Forza Horizon review
Forza Horizon is one of those games that tries too hard to look hip. Its characters and setting – a festival of music and motor racing – share the same sanitised vision of youth culture you see in ads for mobile networks. Its colour scheme is black with hot pink and every menu rests at a 15 degree angle. Achievements have titles like ‘OMG’ and ‘#WINNING’.Perhaps it’s trying to correct the famous lack of charisma of its parent series Forza Motorsport, from Microsoft’s in-house team Turn 10. Or perhaps it’s trying to cover up a strain of rank commercialism, since it’s plastered in sponsor logos and invitations to buy tokens for shortcuts. An offshoot made by another studio – new UK outfit Playground – Forza Horizon comes across like a marketing drive first and a game second, tainted as it is with buzzwords like “brand extension” and “annual cadence”.Prepare to swallow your cynicism, however, because Forza Horizon is a quite brilliant racing game – one of the best of its generation. It’s also a lesson in how to make that development model work to create something greater than the sum of its parts.Read more…
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