Forza Horizon 5- needs no introduction

[digdugnate]

I spent a few minutes with Forza Horizon 5 this morning before my workday and... holy. macaroni.

 

I've not had many games elicit such an emotional response from me when I started it; it is utterly, absolutely amazing.

 

If you're a fan of the Forza Motorsport/Horizon games (particularly Horizon since... well..) you will NOT be disappointed.

[Atariboy]

Xbox One version looks amazing as well. Really impressive technical performance for the system.

[digdugnate]

That's cool!  I heard that it ran pretty decent on the One.

[+remowilliams]

Oh yeah, it looks amazing on the XSX/4K.

 

I've arrived at the festival and my in game driver avatar even has the right license plate : D

 

[digdugnate]

13 hours ago, remowilliams said:

Oh yeah, it looks amazing on the XSX/4K.

 

I've arrived at the festival and my in game driver avatar even has the right license plate : D

 

ha! that's fantastic.  mine's boring, it says 'MOS6510'

[Guest]

This and infinite are both on my must have's list this year for sure.

[+Razzie.P]

I think I lack the intelligence to understand these games.  This is the 3rd one I've tried, and I'm not sure what the heck I'm supposed to be doing.

 

I drive to the pop ups/icons on the map and it takes me more time to get to an event than it does to actually do the event.  Sometimes I'll get 3 stars in an event that I didn't even know I entered (speed zone comes to mind)

 

No matter how bad I do, the game's always letting me know I'm awesome.   Bounce off 2 cars by driving like I'm in Mad Max, get a "clean racing bonus."  Lose control, go flying sideways off the road, I get a pop up bragging about my "awesome drift."  ?

 

It's gorgeous, and I think I'd really love the racing if I could find something that wasn't just a short 3 laps around, but I don't understand how its structured to feel like I'm actually making progress.   As it is, feels like I'm just driving around an open world while some sort of "millennial kudos generation engine" is running in the background.

[Guest]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:04 PM, Razzie.P said:

I think I lack the intelligence to understand these games.  This is the 3rd one I've tried, and I'm not sure what the heck I'm supposed to be doing.

 

I drive to the pop ups/icons on the map and it takes me more time to get to an event than it does to actually do the event.  Sometimes I'll get 3 stars in an event that I didn't even know I entered (speed zone comes to mind)

 

No matter how bad I do, the game's always letting me know I'm awesome.   Bounce off 2 cars by driving like I'm in Mad Max, get a "clean racing bonus."  Lose control, go flying sideways off the road, I get a pop up bragging about my "awesome drift."  ?

 

It's gorgeous, and I think I'd really love the racing if I could find something that wasn't just a short 3 laps around, but I don't understand how its structured to feel like I'm actually making progress.   As it is, feels like I'm just driving around an open world while some sort of "millennial kudos generation engine" is running in the background.

It's just an arcade racer with modern graphics. I just turn off the in game music audio and run Pandora's Xbox app in the background. When going to the map filter turn off all the extra icons you don't want.

I don't own FH5 yet. But I can give you these tips from my experience from playing the 4th game. Hope this helps..

[digdugnate]

On 11/21/2021 at 2:04 PM, Razzie.P said:

I think I lack the intelligence to understand these games.  This is the 3rd one I've tried, and I'm not sure what the heck I'm supposed to be doing.

 

I drive to the pop ups/icons on the map and it takes me more time to get to an event than it does to actually do the event.  Sometimes I'll get 3 stars in an event that I didn't even know I entered (speed zone comes to mind)

 

No matter how bad I do, the game's always letting me know I'm awesome.   Bounce off 2 cars by driving like I'm in Mad Max, get a "clean racing bonus."  Lose control, go flying sideways off the road, I get a pop up bragging about my "awesome drift."  ?

 

It's gorgeous, and I think I'd really love the racing if I could find something that wasn't just a short 3 laps around, but I don't understand how its structured to feel like I'm actually making progress.   As it is, feels like I'm just driving around an open world while some sort of "millennial kudos generation engine" is running in the background.

That makes sense.  The Horizon series is like that, where it's an arcade racer with stuff you go back and forth to do.    It sounds like you might enjoy the Forza Motorsport games more- those are still 'arcadey' compared to Sony's Gran Turismo series, but it's more race-oriented.

[Zoyous]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:04 PM, Razzie.P said:

It's gorgeous, and I think I'd really love the racing if I could find something that wasn't just a short 3 laps around

When you enter an event, you have the option to edit it to bump up the number of laps. Also, once you've made a bit of progress you'll unlock the really long races (15-30 minutes or more for a single lap, varying depending on what class vehicle you're driving) and those might be more interesting as something that can't be found in other games.

 

In order to avoid overload, I tweak the GUI settings and just remove all the skill notifications, driver names, and other visual clutter. And when viewing the map, you can filter the icons to see only event types you're interested in.

[digdugnate]

2 hours ago, Zoyous said:

When you enter an event, you have the option to edit it to bump up the number of laps. Also, once you've made a bit of progress you'll unlock the really long races (15-30 minutes or more for a single lap, varying depending on what class vehicle you're driving) and those might be more interesting as something that can't be found in other games.

 

In order to avoid overload, I tweak the GUI settings and just remove all the skill notifications, driver names, and other visual clutter. And when viewing the map, you can filter the icons to see only event types you're interested in.

the map is just awful with everything turned on.  I used filtering in FH4, too, because it seemed to suffer from 'Far Cry Map' syndrome.  

 

Good point about increasing the race length, I totally spaced that.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, digdugnate said:

the map is just awful with everything turned on.  I used filtering in FH4, too, because it seemed to suffer from 'Far Cry Map' syndrome.  

The map is great. It's the way the legend for it is set up. Once you figure how to toggle things for the way you play it's fine.

[zzip]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:04 PM, Razzie.P said:

I think I lack the intelligence to understand these games.  This is the 3rd one I've tried, and I'm not sure what the heck I'm supposed to be doing.

 

I drive to the pop ups/icons on the map and it takes me more time to get to an event than it does to actually do the event.  Sometimes I'll get 3 stars in an event that I didn't even know I entered (speed zone comes to mind)

 

No matter how bad I do, the game's always letting me know I'm awesome.   Bounce off 2 cars by driving like I'm in Mad Max, get a "clean racing bonus."  Lose control, go flying sideways off the road, I get a pop up bragging about my "awesome drift."  ?

 

It's gorgeous, and I think I'd really love the racing if I could find something that wasn't just a short 3 laps around, but I don't understand how its structured to feel like I'm actually making progress.   As it is, feels like I'm just driving around an open world while some sort of "millennial kudos generation engine" is running in the background.

Sounds like my experience with the game too!   It's pretty, but there isn't enough of a hook to keep me wanting to play.   It also seems that all arcade racers are going down this path where the objective seems to be to win fake "fans" or "social media followers".   Sorry, I just like my racing games to be about racing, not be a social media simulator.

 

Speed Zones are just two points on the map where the idea is to get through as fast as possible,  you don't enter it because that would wreck your head start, so it will automatically record your time when you get through it.

[Zoyous]

Maybe it's because I've played all five of the games in the series, but I just kind of tune out the "followers" trappings. Progress is easy in the games and doesn't require any particular attention. There's a pretty deep system of upgrading and tuning, so that's what I spend a lot of time on - getting cars that I want and then figuring out what class they're ideally suited for, and tuning them for different event types.

[HammR25]

The clean racing award only means you haven't run into any solid object like a wall.  It doesn't care if you bump other racers. There's also a way to Fast Travel to an event but I can't seem to figure out how to do.  Then again I enjoy driving around randomly more than doing the actual events.

 

Google tells me this is how to unlock fast travel:

 

Quote

Fast travel has a steep unlock requirement in FH 5. You’ll need to complete an Expedition, then spend 2 million credits to buy the Baha region house. After that, you’re free to fast travel there, to any other house you’ve purchased on the map, or to any of the fast travel boards you’ve smashed on the world map.

 

FH4 had awesome graphics and this seems like more of the same with slight tweaks.