Forza Horizon 4 review: UK-themed open-world playground gets the green light

THE Forza series heads to the UK and it continues to pay off, whether you’re still on your L-plates or a seasoned racing driver.

DRIVING expensive cars very fast has been fun ever since doubtless moustachioed gentlemen of leisure in the late Victorian era donned leather gloves and goggles, climbed into their strange vehicles, put their hat on at a rakish angle and tried to race each other.

Naturally, there have been a lot of computer games about motor racing over the years, and of late some of the best have come via Microsoft’s Forza series.

While Forza Motorsport 7 is a serious (and very good) game about the world of motorsports, taking place on proper tracks and motorsport facilities, Forza Horizon 4, developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft for the PC and Xbox One, is more about ‘road’ motorsports — street racing, rally driving, road courses, stunt driving and generally having a good time.

The framing device of the series is the Horizon Festival, which involves a lot of dance music, laser lights and people enjoying themselves — and is also an excuse to drive a vast array of cars very quickly on roads, through fields, up hill and down dale.

While Forza Horizon 3 was set in Australia, the sequel shifts the action to the UK in an open-world reimagining of some of the more iconic parts of the country — and this time, the country’s famously changeable weather is a key part of the experience.

Having spent my adult life in Queensland, where winter was on a Tuesday this year, and grown up in New Zealand’s South Island, where the bright yellow disc we’d sometimes see in the sky was a source of awe and mystery, seasons have always been more of a theoretical thing for me than an actual part of life.

The new instalment sees you combing through a UK-themed world.

Forza Horizon 4, however, features all four seasons in one handy location — not unlike Melbourne. Driving in summer offers a different experience to winter (guess what happens when you drive a sports car on ice, folks?) which is different again to autumn (raining a lot) and spring (green and pleasant). Different events will also be available in different seasons, so the changes aren’t purely cosmetic and vehicle handling-based.

“Best of British” is a recurring theme throughout the game, from the cars — including the venerable Morris Minor, the iconic Mini Cooper, the indestructible Land Rover Defender, and pretty much anything James Bond has ever been anywhere near — to the scenery, which perfectly captures the essence of the UK. (Although, unusually, the city modelled in the game is Edinburgh rather than London.)

There are more than 450 cars in the game — including a good number with the steering wheel on the correct (right-hand) side of the car, although a head-scratching number of Japanese vehicles are presented as left-hand drive models for some reason, as is one of the Land Rover Defender 4WDs.

Forza Horizon 4 boasts some classic British wheels.

The interior views of the cars are very well done, but still only encompass the dashboard and front 150-degrees or so — the sides and rear of the car interiors aren’t rendered, which really detracts from the experience, unfortunately.

The graphics, in true Forza fashion, are superb, regardless of whether you’re playing on Xbox One or PC. The seasons have very distinct looks and feels, with cars losing traction on icy roads, streams filling with water in autumn and sunlight reflecting off paint. It looks amazing all around.

You can race against your friends and other real-life people in the game world too, and the developers have put quite a bit of work into ensuring that people can’t crash into you or mess with your driving etc unless you’re engaged in a race with them and the relevant options are enabled. You can still crash into AI cars, road signs, fences and billboards though. But the crash physics are pretty tame so you’re not going to be creating epic pile-ups or anything.

When not racing, you can explore the shared open world as part of what the developers refer to as “Horizon Life” which gives plenty of opportunities for sightseeing — although in some of the faster cars, you’re not likely to be admiring the scenery as much since it’s hard to appreciate that quaint English village when you barrel through it at 200km/h. The seasons will change weekly in Horizon Life, meaning it will always be the same season for all players on the server.

Some of the showcase events are particularly well done. In one race, I was competing against a hovercraft, while another memorable race pitted me against the Flying Scotsman steam locomotive.

It’s nice to be driving on the proper side of the road in a car game and ultimately everything I said about Forza 7 applies here as well. Broadly, this isn’t hugely different to the previous Forza Horizon games — besides the change in location and addition of seasons — but since the game provides a fun environment to drive ludicrously expensive cars extremely recklessly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for many people either.

You can race against your friends and other real-life people in the game.

Being a Microsoft first-party title, the game is available on the Xbox Game Pass service from launch on October 2, so if you like racing games and have a Game Pass subscription, or don’t have Forza Motorsport 7, then the only thing that should potentially stop you from getting this is a lack of internet bandwidth (#AustralianInternetProblems).

If you don’t have a Game Pass subscription and already own Forza Motorsport 7, however, the question you’ll need to ask yourself is whether the change of setting to road-based racing is enough to justify the purchase cost, and that’s a tough decision because at their heart, they both do what they do very well but are broadly about pretty much the same thing.

Personally, I think the open-world setting and focus on road and rally racing makes it worthwhile, but if you’re still trying to fill your Forza 7 garage you aren’t going to be flooding your engine with tears either if you hit the brakes on getting this one immediately.

Assuming you’ve decided this one is getting the green light, though, then start your engines and get ready to race, because there’s plenty here to keep you entertained.

Being a Microsoft first-party title, the game is available on the Xbox Game Pass service from launch on October 2.