Forza Horizon 3

Forza Motorsport 4, for a long time now, has been my all-time favourite driving game. In my opinion, nothing else that I’ve played matches it. Not Gran Turismo, not Need For Speed, The Crew, Project Cars, Assetto Corsa; you can name any racing game you want, but FM4 will continue to hold that position for me. Considering that, I’ve always looked upon the Horizon spin-offs as an incomplete idea. The first one didn’t even think to include rallying on the disc, even though off-road courses were already available in-game. The second was a good game, but still felt inferior to its racetrack-bound brother, Forza Motorsport 6.

But here, on its third try, Turn 10 has nailed it. This is the closest they have come to topping Forza Motorsport 4.

From the very beginning, the game treats you like a king. You are the boss of the Horizon Festival, and thus the show is yours to run how you please. Ultimately, your goal is to gain as many fans as possible, which in turn unlocks more festival locations, races, PR stunts, challenges and so on. But while the game starts you off with the usual choice of coupes and then sends you off to perform appropriate races, the game is very quick to tell you to, if you so wish, completely ignore it’s event choices and restrictions, and make your own. Want to take a supercar through every race in the game? Go for it. Fancy only cars from your home country? It’s your call. While you can’t design your own racetracks, you can make the rules and choose which ones actually take place, and when it comes time to take part in a championship series, you can even choose what tracks are involved, and how many you go through. The game doesn’t just chuck all this at you at once though. Rather, it introduces you, bit by bit, to the world of Horizon 3, giving you just enough to satisfy, and then giving you some more before you can get bored of the first helping. It’s almost addictive.

Heading online, you can take part in the main career with others, building up cash, experience and fans as you go, so you don’t have to worry about falling behind when the hyper cars start pulling up. Making the whole campaign an open experience that you can enjoy with your friends was a smart idea, and should help encourage those who prefer to stay offline to come and join others in smashing through the races. But for the typical online enthusiast, there is Online Adventure, where a group of people pick a series of events, and aim for the top of the leaderboards. In yet another great move, the adventure mode emphasises that getting first place is not always the only thing that matters, as a variety of modes and race styles are on offer here. In fact, even with the standard races, you can propel yourself up the leaderboard by driving well and gaining Skill Points, the score that you are awarded for performing stunts such as drifting, airtime and even smashing small objects. Horizon has never been about pure racing and being number one, it’s more about the driving experience and having fun, and it shines through here.

The driving experience is also an important point, because if you’re going to explore Australia, you want to do it in style. Horizon is not as realistic as its big brother series is, but it can come close when you turn all of the assists off. Personally though, I prefer to use the assists, so I can spend less time twitching the steering wheel, and more time taking in the sights. I’ll put it bluntly; this game is beautiful. From the lush rainforests to the bustling cities, from the desert to the valleys, this game is like virtual eye candy, and that’s just the landscape; the cars are, as you’d expect, stunningly well done and a treat to view.

It’s hard to find fault with this game except in one or two small details, but they are there. The rewind function seems to have been altered in that, if you rewind the same section over and over, the game may eventually stop allowing you to rewind, or it may place a block on it at an inopportune time. It’s hard to know if this is a deliberate attempt to lessen your use of the feature or if I’m just experiencing a glitch, but it has frustrated the odd race here and there for me. There’s also the odd crash here and there, and the audio can lag if your console is doing almost anything in the background. Then there is the PC version of this game, which sadly I cannot review due to my refusal to take Windows 10, so please be warned if you are buying it to use on your PC, I have no idea how that runs.

But again, aside from the PC issue, this game is amazing. It’s been a long time since a driving game gave me this much pleasure. I debated for a while over whether or not I could give this a perfect 5, as I still don’t think it surpasses FM4, but to give it a 4 would be to undersell just how great this game is. At the very least, it’s the best driving game I’ve played in years.

Third time is indeed the charm.

+++ Amazing gameplay
+++ Online and offline mesh well
++ Beautiful graphics and landscape

-- The price to own everything is really steep (Around £100)