Published: July 28, 2023 Author: JasonDarkX2 Category: Gaming,Reviews
For a motor racing festival that has been going on for nearly two years. Forza Horizon 5 still has gas in the tank but is it still worth it? With some new contenders like The Crew Motorfest or Forza Motorsport coming later this year. So, well first and foremost the game since release has gotten better in terms of performance on PC. Well at least for my RTX 3080 Ryzen 5800x setup that is if my 500+ hours in Horizon 5 can attest to something. That is the expansions for Horizon 5 took their time to be released, now with over 700 unique cars to unlock and drive, new players will surely have plenty to do and unlock.
Where a small handful of those cars are from paid car packs, so completionists your only option is to purchase the premium edition. Unfortunately, they’ve started adding additional premium car pack which aren’t included with the premium edition, opting players spend a couple bucks more. While missing premium cars, don’t affect overall gameplay. They do help during the beginning of your Horizon career. I used the Welcome Pack Porsche Taycan Turbo s for most road to the hall of fame story portion of Horizon 5.
While there’s an online multiplayer portion to Horizon 5. I rarely touch that portion of the game after completing their respective mode achievement requirements. With Chicken Dinner achievement being the hardest one in the game. Cheaters with potential usable speed hacks infesting the multiplayer aspect, leaving a last impression that you could pretty much abandon any serious online racing prospect in Horizon 5. While co-op racing such as horizon tours and weekly trials have own set of nuisance players. It's still manageable with one of two rammers ruining the PvE race for everyone. Whereas PvP content you'll just find yourself sitting on the track just waiting for it to be over and the Eliminator(Battle Royale) mode is purely based on luck.
Thankfully Horizon 5 is an all-round good Single-player racing game that never takes itself too seriously, as all the characters at the festival are oddly cheerful and happy. The story aspect of Horizon 5 is mostly about giving the player a good/enjoyable car history lesson. With an assortment of different activities such as racing lol on different terrains and settings. PR stunts such as drift zones, danger signs, speed trap/zones. There’s something, for everyone, I personally enjoy drift zones, and danger signs more than the actual racing events. Out of the different types of races, I despise Street races in Horizon 5 because tracks force you to abruptly make very tight corner turns while coming out of high speeds. Which ruins the flow overall driving experience. On the other hand, road and off -road races are fine in my opinions.
There are expansions for Horizon 5, Hot wheels and Rally Adventure. While they add pretty much the same kind of content just on a new map. You could just skip them since Horizon Mexico is where you’ll spend most of your time. With Mexico being already so eventful, the only reason you’d want the expansion is to 100% Horizon 5 achievements.
From a technical standpoint since I’m playing on a PC with an RTX 3080. The visuals look amazing even on High settings. Whereas play testing on a GTX 1650 on very Low setting the game is still visually passable graphics quality of an Xbox 360. If you can pump settings to Ultra, you’ll get better world visual and car model reflections. At the expense of potentially heating up the room in the Summertime.
In terms of car handling while using a controller and/or keyboard. I’d say they are on par with one another, though I find drifting on the controller easier to manage. Have yet to try a full-on steering wheel setup with steering on simulation. But having the ability to easily remap control to any button, even on the controller is certainly a major plus in my opinions.
Replay ability wise, your experience may vary. As the main appeal after the main Horizon Mexico campaign is simply continue playing to unlock cars and watch a number go up by completing accolades to increase your Hall of Fame rep. But cruising around the open world while drifting to skill songs is my favourite pastime in the game. Replay ability certainly runs thin once completed most of the content. But being able to do just whatever you like is vastly more superior in my opinions.
Car customization is at average at best, you can tune your car performance in which everything you add can have a positive or negative effect depending on what you’re using the car for. If you’re looking to rack in some online rep, you can share your tunes and car vinyl designs with the community. There’s an accolade for those, I personally just tune the car for objective, paint it and go. If you're feeling overly creative, you can also create your own events and track for the community to play.
Overall, Horizon 5 is still a great game in my opinions. Even if racing games have become sort of a niche genre in this day of age that might not appeal to everyone. If you like collecting cars and driving them, then Forza Horizon 5 casual single player experience has you covered. Depending on how quickly the method of unlocking new cars becomes too repetitive. But the new additional free unlockable cars, driving experience and visuals is what have me coming back to Horizon 5 every week, remaining as my main PC racing game.
The Good:
- Plenty activities and cars.
- Exceptional visuals,
- Great Single-player experience.
- Has free roam.
The Bad:
- Cheater infested multiplayer.
- Multiplayer Achievements.
- Might get repetitive.
- Weak expansions.
Is it still worth it?: Yes
Tags:
Forza,
Game Review,
PC Games,
Xbox