Forza Horizon product reviews

With this the latest installment in the Forza series, it is shown once again why the Forza series is the best driving game series available currently for consoles.

With this latest foray into the Forza universe the developers have ramped things up a gear and made it a much more immersive experience. To start with the entire game is set in and around the fictional 'Horizon Festival' which is essentially the motor/street racing equivalent of The Big Day Out or other such music festivals. As with the previous games music is a very integral part of the game and this time you have the option of listening to various different radio stations in your selected vehicle. One pleasant surprise was the inclusion of a song by a Kiwi band 'The Naked and Famous' which is huge kudos for them .

Also with the change in enviroment comes a change in play style. Firstly in order to get to each event and to the special locations, you now have to drive everywhere (aided by an in car GPS), this serves two purposes, firstly it gives you practice in driving your selected vehicle, and secondly, it enables you to earn cred or popularity points for various stunts and driving skills. In this new enviroment also comes new challenges as well, such as traffic, that's right for much of the game as well as your opponents you will also have to deal with other regular road users, but never fear, they can also assist you as well as being a hinderance, for instance one of the skills for getting cred points is a near miss, this involves you passing by another car on the road as closely as possible without whacking into it, one more difficult than that is the trading paint skill, this involves you passing by another car and actually sideswiping it without either of you losing any control. You also get cred points for drifting, air time and many other things. Your popularity is used in the game to open up special events where you can get new cars just for beating the challenge.

There is still the good old car store, but a new additions is the use of tokens, so for instance if you don't have enough credits to by that spanking new shiny Bugatti Veyron, then you can use your tokens to buy it, however (and here's the catch) the only way to get tokens is to spend your hard brought microsoft points to buy. However tokens aren't used solely to get cars, you can also buy a treasure map with them which will show you where various special items are such as billboard that if you knock them over give you upgrade discounts at the car upgrade garage, and also the locations of all the 'barns'. These barns are essentially locations that contain various classic cars in disrepair, however once you have found one it will get repaired and added to you garage once you collected it from the upgrade garage.

As expected with open world, open road driving there is much more emphasis on offroad racing as well, and this adds and extra dynamic to the races that have it in. In order to progress through the game you have to pass through various levels, much the same as with previous Forza's, each race is with a certain amount of points and each level requires more points. Also with each race there is an added bonus as each level has a favourite driver, and if you beat them in a race you get extra bonus credits, once you have gotten enough credits to complete a level you drive to Race Central and earn your coloured wristband. Also at this time it is inevitable that the 'favourite' drive will challenge you to a one-on-one race, my advise take the challenge as if you win you get their car (sorry I can't confirm what happens if you lose as that hasn't happened yet).

There are two other challenges added which I really love as well, the first is the street race challenge, you star this by coming up behind one of the other 'racers' in the game and if you stay behind them long enough and option will come up to challenge them to a race. The other challenge is Rivals, this is rather unique in that you get to compete against the time set by other racers online (even if you only have a Silver membership).

All up this is the best incarnation of the Forza series yet and I can't wait to see what they do next.