a disappointment.
But we all play Forza Horizon for the cars, racing and music and it delivers on these things without any doubt.
I’ve spent nearly 30 hours driving in this game at the time of writing this review and I plan to spent lots more doing aimless driving and slowly trying to get 100 percent (which will probably never happen).
The game is worth every penny. Get it now I promise you won’t regret it.
LEFT OVERS
-There is only 1 tunnel in the game and the radio turns off when you drive through it. Cool?
-There are few roads on map which are unfinished.
-Drone feature is kind of cool.
-Can’t comment on PC version as it is windows 10 exclusive (heard only bad things about the port)
-Can’t comment about the online as I don’t have xbox live gold, but all the leaderboards and downloading liveries work without it!
I know i probably missed mentioning something, this game is massive and there is a lot to talk about here. So if there is anything you want to know that i didn't mention and you want my opinion on it (unlikely), just let me know.
GOOD
-visually stunning
-mazda rx-8
-allows for a lot of creativity with custom championships and bucket list challenges and liveries
-skill songs
-great music and great variety of it
-fun radio presenters (most of them)
-lots of cars
-lots and lots of races
-barn finds and their stories
-sense of speed
-great even if rigged showcase events
-sound mixing when driving next to a festival is something else
-sky is beautiful and impressive
-it’s a happy game that you can just relax with
-driving is just fun
BAD
-last race/showcase event doesn’t provide the satisfaction you’d expect from the last race
-not being able to edit downloaded liveries is still a bummer
-water is always shallow giving this weird feeling while driving thorugh it
-can’t create your own races
-can’t drive on the surfers paradise beach…
-repetetive dialogue after getting stars.
-too much open and empty space
-easy to cheat 1 on 1 races
-ANNA is annoying
-why do I have to unlock speed cameras and radio stations?
-rendering in the forest (shadows/trees) it’s a mess. Seizure inducing?
-street races don’t offer anything that normal races don’t (pointless variety)
-forza 6 improved car selection screen is nowhere to be seen…
-load times when turning the camera off, or after taking a picture to collect cars
-bugs such as the one where I couldn’t change radio stations unless I was in drone mode, another one was where I also clearly drove on every road but I was still missing one (solved itself don’t know how) still missing one view point and vistas even although I drove everywhere…
-doesn’t have my name, and why have the name system in the first place? It’s pointless, it doesn’t enhance the experience in any way.
-emotionless and generic avatars
-trains don’t drive as often as you’d like (personal)
-can’t change the time of day instead you have to wait for that perfect weather, and it can take a lot of real life hours…
-no international dubbing because of the name system
-missing out on the radio presenter announcements because you listen to a different radio or entered an event