5 Reasons Forza Horizon 3 Has Failed To Hook Me
When I first got my hands on Forza Horizon 3 a couple of months ago, I sunk more hours into it than I’m comfortable mentioning. I found it on the whole thoroughly entertaining, but since those first intensive two weeks of play, I’ve barely touched it.
I fully expected to remain hooked on Horizon 3 for a while, but that didn’t happen. But why? Here are the stumbling blocks:
The 'Bucket List' challenges are hit and miss
I’ve had a crack at some great Bucket List challenges so far. Racing a freight train was pretty cool, as was charging to the city cross country in an Audi Quattro rally car. But a lot haven’t been anywhere near exciting, and I was particularly miffed to be handed a stock Nissan GT-R for a drifting challenge. What gives?
Yes, there is the ‘blueprint’ option of making your own challenge, but it’s always going to be the same sort of thing - hit a particular speed, get a certain amount of drift points and so on.
I just don't care about the non-car stuff
While firing up the game for the first time in a while the other day, pretty much the first thing I had to do was endure the Irish voiceover lady banging on about which radio station I should sign next. I recall thinking I just don’t care, let me play the game, but her ramblings weren’t skippable.
It’s just one of the non-car elements of the game I’d happily do without, like the whole festival expansion thing. It just seems like a pointless part of the game - you play no part other than picking a location and hearing Irish voiceover lady talking too much about which you should choose, and I’m guessing all locations will be unlocked eventually anyway, rendering the whole process moot.
Where's the satisfying car progression?
For me, the best part of any driving game is starting off with a relatively humble steed, and building up your funds until you can buy something better, and repeating until you’ve an enviable garage of exotics. Horizon 3 however gives you a choice of particularly un-humble motors like the BMW M4 and Shelby Mustang GT350 as your very first ride. To make matters worse, if you have Ultimate Edition, you can immediately go and get cars like Koenigsegg Regeras and Lamborghini Aventador SVs for free.
Even if you have the regular game, obtaining expensive cars isn’t going to take long. You seem to have virtual money projectile vomited in your face every five minutes through the ‘Wheelspin’ feature, and let’s not forget those barn finds which some poor sap restores for free and then hands over to you…
The dirt race obsession is getting annoying
If I lived in a fantasy land where I was a billionaire with the sort of access to cars that’d make the Sultan of Brunei jealous, I wouldn’t suddenly want to take a Maserati MC12 or a Bugatti Veyron to a ruddy dirt race. And yet, Horizon 3 seems to have this obsession with supercar dirt races.
Sure, a one-off for the lolz race is entertaining enough, but the sheer amount of the events in FH3 is baffling. Why can’t these races just be left to the Ariel Nomads of the game?
The lack of decent roads is still frustrating
I mentioned this in my original review, and I’ll mention it again here, as I reckon it’s the game’s biggest weakness. All of the really twisty bits of the map seem to be dirt roads, and in this peculiar fixation on spraying dirt roads over the map, the developers seem to have forgotten about building some really great tarmac sections.
I remember losing many hours to Test Drive Unlimited a few years ago, mostly because there was a brilliant mountain road at the far end of the map. But Horizon 3? When I load it up, there’s no driving nirvana I instantly pinpoint on the in-game sat nav. A pity.
But...
While I haven’t ended up hooked on Horizon 3, it does remain a good way to spend time when you want to have a little fun without thinking too much. And hey, when that snow expansion gets here, I’m sure as hell giving it a go.
Any Horizon 3 players out there want to share their thoughts a couple of months on from release?
Comments
Well, I expected some valid reasons, like the poor optimalization and so on…but this? For starters, every Horizon game is about the “festival”, its the thing that ties the mindless free roam and tons of races together, if you hate this kind of thing, its absolutely ok, go play something else, but your reasoning has the same kind of logic as would bitching about the fact, that you have to shoot people with guns in Call Of Duty or Battlefield have. Car progression is absolutely fine, i mean, unless you get really lucky with wheelspins or pay quite a bit of real money (which is absolutely fine IMO, some people just cant afford to spend too much time on grinding to get the thing they want), you wont drive P1s and LaFerraris, you have to get the money first (which takes long enough). Also, I have completed most of races and championships but as long as I remember, most offroad races are for offroad cars, rally cars, buggies etc.(there wasnt a single event that would want me to drive some McLaren or Ferrari on dirt). Except for your points on the amount of dirt races and not enough interesting asphalt roads, your article just doesnt make sense.
i agree with alot of these points. I’ve been hooked on it for a few weeks and now I want to play it, but I just don’t know what to do. It feels like i’ve done it all, while i’m only 40% through. Also some things that anoy me: you can built a full raly spec truck/car with rally suspension, tires,… the complete set up, and then you get passed by a mustang cobra with race suspension, racing tires, etc driving trough the rivers and the fields, hitting jumps. where is the logic in that? and the checkpoints feel way out there sometimes, and just missing one by a hair gives you a huge punishment of sending you all the way back. And yes there is the rewind feature for this but if you want to play with all assists off this gets really annoying. this is alsmo my first forza game i played and the handling felt weird at start. i’ve sunken hondreds of hours in games like dirt, old need for speeds, gran turismo’s etc and they all handle different but still this felt weird at first (and still kinde does).
the AI in freeroam is the most annoying thing in existence! they always appear wherever you don’t want them to appear, there always in the way, they make all the free roam ‘events’ annoying instead of fun. also the ‘drivatars’ don’t really have any use other than filling up the streets. getting drivers in your line up gives you no real bonus other than just some random more credits and exp after a race. the heads up races are.. ok.. but nothing to exiting.
I think the forza series have taken a sad turn to focus on the mainstream market. I miss the good old handling who, twisty roads (in forza 4), competetive single player races and in depth progression system.
I wish there was an area in the game where you could go visit your garage and see all of your cars lined up in an enormous parking lot. That would be amazing in my opinion.
You could do that in Test Drive Unlimited - you’d use your winnings to buy ever bigger houses with fancier garages. One of the cool things in that game that made up for the garbage handling!
And those god damned trees. Trying to avoid them like the girly drinks at a party but inevitably hitting them and f_cking up everything you ever stood for.
You got my points
It is just fun to speed with supercars (and come on you play as the rich guy) but i agree with the dirt races being absurd
There should even be more non-car stuff. More Party. <3
Well, you can’t satisfy everyone
Do you play online? That’s where the longevity lives imo. It tells tou whether you’re racing dirt or street so it’s not hard to find the right car for the job. As for the progression I get your point but I’d rather have a load of stuff thrown at me and be allowed to find my own niches. I have plenty of S2 cars but most of the time I don’t use them. I prefer racing classic rally or retro supercars class. I wouldn’t want to be forced into a play style that bores me.
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