A pertinent word for the ’16 edition is expansion. From a state in Horizon, to a few countries in Horizon 2, this new journey utilizes an entire continent as the content fulcrum point. Get ready to go down under, as you’ll be ripping and roaring through a multitude of terrain in Australia! The exordium straps you in a hyped up dune buggy, racing against a Jeep that’s being hoisted by a cargo helicopter. This does two important things from the jump. One, it’s a memorable way to show off all the different types of surfaces and surroundings you’ll find in the proceeding tens of hours spent in Career (and more online, if that’s your thing). Two, it re-establishes the leading Horizon philosophy that differentiates itself from familial Forza Motorsport: gleeful lunacy.
At the center of a bountiful map of bustling streets and rally inclined back country is Career. This time around, YOU are the festival boss. Chose a character from several choices of different ethnicity and gender as well as a name that seems be suggested based on your Microsoft/Xbox LIVE account info. In practical terms, being the lead essentially equates to having a lot more control over what events will comprise each stop along the campaign. Two “managers” offer assistance at germane points. Keira keeps you up-to-date on festival happenings and any new bits of noteworthy info. Warren is the residential grease monkey with tips about vehicle management and serves as the restoration guru of those elusive Barn Finds. Between the pair, you’ll be fully aware of what may lay directly ahead. Usually, next up on the to-do list is race! Career events are broken down into three main categories. First is exhibition. A one-off lapped or point-to-point endeavor with a field comprised of Drivatar NPCs. Their class will follow your chosen vehicle selection, and the goal is to naturally finish first. Rivals are timed runs that selects an fellow Horizon 3 player’s mark that must be bested. Championships are multi-stage grand prix that determine the winner based off of accrued points.
This year’s entry relies heavily on the Blueprint concept. Essentially, it integrates a whole host of customization options for every event. Set parameters like number of laps, weather conditions, class restrictions, et cetera before pressing OK. Of course with the persistent effort of keeping Forza products as social as possible, creations by you and other LIVE-rs are available to try and (probably) the ones most often chosen will be featured closer to the front of the side scrolling list. After settling on a rules set, it’ll finally be time to go, go, go! In all races, you’ll have to be mindful of the numerous checkpoint gates interlaced among the entire outlined path. Compared to Horizons of old, they seem to be more numerous, more narrow, and in more “technical” areas. Let’s use a theoretical track section of straight away to medium left hander back to straight. Instead of the required gate in this sequence being placed at the entry or exit of the turn, it’s more often fixed right along the apex. And the inside gate flag is tucked right along the edge of the “official” track surface, which means you’ll often have to play it clean and stay inbounds in cornering sections. This becomes especially pronounced in Scramble type races that feature mixed terrain of tarmac, dirt, mud, and gravel. With so many varying marks of contact, it’s impossible to have the “perfect vehicle” for a given event. Taking advantage of the areas where your machine is most at home is pivotal for good finishes. And podiums generate more Fans.
Fans are the forefront currency of progression in Horizon 3. New batches of events are predicated on either breaking ground or expanding a festival site. Races and challenges within a site will follow some common theme based on its location on the map. These range from flowing cliff side highways, to acutely cornered metropolitan streets, to wide open off-road treks and everything in between. Upgrading each area unlocks more events, so knocking out the initial wave of objectives won’t be nearly enough to “shut the party down” at a particular spot. Be prepared for extended stays. The cool thing is you can have multiple places open for business at once, which is a huge help in relieving the monotony of an event string. If you want to get a little more sordid in your fan attraction effort, check out Street Races. Considered “unsanctioned,” these tough point-to-point battles on diminutive two-lane roads field hungry Drivatars looking to take a shot at the boss for supreme bragging rights. The trickiest part about them is that traffic is on because of their underground status. Couple that with them often having a night time theme and you’ll really need to be on top of the thumbsticks and triggers to change direction and speed in a blink. Also, it seemed to me that the dreaded Forza “boss car effect” might be in subtle quantity here, so make sure you do whatever it takes to get along the back bumper of the leader early.
While budgeting time for concentrated efforts towards checking off Career stuff is important to gaining access to more content, Horizon‘s most bearing characteristic in comparison to Forza proper is simply the open road. 488 of them, to be exact. Yes, be ready to spend an abundance of time behind the wheel if you’re one to scour every drivable nook and cranny. Just remember to stay towards the left as oncoming traffic will come at you on the right side in Australia. During your joy rides, there’s plenty of smaller obligations in which you can chose to participate. Old faithfuls of Speed Traps (MPH marked at a predetermined line) and Speed Zones (average MPH along a designated stretch) are joined by newcomer Drift Zones. Whip that back end around and get slideways to build style points from the start line to finish. Though make sure to stay on the road and going forward, or your run may be disallowed. In relation, wreckage based skill chains are serious business this time around with umpteen million fences, patio furniture sets, shrubs, light poles, even entire rows of crops. Just heed the same advice given to George of the Jungle and watch out for that tree! The skill points you earn for “entertaining” driving are used for the familiar Skill Point system. Horizon 3 offers it a buff in the form of three different groupings: Festival Boss, Skills, and Instant Rewards. Predictably, a shared theme can be discerned within the tabs, like locating valuables easier, higher percentages for skill chains, and immediate deposits of more credits.
Two other festival hallmarks have returned for a third time. Present and well accounted for are Bucket List and Showcases. You know, the times you get to do super unrealistic, but incessantly satisfying things like tear ass through a construction site in a souped up Ford RS200, launch sweet jumps off wrecked ship carcasses along sandy shores with a Baldwin pickup, and race a freight train in a Chevy ‘Maro at breakneck speed! There are several to stamp “done,” ranging from piece of cake easy to controller hurling-ly hard and each is designed to come down to the wire, so you’ll be inclined to keep at it until the last second before having to retry failed attempts. The Blueprint system also has an extension into Bucket Lists, where members of the community can create insane challenges and invite the world to try. Thankfully, just like Super Mario Maker, the uploader must accomplish their concoction before submitting, as to cut down on potential trolling. With all of this offline solo goodness, how about a side of online multiplayer for desert? In the spirit of the festival, you and a group of buddies could keep the world as your explorable oyster in Free Roam. With no rigid itinerary, y’all can have a ball just cruising and perusing the vastness of the outback to your collective heart’s content. If you want some structure and feeling competitive, check out Adventure. An assortment of event options splash on the screen and group members vote on the next round of races. Finally, Co-op affords the opportunity for you and a few others to tackle Career events together, and progress carries over into solo. Based on the multiplayer session I had with other media members and some of the Turn 10 and Playground staffers, these three pillars were architecturally stable in terms of netcode and featured an acceptable varying degree of variety from one mode to the next. Word of advice, though. If you plan on knocking out a large percentage of the game in Co-op, make sure the group is on the same page and willing to work together and communicate. With higher level Drivatar difficulty, you probably won’t have the luxury of beating-and-banging while still finishing in the top spots. Be cordial and save the rough stuff for Adventure.
At the heart of any solid racing game is a large garage. Horizon 3 doesn’t lack in this department a modicum. Good news, because you’ll want a diverse stable of whips to take advantage of the aforementioned varied playable area. You can shop for brand new rigs at the Auto Show or search for sweet deals at the Auction House. Each car/truck/SUV has a designated grouping to make finding the right choice for a given event type a cinch. Bundles like Extreme Track Toys honor completely impractical yet irresistible engineering marvels such as the unmistakable Ariel Atom. All wheel drive your thing? How about a perfectly suited Subaru WRX of Modern Rally. If you want to taste the possible future of motoring, jump in the Koenigsegg Regera of Hyper Car ilk and experience a rush of mid-range clout like no other from the fixed gear hybrid Swedish rocket ship! Maybe your looking to rip up muddy terrain in tucked away paths in a luscious forest. In that case, select an Offroad Buggie like the Polaris RZR 1000 side-by-side ATV, which can be quite the little piece with a conversion kit. Of course, this truncated list is not even the tip of the offerings, but it does show the wide assortment of machines. Speaking of conversions, the sterling Forza upgrade and tuning menus are here again. To tune certain characteristics (gear ratios, roll bar tact, break bias, and so on), it may be necessary to utilize after market parts. Custom upgrading now places parts in a “basket” that can be viewed with a tap of the menu button, showing an itemized list and a running total cost. Some vehicles have the option of Bodykit Presets, which adjusts all upgrades, tunes, and some aesthetics. The 1968 Dodge Dart Hemi’s Preset is a whole sale change, with a lowered profile and a snarling carburetor scoop.
Per usual with the Horizon brand, gameplay has a little more of a forgiving flair for the dramatic. As with the previous two outings, controlled chaos in the corners lends itself to just a bit more temerity and gumption that cousin Motorsport. Again, this isn’t to say you can hammer out a perfect drifting 90 degree turn in a redlined supercharged SRT Hellcat. Effective turning does still require a substantial measure of venerability, it just won’t punish you as much in your hunt for the limit. As stated earlier, the stubby nature of the checkpoint flag width exacerbates the need for plausible accelerator-to-brake rhythm. Unlike ’12 and ’14, you won’t be able to consistently “cheat” the corners by skimming the inside apex boundary. This makes tilts against flesh and blood competitors a staunch test in the applicable contradiction of aggressive racing line negotiation. Also during my test, it didn’t seem drafting had an ostensibly pronounced effect, as the only real way to catch up was to cut in and out of corners better than the car(s) in front. All of these notes sound like outright negatives, and I don’t mean them to be. These altered features actually brings about more competitive racing that keeps one engaged for longer stretches. Although, I do think because the sliding sim-to-arcade scale fades a little more towards the former this go around that it does take just a notch off the proverbial fun factor ceiling.
The one clear advantage Horizon continues to lend itself over “traditional” Forza is in visuals. That’s not to say Forza 6 isn’t a great looking game. It is very much. The open world theme simply allows for more creativity in this department. The lighting and shadow effects are jump-off-the-screen impressive. Snaking through a heavy brush path with the sun’s visible apricity being diffracted every which way by sumptuous layering of tree limbs and leafs will probably be one of the more memorable examples of deft graphical coding this year. Vibrant colors start to meld like a Dali painting at high speeds, creating a kaleidoscopic tunnel of wicked acceleration. Playground’s effort in traveling to Australia to capture real images of the sky and modulate them in the game reaps hefty benefits. The upward scenery settles perfectly along computer generated imagery. This virtually seamless stitching avoids the possibility of looking uncanny, and instead institutes a good sum of, well, realism. Even the rumble response in the handles and triggers seems to be better, with more articulation and less unabashed feedback. The sound department isn’t quite as awe inspiring, but it isn’t a demerit, either. Engine sounds atop the musical accompaniment of acts like The Offspring, Blink-182, Aesop Rock, CHVRCHES, and the like is more than capable of keeping you zeroed in on the driving task at hand. Radio stations become available as you progress through the festival. Old favs Bass Arena, Pulse, and such meet new offerings in Block Party, Vagrant, Epitaph, Future Classic, and so forth. All of you with a subscription to Groove can “tune” your saved playlists right into the game; a prime example of Microsoft-as-a-Service integration that will probably find its way into more upcoming first party titles.
