I picked up Forza Horizon 4 in the Steam sale. I actually signed up for a trial of Game Pass to give it a go initially, but Game Pass makes me feel so vile and dirty I ended up cancelling it in favour of just buying the damn thing. The Steam version was available for a good price with all the expansions and DLC, anyway, while the version on Game Pass was just the base game.
Forza Horizon 4 is great! I'm not sure why I've never tried this series before. I think, honestly, it's the Forza name that had put me off; prior to getting my Logitech G29, racing sims had always annoyed me with their difficulty, so I'd kind of sworn off anything Forza — well, that, and I never jumped on board with anything Xbox post-360, so.
For the unfamiliar, though, Forza Horizon 4 — and the series as a whole, I guess — is emphatically not a petrolhead sim. Rather, it's more along the lines of something like Test Drive Unlimited: big open-world map with lots of things to do that aren't just races, lots of cars to piss around in, a real sense of "just enjoy yourself". It is probably what the Project Gotham Racing series would have evolved into if Bizarre Creations were still with us — the "skill points" system that rewards you for everything from smashing fences to big airtime is very much like the old school Kudos system.
And, for those who have heard me talk about racing games and sims before, Forza Horizon 4 scratches my "I want to drive a crap car" itch perfectly. My current ride is a dark green Morris Minor (albeit one with some upgrades that make it outperform any Morris Minor you've ever seen) and I also have a stock Citroen 2CV in my garage for when I feel like it. There's even a Ford Transit available, though I haven't acquired that for myself yet.
One of the best things about the game is that it appears the various events tailor themselves to your vehicle of choice. So if you want to run rally races in a Morris Minor, you can do; your opponents will have cars from the same "class". In this way, if you find the more terrifying sports cars hard to handle — and some of them really are tricky! — you can stick to something you're more comfortable with for most of the game. I like this a lot; it means you can use the cars much more as a means of "expression" than in some other games.
And, of course, there's Forza's famous livery editor. I haven't delved into this at all as yet, but I used to enjoy tinkering with it on the old Forza games. Perhaps I'll do some Final Fantasy pixel art like I normally do — that's relatively straightforward to accomplish and looks cool.
Anyway, it was a good investment, and it plays great with the wheel. So I'm pretty sure that's going to be my "comfy game" of choice — a game I play "just for me", because with its soundtrack there's no way in hell I'd be able to make videos about it — for the indefinite future. Because pratting around in cars is always fun!
Back to work for realsies tomorrow. The new year is officially here!
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
