Forza Horizon 5 [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

and also try to play without music!

Turns out the audio upgrade from FH4 is quite substantial. The environment, the car, all sound great in FH5. It also properly use LFE.

 

Playing it during the day with no family around, I've been cranking my nice monitor speakers. Sounds fantastic.

 

I already mentioned it's the best directed and focused start of a Forza Horizon title. It's a pure joy to play. Even just simply driving around is fun.

 

Everywhere I go it's Brit has this much, Brit achieved this, always way more than I'll ever get. It's like you're constantly shaming me. Bastard.

 

Well, here's my encapsulation of my experience. And bear in mind that I prefer gameplay over graphics. I still have fun and replay games with 90's and 2000's era graphics because quite often they offer superior gameplay to AAA games released in the past 10 years. And I absolutely do not like games that prioritize graphics over gameplay. So, with that said...

I'm no longer into driving games. So, I am not in the least bit interested in playing either Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo (even though I absolutely loved GT on the PS1).

I'm still playing Forza Horizon. I'm still obviously in the tutorial "segment" of the game as I still haven't entirely unlocked the map and it's god damned fun. It reminds me of some Japanese developed games which have an extensive hours long beginning that basically serves as a tutorial for the game.

Maybe it's taking me so long to unlock the map because I just enjoy driving around and I'm not racing (pun intended) from one event to another in order to unlock the map as quickly as possible.

And ... I don't mind that everything isn't immediately unlocked because it's fun. And the driving is surprising (for me) good with a controller. That said, I'm seriously considering getting a wheel for this game since I dislike playing driving games in chase cam (controller feels significantly better in chase cam than it does in cockpit view). But I'm still uncertain if I want to drop 200+ USD on a decent steering wheel for basically just one game.

It doesn't reinvigorate my desire to play racing games, but it is a damn fun "game" that makes it fun to drive vehicles and participate in races.

-------------

Back to graphics for a moment. It just keeps getting better and better as I play. The game not only looks good but everything is so cohesive. And the audio is superb as well.

My only gripe about the game so far is LOD management. I don't consider this pop-in as nothing is popping in for me. However, when trees, for example, transition from one LOD level to another, it's very obvious. Now keep in mind that I'm playing on a GTX 1070, so the LOD transition might not be as aggresively close to the player with better hardware. If there is pop-in with FH5, I haven't noticed it yet. I do wonder if people are confusing LOD transitions with pop-in?

I'm not sure how you fix LOD transitions with the trees other than pushing the the LOD transition far enough away that it isn't that noticeable. However that would require either significantly better graphics hardware (especially in my case) or a reduction in overall world detail. For example less trees, but then that would absolutely destroy the ambiance and look of many areas.

That said, it is still, IMO, hands down the best looking game released on any platform up to this point in time. And it's fun enough that I'll keep playing it.

Regards,
SB

 

Thanks, I appreciate your time to respond. And yeah.. I utterly burned myself out on Gran Turismo 1 and 2 on PS1.

I'll give it a whirl tonight after work. I do like the idea of just driving for fun, and exploring. I'm not even fussed about racing.

 

chilling at the beach

 

Well I had been playing it days early and gad to leapfrog my nephew some. Though I'm in a club and theres always someone who has more everything than me.

 

This is easily the best looking racing game I've ever played on my PC, and performance on my 5900X + 6900XT is just flawless.
I disabled resolution scaling, maxed out everything (FOMO galore), got MSAA 4X and at my native 3440*1440p resolution the thing still runs well above my monitor's 75 Hz.


How angry can I be about the game's terrible support for 21:9 monitors though?

All the video cutscenes are in 21:9 as well as the menu and loading screens. And I have a 21:9 monitor so this will just look great on my monitor, right? Wrong.
The game forces itself to a 16:9 output until the gameplay starts, so I get a letterboxed 21:9 output inside my 21:9 monitor. It's especially frustrating in the videos.

 

oof. yea I would like to see more native widescreen support here.

 

The 21:9 support is fine, I don't care about the cutscenes. 99% of trailer videos on YouTube that are in 21:9 aspect ratio are inside a 16:9 container because no one cares about being able to play a 21:9 AR video in actual 21:9, the media teams submitting these for the companies have no concept of anything outside of a standard 16:9 display.

Thankfully the cutscenes in FH are quite short and purely young person wankery that I just tune out.

 

Okay, so I'm twenty fifteen minutes in and clearly have no idea what Horizon is. Why am I being dropped out of a plane in four different cars?

The driving feels god, but do I need to read a guide or does it get explained? I feels like it's just jumped into a story or narrative but I'm just.. help. Need context. I think I played Horizon 2 for about an hour on the 360 and I can't remember any of this.

edit: so I pick a car. No explanation. Can you pick a bad car? Is it reversible. then you pick a route(!) then you drive for 40 seconds. it looks like there might be other players on the road?

I feel like I don't understand what I've got into. Did I miss some kind of tutorial or does this only make sense to previous Forza Horizon players? Maybe I need to read some reviews.

 

so actual in game is 21:9 ?

 

Yeah as soon as you go to live gameplay, the render expands the edges to full 21:9.

 

Nope, welcome to Horizon. It's a weird game that isn't really racing. Think of your car as your avatar, just drive around and do whatever you want. They lay out a bunch of activites across the map, and you could do them or skip them. The game has no real bearing on your vehicle of choice. You can upgrade your cars to compete in higher divisions, or drive different ones etc. No such thing as a bad car, as any bad car can be upgraded.

The only story sort of modes in the game, have special icons. Completing those grant a small story experience/chapters you can play through. Otherwise you're just driving around the world doing what you like doing. As for other players, yes, you are driving around in a shared world, a little bit like Destiny as a concept. They can't impact you in any way, you just sort of see them driving around in your world. ONce you engage in an online activity (like a race) , then you can interact with each other.

 

From what I understand, what iroboto said.

It's basically an open world sandbox with driving as the core mechanic. You drive whatever you want to drive. Participate in races and events or don't. Find cars in barns or win cars on a spinning wheel (with tickets) or buy cars. You can even sell cars you find, sell designs (livery) for cars, even sell music in game (with game currency, there's no real world cash shop that I'm aware of).

Customize your vehicle however you want based on how you want to drive it or based on an event or race you want to compete in. You can even create your own races which you can then publish for others to race in.

At its core, it seems like the type of game I wouldn't like. But the driving is nice and the scenery is fantastic. That combined with there being no pressure in the game (like say an open world survival game or even a story driven open world game) just leads to a pleasant experience where I can do whatever I want to do without feeling I need to do any particular thing.

That said, I have a feeling finding cars in barns is going to drive me nuts as collecting those types of things leads to me feeling like I have to find and collect all those things.

This is basically the definition of a game I can jump into and out of whenever I want to. And because of how low stress and gorgeous it is, it's a nice way to just relax and destress.

That said, I've watched some people that can get REALLY competitive in races. So, if someone wants to have this really serious and goal oriented driving experience, it's there for them.

That part isn't for me. The exploration, driving, and just soaking everything in is what I'm really enjoying with this. With no story and no consequences to anything I do, I can just drive around and really appreciate what they've created.

One last thing. The other cars you meet on the road will be a combination of real players and drivatars (AI drivers based on real players).

Regards,
SB

 

This is true and I wish I could skip them.
Unskippable FMVs should be declared a crime against humanity. Especially if the content is as cringey as this one.

Them gameplay graphics tho...

Yes!

 

I'm just kind of surprised they even bothered with pre-rendered cutscenes considering how good the graphics in the game are. Why not just render the cutscenes in game?

The pre-rendered cutscenes are by far the worst aspect of the game. It's visually jarring to go from 60 FPS down to 30 FPS and then on top of that the pre-rendered cutscenes look worse than the in game graphics, although I guess there's no aggressive LOD changes in the pre-rendered stuff. Bleh.

Regards,
SB

 

I don't like the open world aspect either. But once in a race it really feels like a driveclub 2 to me which is great.

 

Good player engagement with FH5 thus far.

Early access (people who either paid 100 USD for the Premium Edition or bought the 40 USD Premium upgrade DLC for the Game Pass version) exceeded 1 million players.

Launch expanded that to 4.5+ million players on Nov. 9th. Compared to the FH4 launch, that's 3x the number of people playing the game.

It also represents the highest number of people playing a Microsoft game on launch day (Day 1) of any Microsoft game.

Don't confuse that with sales numbers. There is no breakdown between sales and Game Pass/Xcloud subscribers. This is purely about the number of people that area able to play the game on launch day.

In that sense, this is a huge win for gamers. People that in the past may not have been willing to pay retail (60 USD) for a driving game can now experience the game without even having to think about how much the game costs. For the MS bean counters? Well, only MS knows that.

Regards,
SB