I love a good racing game, and Forza Horizon 5 has been quite enjoyable. I like that I can drive around freely on the map and jump into events anytime I want to. Or just dick around and get combo points for doing cool stunts in the wild.
This Porsche has been my “daily driver” in this game. So far, it’s been my favorite car to get around in. Just because the handling is really nice in the game; I don’t really care for Porsche’s in real life.
I also really enjoyed their collaboration with Hot Wheels. I daresay their Hot Wheels events are far more fun than anything else going on in the game. It’s fun to be playing in real cars on an oversized track, which make you feel like you’re driving a tiny toy car. But I also really like the Hot Wheels Unleashed games, so maybe I’m a bit biased. Also, I collected Hot Wheels when I was a kid back in the '80s, so the idea of driving in a life-sized Hot Wheels car is amazing to me. #LifeGoals.
Hot Wheels. I’ve said it too much and it sounds weird to me now. I believe the term is “semantic satiation.”
Plus, the visuals are gorgeous! I suppose I should mention that I built a gaming computer earlier this year just so I can max out graphics on my games. Most of my screenshots are in 4K resolution ([dons my IT technician hat] Officially 2K, but marketing departments call it 4K) and I’m playing on a giant 48" OLED monitor. It’s important to have the best visuals in my games to get that immersive feeling. Especially in a racing game.
What I don’t like is all the micro-transactions to buy individual cars. I enjoy unlocking more cars to play in my racing games, but I’m not about to spend real money to unlock a single car that might be interesting to drive around for 15-20 minutes.
I will play 100+ hours of challenges to eventually unlock a single car before I spend the $3 to immediately unlock one. First off, that’s the whole point of games - to play them! Unlocking content should be part of the gameplay, not something you can skip if you have the money to throw at it.
Secondly, I’m very anti-corporate greed, and unfortunately, games are run by businesses who care more about making money than actually making good content. So the enshittification is spreading.
There was a time when gamers balked at DLC - if you didn’t have all content in a base game upon release, then what was the point? But every company jumped on the DLC train, and we’ve gotten so used to it in the past decade or two that it’s almost expected that a game will release extra content after the fact now. If it weren’t for Steam, I’d probably never play games. They’re not the perfect company, but they’ve done more to support the gaming community, providing reasonable deals and permanent access to your games, even if publishers pull them from the store. But that’s a rant for another day. I digress.
Also, I hate that this game is super expensive! It sat in my Steam wishlist for ages until I got a pretty decent deal on it. No way I’m paying $60 on the low end for a base racing game. Interestingly, there was a time a year or two ago, when I noticed Forza Horizon 4 was even more expensive than Forza Horizon 5! I dunno what the deal was, but I guess it must’ve had a larger player base at the time, so they jacked up the price.
Anyway, the TL;DR is that Forza Horizon 5 is a fun game with beautiful graphics, but gaming companies are evil, including whomever makes/distributes this game and all its overpriced and useless DLC.
Taycan is a fantastic daily driver IRL too! Especially the wagon variant.
I’m enjoying the screenshot series. Thank you!
If you feel like grinding skill points, the Hooligan Ford RS200 with a full mastery is the best.
You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up. 10 years ago, I drove a 10-year-old 911 and it remains the best driver’s car I’ve ever driven. So precise, so confident. It’s what they’re known for. I knocked them before because they always looked so understated and the owners seem pompous. While both can be true, it’s still an excellent sports car. I’m out of the car scene and can’t talk about modern hybrids/electrics/SUVs and wouldn’t recommend a Panamera as the basis for your opinion.
FH4 just went semi-offline (no more seasonal or promotional content, still has online play/free roam randos). I wonder if that played a role in that pricing inversion. Last minute cash squeeze? Maybe it ushered the market away from 4 and into 5?
I do enjoy the FH titles. I wish there were more normal cars, but that’s probably partly due to not keeping up with the latest hypercars. With limited time to play, I spend a ton of time cruising in semi-normal cars across the open world. One of the unusual activities is 4th+ gear highway pulls in some blundering V8. Just hear it wind out from idle to redline. FH1 remains my favorite story because it actually had a story, it felt. It was shallow, but it had a clear progression of races, rivalry, and all the world building for the horizon festival. The rest have just too many races, tournaments, and events thrown at you at once. Every race unlocks 4 more. FH2 did an amazing job introducing the open world, drive anywhere style although I found the European map to be bland. FH3’s Australia was more diverse, but I was further overwhelmed by the number of map icons. I’m currently in FH4 and I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.
I guess I should hurry up and get FH5 before all the time-sensitively content runs out there, too, right? Damn consumer cyclism.
You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up.
I used to be pretty big into cars in my youth. I actually took part in some drift racing in northern Japan when I lived there for a few years, and those guys are all big math/physics/car nerds (not the Yakuza gangster wannabes like you saw in Tokyo Drift; that movie was fantasy American street racing with a Japanese skin over it), so I really got into that stuff for a while. But high-end sports cars were out of our league, so I haven’t ever tried a Porsche. I guess that needs to go on my bucket list.
I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.
I really hate that there’s so much push to get us to play online multiplayer games now. I mean, I get it from a financial standpoint - it keeps players engaged with a game long after they’ve finished the campaign and if they can squeeze micro-transactions/seasons/DLC into it, it’s a source of added income for years afterward. But from a gaming standpoint, I just see it as repetitive gameplay that doesn’t lead anywhere, with rewards that are never worth the effort.
I’m also not a fan of playing online with strangers because the environment can be very toxic. I barely tolerate playing co-op with my friends some days. 😆
I like the environment of the map you drive in, I have everything that has to do with the characters in game.
I feel like DLC is just a re-branding of ‘expansion packs’ that we used to have in the 90s.
It depends on the situation. There’s plenty of games that made the DLC era notorious by putting out games with only half the content as prior games. In the case of Forza Horizon, I feel they’ve provided substantial content in the base games, at least as far as maps and modes.
I will agree with OP about the number of DLC cars though, because it’s excessive. I wish I could filter out DLC and stop being teased. It’s particularly annoying when basically and entire manufacturer is DLC (Porsche in FH4 I think) or when some 3rd party sponsor brand drops a ton of “sponsor edition” cars. Maybe I’m just out of the pop loop but I do NOT need Hoonigan cars when I can modify any of the base cars to be stupid fast. I rest my cane.
Yeah I play FH5 and have not touched the DLC. I feel like there is more than enough cars and content in the base game that I will probably never get to as is. It’s just a chill game for me, drive around the beautiful scenery, relax, and do a race here or there.
Even then, expansion packs were far and few between, and they expanded the story! They didn’t just add a custom skin of horse armor to your game. You got actual real content to enjoy with your money.
Incidentally, I just jumped back on the horse this morning by adding the latest World of Warcraft expansion to my account. I was almost done with Activision Blizzard and their awful content updates, but I decided to give it one more shot. So I might have some WoW screenshots incoming in the near future.
I had been an active player since 2005 and have bought every collector’s edition since The Burning Crusade. Only because Blizzard used to be an amazing company. But they’ve been garbage since they sold to Activision, and I’ve been spending more and more time away from it in the past decade. My wife actually gave up on it when Mists of Pandaria came out.
I barely played the last expansion; it just wasn’t fun trying to level up a dragon so I could glide just a little bit further across the map, when I have dozens of actual flying mounts in my inventory. Too much work for something that should’ve been given to us after meeting quest and/or level requirements. As far as I understand, their latest expansion is supposed to be the first in a massive 3-part story to reinvigorate the franchise, so I’m hoping they actually hired someone who knows what they’re doing this time.
I agree completely, I was just trying to say I think that was the beginning of it. I never touch cosmetic DLC but I at least consider DLC that adds story or more content. I play Paradox games after all. :-)
