Forza Horizon 3

In the United States, we call it "making donuts", in Australia it is "making circles." Right now, I'm doing spectacular rounds near an outdoor airstrip, in a custom, full-featured V8. I'm talking about, for example, a CB radio antenna pointing proudly up to the sky, and a front panel of large Kenworth trucks. "Thunderstruck" hums through my radio and my taco blows through Australian roads. That's what I think sums up Forza Horizon 3; an experience that couldn't be more Australian, as if Paul Hogan had crashed into your living room, holding a crocodile in his arms.

But probably not in yours. Maybe you prefer muscular Americans, or maybe you are more Japanese, or a particular preference for European supercars. That's not a problem, because the Forza license is famous for its eclectic approach to its choice of vehicles, and Forza Horizon 3 is no exception; it's still the best of its kind. The biggest difference here is the high level of customization of the cars, an incredible single player experience that is malleable as possible, which can be played alone or in co-op with friends. It is even possible to import your own playlists in order to play as you wish, never seen in the series. Combined with the dazzling landscapes and lighting effects, the exceptional sound design, and the driving that is as dynamic as it is sharp, the result is absolutely fantastic.

The great southern lands

The standards of the series are very high. In 2014, Forza Horizon 2 had already offered something sumptuous on the Mediterranean coasts; a splendid summer weather to visit the most beautiful cities of southern Europe, sometimes even making us think of an episode of Top Gear. It was just excellent, really.

And the world imagined in Horizon 3 puts it all in the trash. Cars are obviously part of the good news, but the locations where the game takes place steals the show.

There is not just one reason, but several that add up. The attention to detail, for example, is wonderful, and as an Australian that's most definitely something that matters. The markings on the road, the road signs, even the garbage cans along the sidewalks with that multicolored side. It is very disturbing. The lighting is amazing, with an incredibly authentic sky bathing the entire environment in sunlight in a strangely realistic way, casting even sharper shadows. (The latter are even prettier when you find yourself hurtling down the roads near the rainforest, as the sun's rays pierce the branches of tall trees.) Water plays an important role too, and not just because entire area looks even smoother in the rain. Everything from the gentle sloshing of the waves and the splinters caused by your wheels, to your slowdowns caused by deeper water, is on top.

Its greatest strength is the variety of its environments. Horizon 3 takes the let-motiv of The Crew by offering a particularly large map, but with a whole bunch of different terrains in Australia. There is this small coastal town, its picturesque beaches and dirt roads, but also more urban landscapes with tall buildings. We must also count on its forest expanses offering a tropical atmosphere, very humid in thick undergrowth populated by tight trees. There are also plantations that give way to a desert made of isolated farms. In any case, it is large enough for the game to communicate to us the immensity of what it is trying to represent (although you have to do with an arrow road to guide you towards ... the horizon), and it's a noticeable improvement over Horizon 2 where the four corners of the map looked a bit too similar to each other.

Light management also does a great job on the different vehicles, driving them is even better than expected. Even though I'm more of the interior viewer type, I'm getting more and more enthusiastic about using the far view on a regular basis to enjoy the effects on the car, and experience the realistic reverbs, right up to clouds in the sky. However, the interior view is probably the best place for those who want to feel the weather effects. These have been considerably improved since Horizon 2, with droplets exploding on the glass, jostled by the wipers, as we already saw last year in Forza Motorsport 6.

The price for having these stars in your eyes on Xbox One is that Horizon 3 only runs at 30 FPS (as it does for previous episodes of Horizon), and the framerate is particularly solid, as usual, offering a pleasant and smooth driving experience. The only time I could see a slight derailment was when I discovered a notable new place (and there are even more of them than before, and well hidden in the menus to allow the surprise). The PC version obviously had no restrictions.

Another feature to benefit from improvements: the audio part. Horizon 3 is the best Forza game currently on this side, including Forza Motortsport. The difference with Horizon 2 is glaring, and it's already a great game on that side, but there is something bigger, more aggressive in Horizon 3. I don't think I will ever be able to do it. Weary of the sound of the throttle when the flames start to appear at the rear. It's like a warning shot.

Unlike Horizon 2 which opted for a simple multi-mode to activate, Horizon 3 includes new cooperative features, so if you don't want to play Career mode alone, then you can join three of your friends and do it together. Everything you discover and complete can be done alone or with others, in a setting to die for.

"Kick It in the Guts, Barry"

Beyond its visual prowess, Horizon 3 scores a huge point thanks to its malleability. There are more options for customizing your cars than ever before, and they have a dedicated and separate menu, to showcase the possibilities for modifications. Since Need for Speed in 2015, the Forza franchise has caught up with a lot of ground (even surpassing its predecessor in some areas, including the ability to place stickers on the windshield and windows), and therefore offers strong competition in this aspect. .

We are also no longer restricted by the default choice of our avatar; you can now find a selection of characters, like in Test Drive Unlimited. Playground has also worked on the voices, especially for the commentators, who will not hesitate to call you by your first name (and there is a vast choice in French, ndt). By default, your name is Luke, but you can also choose “Sausage”, which is still a lot of fun. Every time I launch my game, I hear Anna, my GPS assistant, say to me "Hi Sausage, you are back!" »And it is downright impossible to drive in these conditions.

Same thing for music, you are no longer restricted by the choices of the game: there is an incredible integration of Groove Music. It's really surprising how easy it is to play your own music in Horizon 3, and it's worth a visit if you like to drive on very particular tracks. I mentioned “Thunderstruck” in my introduction, but there is no AC / DC; i just play it from my own library. Having this option is very different from just using background music, an option you get with the latest update for Xbox One. In the first case, the music is integrated into the radios present in the game; there is no DJ, but only your music which will benefit from a specific treatment to work with the noise of the motors, while changing the volume when you approach the key places of the festival, where the speakers play this music at their tour, putting you in the shoes of a concert goer. However, I noticed that sometimes my music tended to skip, but I couldn't tell if it was a bug or a connection problem.

But it's the flexibility of the events themselves that gives us near-complete access to how Horizon 3 unfolds. Horizon 2 allowed us to switch from completely ignoring the suggested car class, which meant we could progress to the festival grand finale without ever switching vehicles. Horizon 3 goes even further. Not only do some events automatically adjust according to the type of car, but it can also be completely rewritten to have a personalized race performed as part of a challenge with friends.

This Horizon feature is a bit like a blank diagram that allows you to choose, within a race, the weather, the type of competition, and even the name of the race itself, via the poster. It's brilliant, and it means the same event can be done dozens and dozens of times in a different way, with a lot of special conditions. We add to this the possibility of enjoying the diagrams of your friends, as well as those more official, created by Playground. You can even create your own challenges - those special events introduced in Horizon 2 - starting from a predetermined point on the map.

My only real complaint about Horizon 3 is on the distinction between Ford brand vehicles from the US, UK or Australia. As a result, races reserved for Australian cars are a real waste of time since Australian Fords are considered American, and are therefore ineligible. A strange failure considering how Horizon 3 seeks to be as respectful as possible.

After tracing the path with the first chapter and expanding it and making it much more open with the second, with the third iteration of the series the developers focused on improving the game formula, going to refine it with a touch of personalization and extra connection. On the other hand, what need is there to upset something that works very well on its own?

Set in Australia, Forza Horizon 3 is proposed as the largest and most diversified chapter of the series: the setting of the third Horizon Festival is twice as large as the previous and delicious European stage, with an immense variety of areas and driving styles. We pass from the sun-kissed coasts and caressed by the sea, to the urban setting of the town of Surfers Paradise, jumping among the vegetation of the rainy forests and darting among the desert dust on board a dune buggy. The predominant theme, however, is the reckless off-road, which is often called into question and managed by the physical ForzaTech engine, which has definitely improved as regards the management of the suspensions and tires.

In general, the driving system finds all the necessary confirmations: with the Horizon series, the developers had already shown that they can handle dirt roads and variable climatic conditions, especially with the Rally and Storm Island expansions, while with the more recent Forza Motorsport 6 a firm point has been put on the management of races with rain and puddles. The unpredictability and diversity of the setting of this third chapter, therefore, will not reserve negative surprises for fans of the series, who will find themselves at home rediscovering a gameplay and a concrete feeling struggling with the over 350 vehicles available in the game garage. In short, one of the great certainties acquired after years of improvement is that Forza Horizon 3 is able to adequately offer an impressive insight into driving situations, without ever losing sight of a touch of credibility.

Unlike what happened with the first chapters, where perfect strangers were playing in search of success, this time we will be the boss (with face and name selectable at any time) of the Horizon Festival, on which the task of increasing the fans of the automotive event to expand it visibly on the fully explorable map surface. At the completion of each stage of the Festival, choices are proposed to advance the event in other areas, which are then "leveled" to obtain more and more races, participants and activities to be carried out up to the final challenge. All this opens up to a clearly more customizable game concept, based on the constant connection with the community of players.

The personalization, in fact, does not stop at the enormous possibilities that the series has always offered to embellish and enhance its racing cars, but goes further with the introduction of Horizon Blueprint, a system that allows you to create your own event by sharing it instantly with the other pilots scattered around the globe. The theme of the cars, the climatic conditions, the laps to be completed and all the other predefined aspects of a given race can be modified, not only to adapt the experience to one's tastes, but also to diversify and exponentially enrich the performance of the whole The carreer.

An interesting novelty, which goes to file one of the big problems that often occurs over the long distance with driving games, or the variety of game situations. A problem that was not already part of the Horizon series with the boundless types of events available and that in Forza Horizon 3 has been further mitigated with the inclusion of new challenges, such as the jumps to be made in the most dangerous places on the map, the areas drift, night battles and convoys with which to challenge the Drivatars. In October, then, the Forzathons will be added, weekly tests that will allow, upon completion, to unlock special cars never previously introduced.

The feeling you feel from the beginning of this generation by getting your hands on a game from the Forza series is that you are never alone. The merit is first of all the Drivatar system, the artificial intelligence that updates persistently with the style and behavior at the helm of the players of the franchise, reinvigorating the races with extremely credible situations that never boil down to the typical "little trains" of few years ago. The game experience of Forza Horizon 3 is much more focused on the accumulation of credits and fans to enrich the stages of the Festival, and the Drivatars have their part in building this evolution. Right from the start of the game, in fact, he was asked to set up a team by identifying and beating the strongest Drivatars encountered through the map. Thus, making sure the deeds of the best drivers of the Festival, among which the exponents of the friends list stand out, the scores are increased, speeding up the growth process that replenishes the game with content.

The Forza PC maiden voyage

Driving fun workaholic

Speaking of fans: In order to expand the Horizon Festival, we primarily need people who are interested in our racing event. We collect them with every challenge we master - the more spectacular, the more followers. And how do you spice up a race in terms of opulence? Right, with increasingly blatant carts. We activate them with credits (i.e. money) and through experience points, which we also get for almost every action in the game world, we increase our multipliers, which in turn rake in more money in our pockets. With these three currencies - fans, money credits and experience - the developers create a conglomerate of reward spirals that keep us going for dozens of hours .

The countless challenges that we can tackle in Australia's gigantic open world ensure that this is also fun. The classic round and point-to-point races are already part of the standard inventory, we also slide stylishly through drift challenges, pass speed cameras at as much speed as possible, challenge AI drivers to fast matches in the game world, look for spectacular ones Jumps, discover secret cars in abandoned barns, look at the sights of Australia and, and, and. A special highlight is the so-called spoon list, a compilation of various special races. For example, you have to race through the jungle in a Warthog military jeep from Halo to the sounds of the corresponding theme tune or reach ridiculously high speeds in the cockpit of a Königsegg prototype (and we only mention the more harmless missions here for spoiler reasons).

When it comes to the spectacle, this is only topped by the five show races in which we compete against a helicopter, a sports boat squadron and other curiosities. At all of these events, we largely decide ourselves in which order and with which vehicle class we want to start. For example, we can first upgrade the outback as a location and unlock more and more races there, or we can evenly distribute the resources and pave the entire game world with challenges. A great thing, but the player guidance is not quite ideal: The first five hours of the game we are completely bombed with new aspects of the game, which we should also please tackle directly (often Forza doesn't give us a choice) - other, equally important facets are withheld from us the game. How to form a column with other cars for more money, for example. How the tuning works in detail. And which aspects, racing modes and vehicle classes should you concentrate on as a beginner.

On page 2 you can read all the details about PC problems and find out why Forza Horizon 3 is still probably the best racing game of the year.

Outside hui, inside hui

As usual for Forza, under the dazzling surface of myriads of humorous driving fun events there is an extremely solid game mechanics that we can adapt to our own wishes. Specifically: We choose whether we shift and clutch manually, switch the damage model from "purely cosmetic" to "our engine can fly around our ears", switch off ABS, ideal line and rewind function - and thus Horizon 3 as an arcade racer so close as close as possible to the simulation feel of the Forza Motorsport series. However, if we just want to accelerate and steer carelessly, that works just as well. The tuning extends to new components that increase performance, complicated curve calibration in the driving behavior, optical attachments, paintwork and community designs for downloading. The level of difficulty can also be adjusted manually and gives us more credits at high levels - that much freedom is really great. However, some of the races on the "unbeatable" level cannot actually be won.

This is due to the so-called Drivatar AI . Forza Horizon uses a completely different system than Need for Speed, which is often criticized for its rubber band intelligence. Opposing drivers adjust to our own speed there in order to keep the races as exciting as possible. The catch: Your position in the race doesn't depend 100 percent on your own performance. Forza Horizon 3 takes a different approach. Adversaries are called Drivatars and are computer images of other players all over the world, but especially from their own friends list. According to the developer, the individual behavior is registered and converted into an algorithm - in reality, this is noticeable in the small differences in the aggressiveness of the driving behavior.

The Drivatars are mostly racing smart, it feels demanding and fair to compete against them. With the exception of the very high levels of difficulty. Since in Horizon 3 you always start far back in the line-up and cannot influence this, you tend to get into tussles with other cars in the first lap - the AI driver at the top, meanwhile, makes off and is often simply impossible to catch up . But that doesn't happen in all races at this level.

And that's why those little problems are likely to disturb especially the players tackle the Horizon 3 with real power ambition. It is also annoying that switching between different cars, tunings and vehicle builds before a race is extremely fiddly. A professional wants to drive a route with different engine optimizations and has to chug back to the Horizon garage before every attempt to manually change the parts. That would definitely have been more elegant. On the other hand, the majority of Forza players will not even come into contact with these smacks of detail. Because Horizon 3 should primarily be understood as a fun arcade racer with optional simulation tweaks and a bombastic open world. And if this test sounds a bit sober in view of the extremely high rating of Forza, it is only because we save the big guns until the end.

On your marks, set, praise!

Forza Horizon 3 is a playful masterpiece . Seldom has a racing game in the arcade sector tied us so intensely in front of the screen for so long. The Open World of Australia with all its sights and hundreds of challenges impresses around every corner - and that this is far more than optical eyewash, the game owes its excellent driving experience. No matter which car you pick up from the fleet of almost 350 vehicles - it drives unique, comprehensible, varied and easy to grip. A muscle car roars and vibrates with horsepower below us, super sports cars whiz uncontrollably towards the horizon and the numerous off-roaders demand extreme skill in the jungle, but can cope noticeably better with bulky terrain. Tunings, weather conditions and floor coverings also affect the handling of the carts.

Technically, the game sets new standards in the racing game genre in principle (!). On the PC, Horizon 3 naturally benefits from the additional 4K option and better anti-aliasing compared to the One version. On ultra-details, however, the races are a feast for the eyes through and through, even in lower resolutions; a show race against a helicopter in the dense jungle of Australia looks like an image film of the tourism industry that has become a game. And even in “only” high details you can't get enough of the landscapes.

Pc problems

If you want to enjoy the highest settings, you should start with a high-end system with 16.0 GB of RAM and a fast graphics card with at least 4.0 GB of VRAM. Our problems mainly relate to the PC-exclusive unlimited frame rate - if you set the game to 30 frames per second, just like the Xbox One version (the option is available), the average result is just as smooth as on the console. If that weren't possible, we would have devalued a whopping ten points . But since you can theoretically and practically play the PC version at the level of the console version in 30 frames sufficiently smoothly and without problems, we limit ourselves to five points. Nevertheless: We expect stable 60 frames per second in Full HD from a PC optimization in 2016 with correspondingly fast hardware, and these are not always given in Forza Horizon 3 according to the current status.

This technical hiccup doesn't change the fact that the title is playful all along the line: Horizon 3 virtually grabs the best aspects from the more simulation-heavy Forza Motorsport and translates them into a light-hearted and entertaining open world concept. If you think of the fun of driving as a complicated melody, Forza Horizon 3 manages to hit all the right notes with pinpoint accuracy like no other racing game has managed in recent years. Oh, and speaking of music metaphors: The soundtrack also mixes almost 150 licensed pieces of music from classic to modern electro to punk and metal on eight thematically different radio stations to create an incredibly atmospheric playlist for many tastes. Anyone who drives a Bugatti Veyron towards sunset, sees the freely navigable outback with all its sights to the left and right, leaves the competition behind and listens to Chvrches' radio Lauren Mayburry, experiences an unbelievable feeling of elation. And at least that was the case even after 50 hours of play.

The racing games category is usually quite casual. Items such as Trackmania and GTR or Need for Speed and Assetto Corsa are put in one bag. In fact, however, the gap between some of the titles is huge and they are aimed at completely separate groups of recipients. Fans of simulators and precise cutting of hundredths of a second on a lap of a track known by heart expect something different, and fans of carefree driving an exotic car, which can be nicely modified and rammed everything and everyone along the way. This difference seems to be perfectly understood by the people from the Turn 10 studio, the creators of the acclaimed series with a simulation flair - Forza Motorsport . For fans of more dexterity driving, they have created a completely new cycle - Forza Horizon , i.e. racing in a loose, holiday style, without fighting for the perfect line and braking points.

When I sat down to the newest, third part of the game, I tried to find pure, carefree driving pleasure - favorite cars, freedom, spectacular routes, atmospheric music or engine purring and a hint of competition. Forza Horizon 3 ends the exclusive period for the Xbox console and makes its debut on personal computers - so the next thing was to want to see what the game can offer hardened PCs. Will the next Need for Speed clone be worth the upgrade to the new system? After dozens of races, challenges and hundreds of kilometers traveled, I already know for sure that the third Horizon festival is not only the best one so far - it is the best arcade car since I can remember , and the fun it gives can be compared to driving a 500-horsepower super car, capable of accelerating long after the speedometer has passed a hundred.

Forza in the land of kangaroos

Veterans of the previous part on Xbox One may not see a great leap in quality or in the content of the game - both positions are in many respects identical, but at the same time feel communing with a completely new and much better version. The greatest merit lies in the map itself, large enough and extremely diverse, after all. I admit that I was quite skeptical when the game set in Australia, famous only for the Mount Panorama race track, was announced, but the kangaroo land in Forzy Horizon 3 is very impressive! The scenery changes in a very fluid and natural way - from wild sandy wastelands to shady rainforests to the luxurious Surfers Paradise district , full of holidaymakers and skyscrapers. At any time, we can also leave the established route and race without any restrictions in the thick bush or on the beach, and there is clearly more off-road racing here than in the previous part .

The visuals look phenomenal - from the dynamically changing sky to the dense forest vegetation - we can pick out a detail that pleases the eye at every step. The wind blows the sand onto the road, trams run around the city, and the wrecks of boats and piers found somewhere in the wild suggest that there used to be a lake there. The only thing that stands in the way of such a sensational map, rich in various locations, is traffic. It is a bit too dense and consists of either very slow "civilian" cars or wild festival participants. Let us add to this the unexpectedly annoying necessity to move on the left side of the road and we will have a free ride, exceptionally rich in "bells".

It's good to be the boss

Just as the map introduces a lot of freshness and news, the entire festival environment known from previous editions has remained unchanged and even the promotion of our role from a participant to the head of the Horizon event does not bring much new. At first, we feel like a rookie or someone who got this job for acquaintance, listening to the constant commands and explanations of our assistant. We are not dealing here with a story developing the game, but rather with a general background that builds the atmosphere of a great mass event with races in the lead role. By winning subsequent competitions, we gather more and more viewers and participants, and this allows us to open further festival centers and expand the existing ones. It is not particularly motivating and entertaining, fortunately the driving as such turns out to be pleasant enough to encourage you to cover more kilometers and face challenges. The greatest reward for progressing in the game is probably the special races - the spectacular duels with other means of transport known from the previous parts: helicopters or fast motor boats. Full of scripted slow-motion moments, they are a real gem that we look forward to with every increase in the number of fans.

The role of the host shows its advantages later in the game, when the assistant finally goes silent and we are given a free hand in creating the races. Something similar happened in the previous installment of the series, but it only applied to the group of cars that remained within our range. This time we set the weather, number of laps, time of day and available cars ourselves. This gives you a lot of freedom, especially if you prefer a small number of vehicles and only have a few favorites, it also opens up amazing opportunities, allowing you to race between personally selected models or all available in the game. We also create challenges on the Wish List ourselves - here we are no longer limited to racing and we can choose to drive at the right speed, do tricks on the way or avoid damage. The method resembles a contract with Hitman - first we have to complete our task, and its result later serves as a determinant for others - because each challenge is shared with our friends. With time, the race routes begin to repeat themselves a bit, but driving them with a completely different type of car or at a different time of the day does not allow the appearance of redundancy. The map is dense with challenges and there is something to do for dozens of hours, although pointless collectibles in the form of boards giving a discount for fast travel or a weak influx of experience points could be successfully eliminated.

Driving fun at your own pace

After a few hours of fun, I was struck by how much the number and variety of cars affect the atmosphere and the reception of the game. At one point I ran into a race around the map that lasted 45 minutes with three laps . Taking first position, without disturbing traffic, I drove one of my favorite cars through all available Australian scenes, in rain and sun, day and night, listening to personally selected music files on the radio. At that point, I felt like I was playing the first Need for Speed game again , where all that mattered was the scenic route and super-fast cars. The whole festival disappeared somewhere, the assistants, the loud DJs from the radio stations - there was only pure joy to drive. Further experiments turned out to be even more amazing - a ride in a Rolls-Royce car to the sounds of classical music stations, a race of noiseless, electric Tesla with electronic music in the background and hard rock during the buggy madness on sandy terrain. Each such combination changed the atmosphere and made you feel like you were interacting with a different game. The ability to listen to your own songs (unfortunately, this option does not work in multiplayer mode) and the freedom to choose a race probably introduces something more than just the awareness of being the head of the Horizon festival. Here we really have the opportunity to shape the entire game according to our own taste , forgetting about what is happening in the background. We race with artificial intelligence, with other players, with our own record, or we simply go ahead in the environment that suits us best.