I only wish I’d had the kind of college life that your digital self in Forza Horizon enjoys. In the new Forza Motorsport spinoff, you drive up to Colorado during the summer in a semi-normal car, get invited to a music and racing festival, then get approached by a beautiful woman who offers you the chance to win better cars just by driving like a boss and listening to hot music. And to think my undergraduate life was spent cracking the books and working in retail. Sigh. But I digress…
As this drop-the-top version of Forza implies, Horizon won’t be as hardcore of a racing simulation as Motorsport is. Sure, it’s built off of the same gorgeous, finely tuned graphics and physics engines. That means it’s got the same stunning cockpit views, vistas, and handling physics. And you can dial it up to be more Motorsport-y by turning the various assists off – like ABS and the driving line – which in turn gains you an experience bonus for making the driving harder on yourself.
This is a serious bullshot, you guys. Seriously, the game looks good, but nothing like this.
But it’s also its own unique-feeling Forza, thanks to a looser leash that encourages you simply hit the gas and see where the road takes you, scattering events and challenges throughout the game’s 200+ roads. I played the first hour-plus of Horizon and came away both refreshed and impressed. This is Forza with a storyline and a structure: the former – to quell your fears – doesn’t get in the way (at least early on), and the latter is delivered, ironically, in the form of an open-world racing hub.
This open world includes hundreds of miles of Colorado roads, and that means dirt surfaces for the first time. Don’t expect any wet weather to get in the way, though. Forza creative director Dan Greenawalt joked, “There are two things you don’t want at a festival: rain and cops.”
Horizon's draw distance is downright insane.
It also delivers a whole bunch of prerendered cutscenes to help drive the story. Like when you first roll up to the festival and get accosted by the aforementioned attractive show organizer. Or when you visit the garage for the first time and the crusty ol’ mechanic tells you the timing is off in your car. It’s all tutorial stuff under the hood – the organizer helps guide you to events and the mechanic is your source for upgrades – but it’s all presented in a very slick and engaging manner.
Out on the road, Horizon will remind you of Criterion’s Need for Speed and Burnout games – and that’s not a bad thing. Speed cameras challenge you to post the fastest average time through a select stretch of asphalt, while you’ll earn popularity (the game’s currency) by driving stylishly, i.e. drafting, drifting, near-misses, etc. And while you drive, you’ll have three stations hand-curated by noted British DJ Rob da Bank: an electronic channel, a rock station, and an indie playlist. It’s a total of 60 songs and five hours’ worth of music, though you can of course turn it off if you wish.
Fun fact: Lotus' Elise (not the Exige pictured here) was also used as the basis for the all-electric Tesla Roadster supercar.
Every single event around Forza’s faux-Colorado is like a Rivals Mode challenge from Forza 4, so that you can challenge your friends for popularity points. And new events will be added monthly, ensuring that Horizon’s user-interest tachometer is always near the redline.
Meanwhile, the festival itself will serve as the central hub for you to return to in order to paint your car, upgrade it, or buy new rides. And those rides themselves range from the laughable econo-boxes you’ll pass on the road, like the hideous (yet efficient!) Nissan Leaf, to the much more fun stuff like a classic ‘60s Mustang, the new Viper, and off-road-friendly fare like Subaru’s all-wheel-drive WRX. Greenawalt wouldn’t answer the question of how many total cars are in this game, which I interpret to mean it’s far less than Forza 4’s 500 out-of-the-box whips. Still, I expect the count to healthily number in the hundreds.
In my play time, Forza Horizon is shaping up to be the perfect spinoff: it still feels like Forza, but in a new, fun way. And since you’re unlikely to return to campus for your senior year with a Lamborghini in tow in real life after hanging out at a music festival, Horizon offers the next best thing: a casual cruise that can still get intensely serious if you want it to.
Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
Source : ign[dot]com
Nema komentara:
Objavi komentar