Forza Horizon 4 - A Brief Review (PC + Xbox Review)

Forza Horizon 4 is my first PROPER racing game in many years, and I'm struck by how much of it is affected by its monetisation model. It's a great game, but ultimately not one that I can recommend.

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[nalak.]

"Why would you want to drive a Skyline, when you can drive a zonda."

Oh no

[Casomyro]

, ,When you can drive a Zonda, why should you drive (pls say (no pls nooo) , I don´t know any God)

[thievesmedia]

If you like Skylines, this review will hurt you at some stage.

Just letting you know.

[YouGotBeKitten]

Good review as usual, my dude. But let me give you some insight into a few things coming from somebody that I would say is a "veteran" of the Horizon games or Forza just in general.

You're not wrong when it comes to the VIP pass. If you want to actually grind up a lot of cash in game the VIP pass is almost mandatory. You can get a lot of money just playing the game regularly but with the VIP pass and getting double rewards on everything (including wheelspins which you never mentioned) obviously makes the process much quicker.

The thing about the car pass though is completely wrong. Now this might take some time to explain cause it's a little complicated but to boil it down there's different car classes from D class all the way up to X class. No it doesn't go through the entire alphabet in case some smartass wants to say that. It goes D C B A S1 S2 and finally X.

The most popular car class is S1. Because it gives you a good balance of having speed and power but with drivability and pretty much any car in the game outside of ridiculous super cars (since most of them are too high rated and you can't like make your car worse to get it from S2 to S1) can get to S1 rank so there's a lot of variety. Can have this giant truck racing against like Ferraris or whatever.

Anyway to get back to the car pass thing you say nobody would want to race a shit box over a car like a Zonda and let me tell you that's not even close to the truth. People race stupid "shit box" cars all the time it's part of the fun. The car pass is mainly for people who just want all the cars and want to collect them all. Think of it like car Pokemon if you will.

Sure there is a possibility of some really unbalanced super OP car being in one of the packs that are in the car pass, but you can just buy that specific car if you really want that car you don't *have* to buy the entire car pass just to get this one car you desire. For the most part at least. Not to mention some of the cars in the car packs are free for everyone to get and if you want to get the rest of the cars in the pack you can spend the money to buy the pack and whatever whatever you get the point

So that whole part about like buying the car pass to get better cars isn't true cause most of those Zonda cars or whatever super cars can get absolutely murdered in races by things that you wouldn't think would be as good. Like your Nissans or your Hondas or whatever affordable car brand you can think of. It's mainly just for collectors who want to say they got all the cars or a majority of them at least.

Tuning bit is pretty spot on. Tuning your car (to me) is pointless unless you're really being a try hard. I've won so many races online using stock tuned cars it's not even funny. It's really not a mandatory thing to have unless you want to be super sweaty. Most people (like myself) just make tunes to make the cars go as fast as possible which is what a lot of people want. They just want to go fast as hell and they don't really care about cornering or weight balancing or suspension they just want to go fast.

Which is why I only make drag tunes or like really stupid tunes like making C class cars that do over 200 mph but have the absolute worst turning and breaking you could imagine. Leads to some really stupid stuff and tuning things for speed is pretty simple. So it works out. I don't have to sit for hours to perfect this tune so I can get the absolute fastest lap on this track. I just have to make my car zoom down the straight away.

So if anybody does read this far (which I highly doubt anybody will) and you haven't played these games before don't feel like you need to tune things. You really don't. Not for offline races or online races. You just need to know how to drive. Which sadly as anyone who's ever had the pleasure of playing an actual online race in Forza will tell you not a lot of people know how to do. A lot of ramming and going into turns way too fast and smashing into the walls.

So if you can just you know drive properly and keep on the track you have an advantage over a majority of people who play Forza online already. Don't need this special tune that makes it easier to go around corners cause some brainlet is just gonna try and smash into you and fuck up your line anyway.

Although I heard they made it to where people can't do that anymore on this game but I haven't played the game online to prove that this is true so don't hold me to my word here. Even still it's not gonna help anybody drive any better. These types of people are still gonna play online and drive like shit and get back of the pack cause it's just fun for them to drive that way I guess idk.

I went on a bit of a ramble at the end there but yeah just wanted to say how things are as somebody that loves these games and knows how it is when it comes to buying things, tuning, racing online...etc...etc.

[AggroNoobs]

I'm just saying I'd throw money at a Skyline before a Zonda in a heart beat.

[Dubwolfer]

It took a single sentence, Skill Up... But you did it. You managed to make every single comment on your video about Skylines.

I salute you, my friend.

[Jesse__H]

The Nissan Skyline was not a great comparison choice 😁😊

Skylines are wicked cool.



Versa's what you want :)

[jimbozini]

Your opinion of this game sort of summed up why I like Forza Horizon so much. There have been plenty of great arcade style racing games and there have been plenty of great sim racers. I love both genres, but horizon has always hit the perfect balance of arcade style gameplay with a more (relatively) realistic style of physics, handling, and customization. No other racing series has really struck that balance as well as horizon has. Great review as always.

[stuartrockin]

Needs more Coke documentary and/or ship turning analogies.

[cycro]

"Why would you drive a Nissan Skyline when you could drive a Zonda?"

*screeching wails of JDM community*

[nat]

Not a fan of racing games, but i AM a fan of SkillUp reviews so i’ll watch regardless

[theadventuresofizzywizz]

Glad you liked diddy long racing I helped code it ! I worked at rare for 16 years it’s one of my favourites 😀😀😀😀

[benjaminolsson]

I feel really at home with the opinions of the gaymen laming. They want to enjoy games and have a good time without all the bs. Gaming has been heading towards a bad place for a long time now and it sucks. Thanks for sticking up for what is right and I'm sorry about the typo. I refuse to fix it because it's funny. Haha.

[steelwolff]

"Why would you drive a Skyline when you could drive a Zonda?"
I know he said that he isn't a car enthusiast, but ouch that hurt me. I know a lot of people do only like to drive supercars, but just remember that there is a group of people out there, including me, that enjoy driving non supercars. I agreed with every other part of the video though. The dlc model doesn't really bother me, probably due to me being able to still be competitive online without having bought dlc in the past. Not to mention having over 400 cars in the game is a lot to have already. In terms of Skill Up not enjoying the game as much due to his own personal reasons, which are completely valid, maybe The Crew 2 would be more suited to him? It definitely has more of a progression model and *somewhat* eases you into the gameplay elements. DLC is free for everyone and he seemed to be impressed by the initial showcase at E3 last year.

[carls]

12:05 "poverty pack" hahahaha

[Tezla]

FWIW, I got Horizon 3 for $20 with all the DLC and the VIP pass. Honestly, the VIP pass kind of takes away from the experience for me. Getting double the money meant that I could always buy whatever car I wanted, and since I had the DLC, there were so many cars that were free. This hurt the progression for me as I like feeling attached to the cars I buy, customizing them, upgrading them, etc before moving onto my next purchase. Plus, money is so easy to make in Horizon 3 that I never felt like I had to grind for any car even without the VIP pass (well, except some of the Ferraris). I don't know if they changed how much money you're able to make in Horizon 4 in order to make people want to buy the VIP pass, but it wasn't that bad for me in Horizon 3.

[anthonydeguzman]

The amount of people trying to defend this game against the review is hilarious. Ralph mentioned it was objectively good but didnt hook him because of the monetization. You dont have to bash him because he knows less of the game than you are. He even mentioned this review is intended for thosr who are not into racing games but want to know if it is worth to pick up. Remember the days when you can unlock all the cars by playing? Good times.

[gerbendehoog]

"why would you drive a skyline??"

I cant believe you've done this :(

[mark.]

"Why would you like to drive a skyline instead of a Zonda?"


Excuse me that's not how it works

[frankbeanz]

This man just said “Why would you want to drive a skyline?”... pray for him