Forza Horizon 3 Review

Take the first star on the horizon and keep driving ‘till morning:

Playground are back with their third take on the Forza Horizon series, and have taken the action down under to Australia. Does this pay off or does it send the series upside down?

Story:

This time, you’re the boss of the festival, responsible for growing it, building a fanbase and choosing the events. This all sounds like busywork, but the reality is that all of these tasks are accomplished through the actual racing, and what the game is really giving you is far more freedom in how you want to proceed through the many and varied events, which is fantastic.

This freedom actually making sense in the context of the game is just a bonus. I still think Horizon could do more around driving an actual narrative and bringing some personalities and rivalries into the mix, but Horizon 3 is still a step forwards for the series.

Gameplay:

Australia is a much more interesting place to drive around than Southern Europe, even if I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. It’s certainly more varied in terms of the scenery, but I think the roads have been designed better, allowing more variety & better course design, which just makes the game ‘feel’ better.

The handling model, is, for the most part, brilliant. There’s just enough simulation to it to make sure you’re rewarded for braking, using the racing line and solid racecraft, but just enough arcade to it to ensure you feel like a legend as you drift between corners, power out of a bend past the competition or take off in an epic jump over a train on one of the five incredible new showcase events.

One of my small gripes is that the handling with a wheel doesn’t feel as solid as in F1 2016 or Forza 6. The wheel has too much play and vibration under wheelspin conditions, and too little outside, making it a bit tougher than it should be to work out when you’re at the limits of control compared to the competition. Controlling a drift, even with simulation steering on, should probably just be a tad easier given the heroic model balanced between arcade and simulation the rest of the game goes for.

As long as you can get to the right setup, Horizon 3 will keep you occupied for months. Australia is huge, there’s hundreds of cars, and the events are diverse and plentiful, before you even get into creating your own blueprints or racing the events your friends have created.

There’s dozens of hours of enjoyment to be had, even for casual fans, whilst completionists will probably need in excess of a hundred to see everything the game has to offer.