The game series “Forza Horizon” has a similarity in aspect to the Gran Turismo games. Its much more open world like Burnout Paradise (online mode shutdown). I am new to the Horizon series but so far its provided plentiful challenges and it online mode, although clunky, is pretty solid for the most part. This is Forza Horizon 4! Forza Horizon 4 is available on the Xbox store (link from the Forza website) and Steam.
There are over 700 collectible cars and a few expansions. Each expansion provides more land to explore and new features to play with, usually contained within their own islands.
At this time I have collected 250 cars and counting and am trying to get as many screenshots as possible to showcase them. The detailing on all vehicles is of extremely high quality which can be seen when in photo mode.
Photo mode is a way to be able to catalogue more vehicles but the photo editor provides some amazing filters from aperture to shutter speed to exposure.
Photos and properties
As an example of the night filters, you can see an interesting mix of exposure aperture and shutter speed to get a great night shot of Bamburgh Castle.
Bamburgh castle is an ownable property and is one of twelve ownable properties. Each property gives a bonus, wheel spins or some other reward on purchase.
When purchasing a property you can select it as your “home” property. What this means is that you spawn here when loading the game.
Each house is unique in its location, price and benefits. So far, they all seem to come with a couple of super wheel spins or more. At your property you can manage your cars, tune them up and auction them off.
Or you can go through the current auctions to improve your garage collection and try and snag a bargain!
You can obtain cars through many methods, the wheel, competing in events, purchasing them through Horizon’s car purchase page and through other weekly/daily events.
Unlocking things
Winning races however isn’t the only way to unlock things. There are a number of other challenges built in, including speed camera traps and zones, massive jumps and places to explore. As a result of all this exploring and unlocking, you get more “stuff”, cars, horns, clothing and so on.
In case your wondering, all the screenshots I have included here have only been filtered by the in game photo editor. No further changes have been made and its actual real screenshots from the game, not further rendered images.
Races
There are 3 main race modes in the game. Road Race, Dirt Race and Cross Country Race. There is a fourth kind of race which kind of matches the Road Race category called Street Race where traffic is enabled. All races can be played against Drivatars (NPC’s or computer controlled). Drivatars have a set difficulty which you can adjust based on your experience and the amount of rewards you are trying to obtain from the event. You can also race against other people in PvP mode or with them in Co op mode against Drivatars. All races come in one of 2 forms, point to point or laps. Most horizon based tracks will be 2 or 3 laps with the occasional race being 4 laps long. It is possible to make blueprints which allow you to choose a custom number of laps, however.
Road Races
Road races primarily take place on the many roads around the map and tend not to leave them for any dirt roads or fields. This doesn’t mean you have to stick to the road at all times though, just make sure you get through all the checkpoints.
These tend to be the fastest race type available although the design of the courses may suggest otherwise.
Dirt Races
The next sort of race, a Dirt Race tends to be more difficult, especially if you
Cross Country Races
The final type of race is a Cross Country Race. In Cross Country Races, you are pitted against other drivers AND the terrain as you aim for a point taking a shorter than usual approach, crossing fields, traversing rivers and making quite a large portion of air time.
I feel these are the toughest events on your vehicle and your guaranteed to take damage in some form. Sudden changes in direction and off camber racing is commonplace as is missing checkpoints because you misjudged a braking zone.
Challenges
There are a lot of different challenges in the game, some created by Horizon and others by actual players. Horizon challenges tend to be specific objective based challenges, drift here, speed trap there, jump as far as you can etc.
This means that there are 2 types of challenge, both are objective based.
The first is the do something challenges. As mentioned previously speed traps etc. One of these is to explore all the roads (see video) and they can be tricky to complete.
The second is get to here in the fastest time or without damage. These tend to be player made and can also include custom placed objects like ramps or even dinosaurs!
Businesses
Further details coming soon
Auctions
Further details coming soon
Creativity
Further details coming soon
Events
Further details coming soon
Properties
Further details coming soon
Seasons
All 4 seasons feature in the game and as the seasons change, so does the weather and the scenery. Some of the scenery is fixed in place with varying degrees of graphical overlays. For example, when driving over leaves, the effect of kicking up leaves is shown (although none actually move). In winter, the rain is not rain, its snow, one of the lakes freezes over and the roads are slippery. In spring and autumn, changeable weather dominates with either leaves or blossom getting kicked up. Summer is not just sunny thankfully and takes the full British weather into consideration. The one main weather type that doesn’t feature is wind.
