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[ironcreed]

I put this one off due to being swamped, but that has not changed, so I figured I would go ahead and just pick it up along with the Blizzard Mountain expansion. At any rate, so far my impressions are pretty much:

No other racer even comes close for me, which is honestly how I felt after the last game. Yet they still managed to top it. Playground Games are absolute wizards.

 

[BinaryBear07]

I need to buy this and play it.

 

[Space_nut]

Dem graphics

 

[ironcreed]

I need to buy this and play it.

If you loved the previous two, then hell yes you do. I love the Motorsport series as well, but as far as I am concerned Playground have pretty much taken the series over with Horizon. The sound, feel, visuals, effects and overall adrenaline pumping fun factor is unmatched.

 

[Snkfanatic]

Easily one of the best racing games I have ever played. Bought the Ultimate version and the pass...cannot wait to see what the last expansion will be.

 

[Lothars]

It's easily the best forza game of the generation by a mile, It's just a great racing game. I am curious on what they do next but even so I will keep playing it because I think it's just that good.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

I hope they up the next one to 60fps on Scorpio. The game deserves it.

 

[AU Tiger]

did they fix the PC version's blurry photo mode bug and inability to maintain steady 60fps?

 

[RedlineRonin]

What's the current state on PC? All fixed up?

I'm on 6700K/1080FE and have been waiting for the "all clear" but every time i check in on the PC perf thread, seems like it's a lot of "it will be broken forever and ever" conversation.

But maybe I'm just seeing the wrong posts.

 

[ironcreed]

I hope they up the next one to 60fps on Scorpio. The game deserves it.

I bet it will be. That said, this game is still pure bliss even at 30fps.

 

[Amory]

Yep, it's a pretty awesome game. One of the only reasons I still fire up my Xbox One

 

[Cjdamon042]

What's the current state on PC? All fixed up?

I'm on 6700K/1080FE and have been waiting for the "all clear" but every time i check in on the PC perf thread, seems like it's a lot of "it will be broken forever and ever" conversation.

But maybe I'm just seeing the wrong posts.

I just upgraded to an i7 7700K to go alongside my 1070 and I can get a near rock solid 60fps at 4K with everything on max except for shadows (set to high) and no AA. I get the odd drop to 58/59 for like a second at times. Cutscenes do admittedly drop to like 50 ish but work their way up.

EDIT: Admittedly before then my 1070 and i5 3570K combo wasn't as smooth, even at lower resolutions.

 

[RedFury]

I put this one off due to being swamped, but that has not changed, so I figured I would go ahead and just pick it up along with the Blizzard Mountain expansion. At any rate, so far my impressions are pretty much:

No other racer even comes close for me, which is honestly how I felt after the last game. Yet they still managed to top it. Playground Games are absolute wizards.

Definitely awesome but not quite my perfect racing game. Throw in a Burnout like boost and crash racing mode and it would be the GOAT racer in my eyes.

 

[shotgunbob04]

Wanted to get this for my PC since it came out, but every time I look into it, there's always a different problem someone has experienced.

Looks like it's horribly optimized on PC, and at least sometime last year, people were randomly getting banned from the online portion for using software like MSI Afterburner. Haven't checked in lately since all the problems scared me away.

 

[Rocketz]

Amazing game. Still have some more of Blizzard Mountain to do yet. Playground Games have made my favorite racers in a long time.

Each area in the game is a joy to drive in and just explore. Being able to drive virtually where you want is just a plus in this series.

 

[LordOcidax]

did they fix the PC version's blurry photo mode bug and inability to maintain steady 60fps?

Yes and No

 

[tearsintherain]

Only reason I still turn on my xbox one. Two quick things

1. check out forza rewards, every friday you get a nice little cash bonus into ALL forza games (even the 360 ones that run BC!) based on your "forza level"
https://rewards.forzamotorsport.net/en-US

Can access it via the forza app as well on the console. I'm level 7 so I get 175k credits in FH3 every friday, its fantastic

2. Every weekend forzathon runs, they are varied but generally a few events which require a specific combo of car/race that gives you bonus stuff. I've gotten tons of stuff from it, and I play pretty much every friday afternoon for 2 hours to knock em all out.

One of my favorite games, like ever. Its a true masterpiece.

 

[Moggelicious]

Wonderful game! Love the vibe and gameplay =)

 

[ironcreed]

I would like to see them tackle Norway or Alaska next. Australia is still god-tier, though.

 

[Daffy Duck]

It's a great game, right up until that final showcase......all that for THAT!

 

[jet1911]

it's an amazing game.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

It's phenomenal. Probably my favorite racing game of all time. I haven't played it in like a month, though. Too much other shit to play. but I'll pick up the expansion and enjoy the hell out of it.

 

[BeforeU]

Agreed, its fucking awesome. Xbox is home for racing fans this generation. Motorsports and Horizon series has been pumping out quality titles every year

 

[ironcreed]

The Blueprint races are a really smart addition. I love how they give you that flexibility and those options to be in control.

 

[Wiped89]

One of the greatest racing games of all time. There is no doubt. It (along with 4K Bluray) is the sole reason I bought an Xbox One S and why I still have an XBL sub. I've put 60+ hours into it. It's so damn good.

 

[shandy706]

Horizon 3 on Scorpio

It's the best looking racer to date during gameplay. All of the above are real-time/gameplay. (not photomode)

 

[boneyjangles]

I finally played this on my friends Xbox One, and while it's certainly a good driving game, I didn't really get the hype.. 95% etc?

It kinda felt like I was playing a recent Need for Speed game, or maybe Grand Theft Auto if you stripped much of the points of interest and interaction out of the world and just had the little driving missions dotted about with more of a Tony Hawk vibe. And the graphics, the effects and weather never took my breath away like Driveclub did at times. It looked more vanilla and 'gamey'.

Maybe I need longer with it, or the expansion. Might pick it up for my aging PC if it's cheap sometime. It's certainly polished and has nice presentation.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

What it needs to be perfect is to basically incorporate both PGR and Rallisport into the game.

So one third of the game is made up of all the wacky festival stuff. Showcases, car modding etc.

Then a full career for both city street racing and rally, basically expanding on the illegal street race 'side quests'.

All on a bigger map with multiple cities, and 60fps on Scorpio. Then it's perfect!

Get to work Ralph and team!

 

[ironcreed]

I finally played this on my friends Xbox One, and while it's certainly a good driving game, I didn't really get the hype.. 95% etc?

It kinda felt like I was playing a recent Need for Speed game, or maybe Grand Theft Auto if you stripped much of the points of interest and interaction out of the world and just had the little driving missions dotted about with more of a Tony Hawk vibe. And the graphics, the effects and weather never took my breath away like Driveclub did at times. It looked more vanilla and 'gamey'.

Maybe I need longer with it, or the expansion. Might pick it up for my aging PC if it's cheap sometime. It's certainly polished and has nice presentation.

Need for Speed, lol? Yeah, you definitely did not play it enough. The variety and actual races here are about as top shelf as it gets for the genre.

 

[CaptNink]

I'm LTTP with this too, but so far, I love it! I've never been a big racing game fan, but Horizon 3 feels so satisfying.

Great game to play when it's time to chill.

 

[ironcreed]

I'm LTTP with this too, but so far, I love it! I've never been a big racing game fan, but Horizon 3 feels so satisfying.

Great game to play when it's time to chill.

Yeah, going back to the first game this has always been one of those 'mood' or 'feel good' games for me. And they just keep topping themselves.

 

[Kickz]

Best racing series since Burnout

 

[TylerDurden4321]

Horizon 3 was my jumping off point for Forza. FFB not good, cars all felt "Forza", progression curve was designed out, didn't care one bit for the grinding for just "more fast cars". Barely finished it.

It's beautiful, the location is great, but don't like the courses and the "campaign"... soundtrack neither.

But I know that I'd probably love it, had I not played all the other recent Forza games to death and this had been my jumping ON point to the franchise.

 

[Novocaine]

Love the game. They recreated the feel of driving around Australia really well. Needs more classic Holden and Ford cars though.

 

[RedlineRonin]

I just upgraded to an i7 7700K to go alongside my 1070 and I can get a near rock solid 60fps at 4K with everything on max except for shadows (set to high) and no AA. I get the odd drop to 58/59 for like a second at times. Cutscenes do admittedly drop to like 50 ish but work their way up.

EDIT: Admittedly before then my 1070 and i5 3570K combo wasn't as smooth, even at lower resolutions.

Wasn't there one or two areas that were notoriously bad? Like surfers paradise or somethign?

Are those still bad? And how much time do you spend there?

 

[KdotIX]

I kinda jumped off this installment quicker than I thought I would have. I keep trying to convince a friend to get it in the hope that co-op would entice me back in. I want to complete it, but with the design of the races, the progression system (or lack thereof) and the PC performance issues not even the lure of Forzathon cars or Blizzard Mountain can get me back in at the moment.

Admittedly im running on 2500K i5, 8GB and EVGA GTX 1070 FTW edition. So my processor could be the bottleneck here. I don't even care about 60fps since playing with 30fps seems to be smooth enough (apart from when entering the city area, but i'll live).

I think what got me was I felt bombarded with events every time i upgraded a festival (which was all too easy to do). As more event were added, it became more like a task list of things to do. I guess that was also due to the way I was going about unlocking them because I wanted to unlock the Goliath event, which is should have been the final showcase event in my opinion.

Perhaps I should give this another go soon.

I feel like for the next Horizon, they should take it to Tokyo!

 

[Mohasus]

I played a ton of it, but there are too many issues in my opinion to consider it a great game.

It is good, I like driving around but everything "gamey" about it sucks.
The campaign sucks, the progression sucks, the tracks suck (especially the cross country ones, fuck those jumps), the car selection and class system suck and the online sucks. Don't even get me started on the championship system.

This was the first time I played online MP in a forza game (xbox silver member), and oh boy, I didn't think it would be that bad.

 

[IronicSonic]

Horizon series is the only reason I miss Xbox consoles.

I played the first two and they are some of the best gaming experiences I had ever

 

[Gestault]

I don't have enough good things to say about Horizon 3, especially combined with the Blizzard Mountain expansion. What they pulled off in terms of content, variety, and quality just underscores how far Forza has pulled ahead of the rest of the genre.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I would like to see them tackle Norway or Alaska next. Australia is still god-tier, though.

Well now that we got Blizzard Mountain I'd say it's unlikely that FH4 will take place in some cold environment (as much as I'd love to). Half of my money is on Japan, other half on another sunny location (Hawaii maybe?).

 

[prophecy0]

I love the series but I'm still trying to find the motivation to "finish" Horizon 3. I feel like the game is almost too open-ended for its own good. There's no real sense of progression at all, which makes it hard for me to prioritize Horizon 3 over all the other amazing games that are out right now. The Blizzard Mountain expansion is fantastic however.

I really hope they go back to Forza Horizon 1 style progression in the future, where you start off with a slower car and work your way up to the hypercars. I doubt they will though because a lot of people probably prefer having everything available to them near the beginning.

 

[Gestault]

Well now that we got Blizzard Mountain I'd say it's unlikely that FH4 will take place in some cold environment (as much as I'd love to). Half of my money is on Japan, other half on another sunny location (Hawaii maybe?).

I would take a Horizon Detroit, which is deliberately cruddy-looking. Lean into the grunge, but contrast it with all the automotive history that happened there. Make the career a sort of restoration narrative.

 

[Yappadappadu]

Wasn't there one or two areas that were notoriously bad? Like surfers paradise or somethign?

Are those still bad? And how much time do you spend there?

Yeah, surfers paradise suffers from slowdowns which is why I'm surprised by the 4K/60 claim on a 7700K/GTX 1070 rig.
I have 7700K/GTX 1080 and have yet to try 4K though, since I was pretty sure that 4K/60 wouldn't be be possible without turning off a lot of graphics settings.

 

[Tapejara]

I'm not much a racing game fan outside of kart racers and a handful of others (Blur, Motorstorm), but I started Forza Horizon 3 the other night and I'm just hooked. It's so good! I actually got it at launch because of that Target price error - the one where the full game came out to <$15 - but just kept putting it off until now. Wishing I had picked up Blizzard Mountain when it was on sale last week.

 

[jet1911]

I hope Playground will use BLizzard Mountain's progression for Horizon 4.

 

[Octavia]

I love the series but I'm still trying to find the motivation to "finish" Horizon 3. I feel like the game is almost too open-ended for its own good. There's no real sense of progression at all, which makes it hard for me to prioritize Horizon 3 over all the other amazing games that are out right now. The Blizzard Mountain expansion is fantastic however.

I really hope they go back to Forza Horizon 1 style progression in the future, where you start off with a slower car and work your way up the the hypercars. I doubt they will though because a lot of people probably prefer having everything available to them near the beginning.

I loved the game, but it moves more like Minecraft than Gran Turismo. You have to make your own fun, give yourself your own goals, and try to make the best of it. Besides the very bare minimum required to get the credits to roll, there's really not much of anything to progress towards considering you can buy nearly everything right away and money is easy to get (especially with the economy being broken the first month with HE cards selling for absurd amounts). Perks really don't do much of anything other than give you some easy money at the start if you fill up that tree. Winning races is sorta trivial and doesn't really reward you.

The strength of the game is that it feels to me like the aftermath of regular Forza or Gran Turismo. You beat the game, you've clearly proven you're the best driver in the world, you have a gazillion dollars and cars, and this is the epilogue. You are just traveling the world doing whatever the hell you want driving whatever you want because you can. Nobody stops you because your a god amongst men.

The weakness of the game is the difficulty in balancing challenge per race. Some races are actually challenging, most races are pathetically easy even if you crank up the difficulty. Even then, a lot of difficulty comes artificially by just not knowing where to go when you're driving offroad in fields and forests. Add in blueprinting, and I honestly felt more like I was playing "RaceMaker 3.0" at times rather than a pre-made game.

Overall, I had a good time with it, but it's really flawed, and that doesn't even touch on the horrendous technical problems or bad game design decisions like constant mini transition demos that can't be skipped or the nagging NPC event organizers stealing your screen from you to show you shit you don't care about.

Yeah, surfers paradise suffers from slowdowns which is why I'm surprised by the 4K/60 claim on a 7700K/GTX 1070 rig.
I have 7700K/GTX 1080 and have yet to try 4K though, since I was pretty sure that 4K/60 wouldn't be be possible without turning off a lot of graphics settings.

I was using DSR on a 2500/970 to do 4k and I got a strong 30 with most settings still pretty high. 60 should be possible on those rigs. This game plays well when it's abusing your hardware as it nullifies the stutter problems.

 

[Gattsu25]

....I just realized that I've been calling this game Forza Horizon 4

It was my first in the franchise. Loved what I played of it when visiting family.

 

[Tunned]

I agree with most of the people in this thread who do not have such positive impressions of the game. I've sank a lot of hours into H3 + Blizzard Mountain expansion, I'm approaching driver level 600. Whilst the game is good, It cannot break into my goat racers such as GT3, PGR2 & 4, NFS III Hot Pursuit (this is not nostalgia talking, I play these games every now and then, and they are still awesome).

H3 is pretty to look at, has a great selection of cars, physics are fun, but... it feels quite sterile at times, the world whilst pretty can feel liveless, there is no sense of progression, cars just get thrown at you. As some one mentioned track design is bad, p2p stages are better though, but the circuits are just eeeh, and why the hell is there no course maker!?? Oh and the whole festival thing is just meh.

I'll get flack for my post, but this game needs more character, I find it hard to go back to even though new cars get released every month. Or I just prefer "corridor racers".

 

[ResidentDante]

Well now that we got Blizzard Mountain I'd say it's unlikely that FH4 will take place in some cold environment (as much as I'd love to). Half of my money is on Japan, other half on another sunny location (Hawaii maybe?).

Japan could be a cool candidate! Hawaii's kinda already been done in Test Drive Unlimited, much the same concept as the Horizon games when I think about it.

 

[ironcreed]

Well now that we got Blizzard Mountain I'd say it's unlikely that FH4 will take place in some cold environment (as much as I'd love to). Half of my money is on Japan, other half on another sunny location (Hawaii maybe?).

I am just a nut for snow and mountains, so there ya go. But I would definitely take Japan as well, which could cover those bases and then some.