These range from story-based mission-chains, such as working as a stunt driver for a film being shot locally, to the 'Showcase' races that offer spectacular racing challenges. Amongst these are more unique events for you to undertake. Most of these races are thoroughly entertaining, each one carefully crafted from the map’s twisting network of roads and undulating terrain. Completing each race results in a clutch of rewards thrown your way, including various kinds of experience points, in-game credits, and the chance to win a variety of prizes from the Horizon 'Wheel of Fortune', which is a devilishly delightful bit of Skinner-box stimulation. Some of these will be straightforward dashes to a finish line via Britain’s winding road-network, while others take the form of lapped races around tracks that naturally emerge from the map design. You drive around the map gradually working your way up the various racing tiers, which here include road races, off-road races, cross-country sprints, and night-time street drives. Horizon maintains its arcade leanings established in previous games, enabling a full racing line and substantive driving aides as standard, although simulation aficionados should find more challenge on the harder difficulty levels.įor its first 5-10 hours, Horizon remains structurally similar to its predecessors. Autumn and Spring, for example, mean extra mud and water on the roads, while Winter coats the land in an unusually thick blanket of snow and ice.įrankly, the differences to the driving are far less radical than the visual changes – at least on the game’s regular difficulty. As you progress, you’ll see Autumn, Winter, and Spring pass by, each bringing with it a strikingly different look and some mechanical differences to driving. The festival kicks off in the height of summer, where the sky is vivid blue and filled with hot-air balloons, which I don’t recall being a major feature of British summertime, but anyway. Indeed, these 'Seasons' are arguably Horizon’s most significant new feature. It isn’t just the landscape of Britain that Forza Horizon 4 so artfully recreates the country’s infamously changeable climate is simulated too. Even so, it makes for an incredible centrepiece in Forza Horizon 4’s beautiful world. Outside of this specific area, greater liberties have been taken with the city’s layout, excising substantial chunks of both the old town and Leith. Forza Horizon 4 meticulously renders the city’s primary thoroughfare, Princes St, alongside North Bridge and the Royal Mile leading up to Edinburgh Castle. The Jewel in the map’s crown, however, is a stunning recreation of Edinburgh city centre. Drive north, on the other hand and you’ll travel along the shore of Derwentwater, before arriving at the iconic Glenfinnan viaduct. Head east and you’ll soon find yourself in rural Oxfordshire, complete with rolling fields of yellow oilseed rape. You start out at the Festival centre, located a stone’s throw from the quaint Cumbrian village of Ambleside. Playground Games has taken a selection of the country’s most attractive areas and elegantly stitched them together. What results is another spellbinding sandbox racer by Playground Games, albeit one that somewhat torpedoes its own ambition of becoming a persistent multiplayer experience.Įven if we temporarily ignore the racing, simply driving around Horizon’s truncated map of Britain is a joy. This Horizon combines its new, quintessentially British map with dramatically changing seasons to produce the most varied racing environment the series has witnessed yet. Variety has always been the bergamot in Forza Horizon’s Earl Grey, and for the series’ fourth outing, developer Playground Games is determined to offer more choice and freedom than ever. For example, when drifting up the track of a snowbound highland mountain, Debussy’s Clair de Lune is a perfect accompaniment to that particular scene, and when chasing down the Flying Scotsman in one of Horizon’s stunning showcase races, Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King encapsulates the magnificent absurdity of the situation. But Forza Horizon 4’s seasonal British festival calls often calls for a more refined mood-piece. Most racing games are accompanied by either screaming guitars or thumping bass for obvious, adrenaline-generating reasons. The moment I knew I loved Forza Horizon 4 was when I discovered the classical radio station.
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