Forza Horizon

This was a case of nearly cocking up a full completion for two completely different reasons. I was very, very lucky to be able to add this to my completion list but more on that in the DLC section. I wasn’t even planning on playing Forza Horizon but then it went on Xbox’s Games with Gold and I’m not one to turn down a free game – unless it’s Battlefield. However, shortly after going on Games with Gold, 2 of the achievements became discontinued due to the leaderboards suffering from connectivity issues. I waited and watched the forums to see if the issue had managed to fix itself and after a couple of weeks, it did. Rather than run the risk of assuming the fix was permanent, I decided to get those done on push on to complete the game.

Forza Horizon is an open world racing game where you are taking part in the Horizon Festival, a racing festival containing lots of different racing events... obviously. The goal is to complete events and rank up to get new wrist bands to enter new events.

That’s pretty much it for story and gameplay but some of the events are a little different. Early on you have to race against a plane but in reality, this boils down to a time trail event. There are also point scoring events but these are limited to the Horizon Outpost events and thank god because they are easily the most difficult things to do in the game.

The music features a typical sound track for the racing genre and based on my Need for Speed review, my feelings on this are clear. It’s the least enjoyable part of the experience and Forza also has the same issue as other racing games in that you seem to hear the same three songs over and over.

Graphically it’s very pretty to look at it but I have to question the point of this. I can understand making the cars look good but adding as much detail to the environment seems pointless when the idea of racing is to look where you are going at all times!

Achievements – 1,500 Points – 70 Achievements

For a racing game, Forza Horizon has a varied achievement list that requires you to do pretty much everything it has to offer. I basically tried to do everything I could from the get go before focussing on events and completing the game. This included driving along every road in the game and collecting all the Horizon signs. The second one actually has a purpose because you get free upgrades for all your cars once you get them all.

Another thing you have to do is win one race on hard but this can also be done on the time trail event, or showcase events. This makes it easier as you have a fixed car so all tuning and car selection issues are done for you and there are no other racers there to fuck you up.

You also have to challenge and beat 10 festival racers. These are guys who are driving around in free roam and as you approach them, you can challenge them to a race. This seemed to take a long time to grind out, the biggest issue being once you’ve raced them, you could be miles away from everyone so you have to get back to the central areas to find new racers.

My favourite achievement (not!) was called May The Forza Be With You and basically requires you to play Forza 3 or Forza 4 to get some content unlocked in Forza Horizon. There is a work around but I couldn’t be bothered with this so I now have Forza 3 awaiting completion on my tag.

Multiplayer

Unfortunately, but to be expected, there are multiplayer achievements here but thankfully, none of them require you to win loads of races. All you have to do is complete 25 races and get to level 25, none of which required a boosting session but it did require me to play with random assholes for a while. I got the one message from someone who thought racing was slamming into me on the first corner, crashing and then losing to me. Such was the rage that I got a semi abusive message from the idiot. But that’s the problem with online gaming – there is no filter on the morons.

Other activities included playing all of the Playground Games events, selling stuff on the storefront, and the one that was nearly the cause of an incomplete game, beating Rival’s times in 10 events. To get this easily, you can race against the same rival over and over again so once someone sets a bad time, you can rinse and repeat.

The last online one I got was for completing 10 free roam challenges which did require a boosting session as it required you to work with others. This actually takes a few hours as some of the events are in-game time sensitive and really long.

Downloadable Content

There are two DLCs and both of them have their own ridiculous challenges, the second of which was the second cause of a completion failure.

The Rally Expansion has two online achievements, one for completing rivals events and one for actually winning 10 stages. I did boost the second one but this was down to the fact that not a lot of people were playing the rally mode.

The other achievements basically require you to complete the Rally event, complete a rally without taking damage, purchasing all of the rally cars and, the hardest achievement in the game, winning a rally stage on hard without a driving line and using manual transmission. I have never really played a game using manual transmission before and this took me over 45 minutes of racing the same 4 minute track over and over again before I managed to unlock it.

The second expansion, the 1,000 Club Expansion Pack, basically adds something to main game where you can earn five medals in every car. You have to earn medals in different manufacturer’s cars for different achievements but the catch is that you require optional DLC to get enough cars from some of these manufacturers and if you don’t have the DLC, you can’t get six of these achievements. And all the DLC is now delisted. This DLC also includes the most time consuming one which requires you to each a medal in 146 different cars.

Now, where I cocked up is that I knew the date the DLC was being delisted and yet forgot to download the additional content... however it appeared that the developer also forgot so I was very lucky that I was able to download the content two days after the delisting date.

Forza Horizon is one of the more fun racing games I’ve played. It seemed to have just the right amount of events that were varied enough before it got tedious and repetitive. Unfortunately it’s now not completable if you haven’t downloaded enough DLC so not one for completionists but the delisting should reduce the cost of the game.