The Forza brand carries with it an expectation of quality and has always been about the cars. Under the direction of Turn 10 Studios, Forza Motorsport redefined the racing simulation genre by being as accessible or as hardcore as you needed it to be. There were no lengthy tutorials, no overexcited announcers, but instead a racing engine that was and is as beautiful as it is deep. They managed to maintain that standard across four separate games. Playground Games does not seem to have taken quite as much care.
Now Forza Horizon is nice at first glance. It’s pretty like Forza Motorsport and it destroys the confines of the race track allowing you to explore the open road. After playing it on the E3 show floor today, I can tell you that while this may look like a Forza game, it’s definitely not.
Immediately upon picking up the controller, a radio announcer started going on and on about some big festival and how the first ten cars to make it to the finish line would get a spot in “tomorrow’s big race”. That’s cool, but I never needed a reason to drive fast. As I raced down the twist and turns towards the end of the race, the wind in my hair and dub-step in my ears, it felt very much like an arcade racer than a sim. Naturally, I assumed it was because I had all the assists turned on so I entered the options and began switching them off. For one, there seemed to be a notably smaller selection but after I got done turning them all off, I didn’t notice a difference. That’s pretty surprising, since the core driving engine is supposed to be the same.
Even the race itself didn’t even seem to matter as cars would enter the track to be overtaken at what seemed to be scripted intervals. I would It seems like what they’ve done is take the Forza name and slap it on a Need for Speed box. About the only thing I enjoyed was the short dirt section of track at the beginning of the race, which is something I always wanted to see in Forza. Unfortunately, that only comprised about 10 seconds of the demo.
The demo only had one car, one track, and one race so it remains to be seen if Forza Horizon will have a vehicle selection or level of customization on par with other games in the series. The game comes out October 23rd so we’ll have to wait until then to see if it can justify its namesake.
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