Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 retains almost everything that made Forza Horizon 3 the best racer in its class and bakes it into a game that doesn’t ever want you to stop playing. The stunning visual quality and sound design, the massive array of automobiles, and the extensive and completely customisable career mode that have become hallmarks of the Horizon series are all here. What’s new is just how much more effectively Forza Horizon 4 encourages us to return thanks to its shifting seasons, regularly refreshed challenges, and steady stream of rewards.
Every real-time week the in-game season will change and bring a whole new look to the world, alongside a bunch of season-specific challenges. Every day there are still more new Forzathon challenges to complete, and every hour there is a live, online event to participate in alongside up to 11 other drivers who we work with cooperatively in order to chip away at a shared goal.
All of this is on top of what’s essentially the traditional Horizon experience: dozens, and dozens, and dozens of races and activities spread across a host of disciplines. Racing, rally, drift, drag, editing your own events with Horizon Blueprint: the lot. With this many cars, this much customisation, and a never-ending stream of things to do, it seems Forza Horizon 4 wants to prove being here for a good time AND a long time aren’t mutually exclusive.
This is all largely made possible by Horizon 4’s new default nature as an online, shared-world racer where all the other non-traffic cars cruising the open world are human players. We still race against AI – unless you elect to race with or against friends and such – but you’ll be sharing the open world itself with the rest of us, doing our own thing.
It’s not unlike a more intimate version of The Crew, though the difference is it’s not compulsory. You can play entirely offline if you want, and being knocked offline for any reason isn’t an issue, either, because it’s smart enough to seamlessly transition between its offline and online state in the background while you continue playing. It happened to me a couple of times and there was no loss of progress at all.
I’ll always have a massive soft spot for the down under delights of Forza Horizon 3, but open-world racing has never looked as good as it does in Forza Horizon 4. It combines a beautiful world that’s really four hugely distinct maps in one with a constantly rewarding and self-renewing racing experience and I really can’t tear myself away from it. Playground Games hasn’t just upped the ante once again; it’s blown the bloody doors off.