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Forza Horizon 4 review

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Forza Horizon 4 heads to the UK for reckless racing, seasonal shifts, and an online open world. We jump in our (virtual) McLaren Senna and give it a test drive.
Right. You know the drill. A huge, open world shared with other gamers, a wide variety of on- and off-road racing styles, hundreds of cars to buy and four glorious seasons of Great Britain in which to drive them.
Wait. What was that last part? Yes, you read it right: Forza Horizon 4 is set in good old Blighty. And not only that, seasons and time of day change so you get some extra visual treats as well as ever-changing road conditions on which to race.
Of course, you’ve probably seen most of this before. Massively multiplayer driving games are hardly a new concept. However, Horizon 4 really does stand out from the crowd and is by far one of the most enjoyable racing games we’ve ever played, putting a big smile on our faces every single time we fired it up.
It’s also insanely pretty, with stunning lighting and scenery that borders on photo-realistic. Add in the cinematic soundtrack which – at times – makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, as well as the soundtrack provided by the cars themselves and there’s a heck of a lot to like. It also makes it much easier to forgive the game’s little annoyances.
Forza Horizon 4 comes out on Xbox One and PC on 2 October. Since it’s published by Microsoft it won’t be coming out on PS4 or Switch.
In keeping with recent trends from the company, the game will also simultaneously release on Xbox Game Pass, the company’s subscription service that lets you play both modern titles and games from across the Xbox back catalogue – so Game Pass subscribers can play the new Forza on release day without paying a penny extra.
If you’re in the UK, the game will launch at £49.99, and you can pre-order now from Amazon, Game, or the Microsoft Store. In the US, it’ll be $59.99, and you should head to Amazon, Best Buy, or the Microsoft Store .
Anyone who pre-orders Forza Horizon 4 will get the 2017 Aston Martin DB11 for free, but you can get some extra goodies by upgrading to the Deluxe or Ultimate editions.
The Deluxe edition (£64.99/$79.99) includes the Formula Drift car pack and the Car Pass, while the Ultimate edition (£79.99/$99.99) includes all that plus a Day One Car Pack, VIP Membership, and two expansions, along with early access to the game from 28 September.
VIP Membership nets you double rewards for each race, 3 exclusive cars, a free house, weekly bonus ‘Wheelspins’ and vanity items.
The two expansion packs are scheduled to be released in December 2018 and first half of 2019.
For anyone new to Horizon, it’s a spin-off series – a more playful, arcade-style take on racing compared to the more serious tone of the main Forza Motorsport games.
The last entry, Forza Horizon 3, was set in Australia and let you race cars, trucks, and more across beaches, deserts, lush rainforests and more. You’d expect the developers to find an even more dramatic setting for the follow-up, and with that in mind they’ve selected, um, Britain. The land of winding country lanes and mini roundabouts.
My colleague Dominic, who played FH4 at E3 and wrote the preview, reckons this is absolutely mad. He says that developer Playground Games (based in Leamington Spa in the UK) should know that there is little that is less exciting than the British landscape.
However, as he concluded – and I concur – Horizon 4 is a surreal treat for those of us who live and drive in the UK. How many years have we had to put up with blockbuster racing games based in the US? Now it’s our turn.
You start FH4 in single-player mode, which gives you a whirlwind tour of the different seasons. It also introduces a few different types of racing, including circuit, road rally and off road. What’s impressive is that the handling and feel of the cars really does change. On a bone-dry summer’s day you get maximum grip for crazy cornering speeds, but it becomes impossible to maintain the same pace on a freezing wintery day with slush on the roads.
Similarly, an off-road course looks and feels completely different in spring and autumn. In spring you’re racing over fields of green grass and wild flowers, but in the autumn you’ll be slowed down by muddy bogs and bales of hay. Drive using the in-car view and it’s a whole lot more immersive as water cascades over the windscreen when you drive into deep puddles.
It’s winter that stands out the most, unsurprisingly. The snow and ice offer tangible changes to handling, forcing you to brake carefully and drift tactically, while the other three are broadly similar, unless it happens to be raining. Still, even if the changes are mostly cosmetic, they’re certainly stunning, and running in 4K at 60fps on a PC or Xbox One X, Horizon 4 is a sight to behold.
The Horizon series’ arcade attitude still runs through the game, encouraging to run a bit rampant along the way. You earn points for drifting and crashing your way through the countryside, while the rewind feature encourages you to dumb, destructive stuff for the sake of it – then roll back time and get on with the actual race.
The courses tend to be closed, but when you’re out roaming free there’s no reason to stick to the roads. Almost everything you see is destructible, from walls and fences to bushes and even trees. Pretty much the only things that’ll prevent you from hurtling cross country at 100 miles per hour are houses and tall brick walls.
It is ridiculously fun to do that in a Lamborghini Huracán or Aston Martin, with baa-ing sheep scattering left and right as you crash into their field.
As you progress through the initial races you get connected to the shared world and get to take part in ‘showcase’ events which are fun races that see you pitted against a hovercraft, the Flying Scotsman steam train, a jet plane and there’s even a crazy Halo-themed race.
But your first big goal is to qualify for the Horizon Roster and get a Yellow Wristband. This gets you into the game proper and means that the season and time of day is in sync for all players. The seasons change once per week on a Thursday, and there are daily and weekly (seasonal) challenges to complete.
In fact, there’s so much to do it’s easy to feel a little overwhelmed. Fortunately, the developers thought of this and provide the Horizon Life screen which is an overview of your progress. Here you can see which level you’re up to in each discipline as well as your standing in the extra-curricular activities such as car tuning and – oddly – car photography.
Disciplines such as drag-strip racing don’t begin until you get your Yellow Wristband, presumably to avoid flooding the map with too many races to begin with.
There are various hosts which look after the various race types and they’ll call you after certain races or at certain points to tell you about new events. This is an opportunity to roll out all the interesting UK accents, and the voice actors have done an excellent job.
Beyond racing, there’s plenty to do. You can hunt down barn finds (below) which are subsequently restored and sent to you garage, smash ‘influence’ boards for points (these are also earned from races and used to progress to higher levels), beat your personal best in speed-trap runs, do huge jumps from danger points and buy properties around the map so you don’t have to drive far to get home to your garage.
Speaking of the map, new areas open up as you progress. Nothing new there, but after roughly 15 hours of play, you’ll still be limited to three main areas: southern Scotland, the Lake District and the Cotswolds.
There’s a good mixture of back roads, dirt trails, A-roads and some – but not much – three-lane motorway. Edinburgh has been beautifully recreated, including Princes Street and plenty of landmarks. Down south – just a 12km drive in the game – you’re in Broadway, the picturesque Cotswolds town where the Horizon Festival is set. A couple of minutes away is the Lake District, which looks very much as it does in Postman Pat.
Expansion packs will add new areas, but it does mean that if you stick to the core game, you won’t get the whole of the UK. At this early stage we just don’t know exactly what the roll-out will look like, but we didn’t get any glimpses of London. As we progress, and as expansion pack details emerge, we’ll update this section.
As with the main Forza series, the cars are impeccably modelled. If you happen to own one of them in the real world, you’ll no doubt be able to nit-pick on slight inaccuracies, but there’s no denying the incredible level of detail here, right down to the stitching on an off-road Jeep’s leather steering wheel which is only visible when the light catches it.

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