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?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Traffic. You stumble upon a drift section and it shows your mate has the lead on points, so you think ‘you’re going down’. You line yourself up and go for it, throwing the back out on the first bend and thinking ‘holy sh*t I’m DK’ while the game thinks ‘you know what would look good on this stretch of road? 4000 cars with horrifically bad road sense’ and the only thing you can manage is a perfect replica of destruction derby. So frustrating
Hi, I’m Justin, I love Forza Horizon 3 but will resist taking the butthurt fanatic role and calmly explain where you are mistaken. For starters, all cars in bucket list challenges must be stock, hence the stock GTR. Secondly, I believe that the the Bucket List variations including Speed Zones, Speed Targets, Timed Sprints, POI completion such as Jumps and Drift Challenges/Skill Challenges, there is a lot on offer when looking at the Bucket List challenges. Also, they are hit and miss to provide easier drives for novice drivers as well as very interesting challenges for more advanced players. Secondly, the whole idea around Horizon is that it is a music festival built around cars, and what is the most importsnt thing for music festivals? Music. Which is why the music takes a somewhat front seat role in the gane regarding signing stations. Also, the irish voice is there to assist the storyline acting as the narrator, she is vital to understanding the point of Horizon. If you wanna hopnin and drive, go buy Assetto Corsa. Thirdly, car progression is rather hard, it just isn’t too obvious… In most games you have cheap, reasonable, pricey, expensive and ridiculous car prices. In Horizon however, you have cheap, pricey and riduclous; there is no in between. When considering you earn about $20,000 for a good race, and $35,000 from a fairly good wheelspin, do you consider $3,300,000 for a Ferrari FXX K or $10,000,000 for a Ferrari 250 GTO or even $800,000 for an Aventador, ‘easily obtainable’? Sure a $20,000 M5 or a $15,000 Integra Type R will be cheap but thats is just to make sure everyone isnt driving around in the same car because it is cheap and fast-ish. Finally, Forza Horizon 3 is at the end of the day and Arcade style racer, abd because of this, reality is left behind a bit. I for one love this because doing 250kph in an Ultima GTR 720 along an ‘isn’t straight’ dirt road is wildly enjoyable. This will make some people angry but the bast majority will agree with me that dirt driving in supercars adds a new and original aspect to the game not seen in others. (Also you can easily bush bash an Ariel Nomad in a race, just blueprint the race that way)… The one thing I will agree with you on Matt is that there is a severe lack of drift worthy roads. This however will probably be foxed in the snow expansion as you mentioned due to the naturally twisty style of mountain roads. I look forward to going sideways heading up a snow covered Snowy Mountains road. Sorry if I got a bit salty here, I just don’t like seeking Forza Horizon 3 getting undue bagging out.
Explained perfectly.
He can’t be wrong since it’s his opinion, otherwise you made some great points!
I’m looking for a reasonable logic, or…some sense in game mechanics, that’s why I dislike having sports cars on dirt driving so nicely pretty dumb…sure it gives something new…but…I would like to meet that majority who thinks about that dirt part the same way, because I don’t, I better drive with proper off road vehicle on off road terrain, or rally car on a proper rally terrain.
Doesn’t sound salty to me at all - kudos for taking the time to write all that!
My complaint about the GT-R is that a stock R35 seems like a poor choice for a drifting challenge - why not something rear-wheel drive with way too much power?
My irritation about the music thing is partially because I’m a busy bloke and don’t have a lot of gaming time on my hands, so if I’m firing up my console for a quick go, I want to get stuck into the action - Irish voiceover lady going on about why some radio station is jolly good is a needless distraction, and I’m sure lots of people will feel the same.
The car progression one is an interesting one - like you say, there are some hugely expensive cars on there that will take time to obtain. But my issue is more that you can get into really fast cars all too quickly, and the whole deal of getting a bunch of Koenigseggs and Lambos for free just because you paid an extra £20 on the fancy version of the game feels like cheating…
But hey, at least we agree on the roads point ;)
The game seems boring, but not until you find a party for drifting/tandem, and drift across rainforest loop 👌
If the Switchback Trail was tarmac, that would be awesome.
If only. Heading for that was one of the first things I did, expecting it to be tarmac. Was rather disappointed when I arrived…
6.My PC
Its missing all my favorite 90s- early 2000s cars so I never bothered upgrading to Win 10 to get a free game :D
You have no idea how disappointed I was when I found out the MR2 wasn’t in Horizon 3
I absolutely hate the race system where it just auto matches your opponents to the car, I much preferred FH1 where each race had a performance restriction and specific categories, so you built cars to suit, very much miss this
Anybody else think the map is still too flat?
Ever been to Australia? Australia is too flat
The drivatars seem to want to crash into me on every speed and drift zone
I absolutely agree. Having spent 100+ hours in Horizon 2, I expected a lot more from FH3, especially better visual customisation and more interesting map (which is surprisely more dull driving-wise than the one in FH2). Also, since we are the boss of the festival, why can´t we create our own races with custom waypoints?? Seems like there is no competition to push Playground Games to make a better game.