Forza Horizon 5

[Steve]

It's releasing on November 9th this year and will be part of Game Pass on day one. It's set in Mexico this time.

 

[Deft]

Looks pretty amazing. I haven't played a proper driving game since forever. Last one was probably Midnight Club 2 on PS2.

[Steve]

I have played FH4 for just under 800 hours, lol. It got me back into racing games in a big way, but I like the more arcadey ones. There is just so much to do in the Horizon games, both single player and multiplayer content.

The one thing that sucks is the number of rammers/griefers you get in online races. It's a really hard issue to tackle, cos obviously there are gonna be some accidental collisions, so it's very difficult to distinguish between that and someone who tries to ram you off the track or make you miss a checkpoint on purpose.

[Deft]

As I watched the demo I contemplated getting an Xbox Series X, mostly to have some kind of weird next gen console bragging rights. Plus you seem to get shit loads of games on the subscription thing with Microsoft. Plus that streaming thing you mentioned too. Plus just a change of console scenery.

Then I realised the cable trunking in my room is so packed at the moment there's no way I'll get another HDMI lead in there, so that's the end of that, LOL.

 

[Steve]

They're doing a live stream of some gameplay starting in just over 20 minutes (6PM UK time): -

 

[Steve]

This is out in less than 2 weeks. I'm super-hyped! I've tried to avoid watching too many gameplay videos, but I've watched a few vids on the new features and some of the improvements and it's looking fucking amazing. It also has the biggest map any Horizon game has ever had. I can't wait to drive around Mexico on November 5th!

[Steve]

Here's IGN's review, where they give it 10/10: -

If you have the premium edition or you bought the premium add-ons bundle, this is playable tonight starting from midnight local time.

[Dan]

My Series X came yesterday (big upgrade from the 360!) can't wait to play this! Got the xbox wireless headset coming too.

[Steve]

2 hours ago, Dan said:

My Series X came yesterday (big upgrade from the 360!) can't wait to play this! Got the xbox wireless headset coming too.

I assume you know about the Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Ultimate conversion?

[Dan]

No mate but I didn't have gold anyway on the 360. I did that All Access thing so it was the X and Ultimate together.

Had a quick go on it this morning, it looks really good! I out it in perfromace mode.

Headset should be here later today too.

[Steve]

I played it for a couple of hours last night. It's great. Just what I hoped it would be.

[Steve]

They've doing some cool stuff with the accessibility options in this game. A new patch coming soon will let people enable either a British or American sign language interpreter to appear during the story cut scenes: -

[Steve]

I've played quite a lot of this now. It is a great game, but it is in a pretty buggy state right now.

The official list of known issues has grown pretty long already: -

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4409616884883-FH5-Known-Issues

They probably rushed it out so they had a big exclusive out for the holiday season. I'm confident they will patch it up though, but some of the bugs are kinda annoying, particularly related to the online stuff and server disconnections/issues.

My main thoughts on it: -

Graphically, the game looks great, and Mexico is awesome to drive around.

The campaign is considerably better than in FH4.

The music is really good IMO. The radio station themes are basically the same as in FH4, but obviously all the music is different.

The car sounds are improved over FH4, with modifications now affecting the way cars sound.

Once again, there is TONS to do, and over 580 cars to collect already.

They've tweaked the wheelspins so you get more stuff that you actually want. There's more ways to earn stuff in general, including a challenge-based accolades system, and rewards for obtaining several cars from the same manufacturer.

The gift system is a cool idea, but it's being abused right now, lol. You can leave a car in a garage for other players to find, and you can choose which type of player can find it (e.g. new players only), leave a little pre-written note, and add your name to it, plus the person that finds it can thank you. Right now though, loads of people are buying Willys Jeeps, unlocking the super wheelspins on them, then gifting them to get rid of them, cos the super wheelspin always gives you considerably more value than the vehicle costs to buy and you can just keep buying them repeatedly. I'm sure they will fix that though.

The hourly Forzathon co-op events have been replaced by something called Horizon Arcade, which is also co-op and seems more fun in terms of the individual events, but it's pretty buggy right now. Borderline unplayable in fact. One thing that's cool is that you can choose to stay with the group once the Horizon Arcade event is over, rather than with Forzathon where once it was over, that was it and people typically just drove off and went back to doing their own thing.

I've only done one seasonal Playground Games event and unfortunately the modes were the same as in FH4, which is a little disappointing, so you have King, Infection, and Flag Rush.

In-game communication is more intelligent than before, and is sometimes context-based. For example, if a player called DrX487 says "Hi", when you go to emote back, one of the options will be "Hi, DrX487", so it adds their name, which is a nice touch. However, it does basically cut your options for emotes in half.

The range of characters you can choose from are all pretty bad. Generic and boring, like in FH4, but your character speaks now, so during cut scenes they're not just standing there like a mute, lol.

The race intros and outros are nicer than in FH4.

There's a new feature called Event Lab where you can make your own events, which is WAY more fleshed out than anything we've seen in a FH game previously.

The Eliminator is back, although this time everyone starts off in a VW Beetle instead of a Mini.

Really, it's just a case of them fixing the bugs, particularly when it comes to online play and server connectivity, but even with the bugs I've still been having a blast doing all of the story-based stuff, drift zones etc.

[Dan]

I haven't seen any bugs yet but I'm playing it in offline mode.

The Jeep thing isn't too bad as the skills reset so whoever gets gifted it can do the same tricks.

[Steve]

The problem with the Jeep thing is that it ruins the game's economy. Why bother buying/selling cars, including in the auction house, when you can just rinse and repeat the "buy Jeep, spend 5 skill points, get super wheel spin" thing? You can literally never be worse off by doing that. It's great for the individual player, but it's like flooding any economy with excess free cash - the overall system will fail.

I've played the shit out of the game: -

Over 40 hours of play time since November 5th, lol.

The first patch got delayed cos they found issues with it, but it's out next week. I hope they address the online issues, cos that part of it fucking sucks.

 

[Steve]

For anyone trying to unlock the "Wash for 20 seconds" daily challenge, it is bugged, but there's a way to unlock it.

What you are supposed to do is do a rivals event and post a clean lap, however, that does not work.

To unlock it, choose to do a rivals event against someone with a flagged lap, deliberately hit a wall so your own lap is flagged, then beat your rival. When you exit out back to the free roam, it will then unlock.

[Steve]

There's another glitch in this game that lets you obtain rare cars.

If you go into the car collection screen, it shows you all of the cars in the game, grouped by manufacturer. If you click on one, it tells you the way(s) it can be obtained. Some cars can only be obtained via challenge rewards, the Forzathon shop or whatever, so they can't be purchased with regular credits.

If you click on any car in the left column of tiles, then press B to back out of the car collection screen, then immediately go back into it, the car you clicked on will now have a "Buy" option, letting you buy it with regular credits even if you're not supposed to be able to.

I have a feeling they will patch this soon, but it's still working as of the time of me making this post.

[Dan]

It's amazing how quick people are finding glitches

[Steve]

Last night I was trying to get the achievement for winning The Eliminator, which is very buggy right now, and I got to the final showdown, correctly guessed where the finish line would be, was way out in front in first place, then all of a sudden it ended and it said I came 8th, lol. Cheers!

[Dan]

I only play solo but it seems they are having real issues with the servers for online, which is a bit strange because the game isn't that different from 4 really. 

[Steve]

14 minutes ago, Dan said:

I only play solo but it seems they are having real issues with the servers for online, which is a bit strange because the game isn't that different from 4 really. 

They've changed how it works in FH5.

In FH4 you would join a server instance that could have up to 72 real players in it, although I never ever saw one be full. So, if, for example, you joined a server with 45 players in it, those players would be scattered around the map. Occasionally someone will leave. Occasionally someone new will join, assuming there's space.

In FH5 everyone is connected to the same server, but you will see up to 11 other players on screen at once. The number of players you see depends on where you are, so if you're out in the middle of nowhere, it won't show you 11 other players, even though you are technically surrounded by players wherever you are, but if you're at, say, the festival site, you'll see the full 11. If it worked, it would be a good way to make sure there's always real people near to you, rather than you feeling like you never see any other real people, but it's clearly fucked right now. That's why you get invisible players, people randomly disappearing etc.

[Steve]

Ah yeah............

😁

I got a little lucky. I picked up 2 car drops at the start of the match, taking me to a level 2, then level 3 car, won a head to head that took me to level 4, then I found a car drop that took me straight to level 9. I won one more head to head to take me to the max of level 10.

When the final showdown started, there was only 3 of us left. 2 of us in level 10 cars and 1 in a level 9, but the other 2 players didn't look at the mini-map to get an idea of where the finish line would be, so they were quite a bit behind me when the showdown began and I managed to take the win easily as I didn't make any silly mistakes.

[Steve]

Patch notes for the hotfix released earlier today: -

FH5 Release Notes: November 17th, 2021 (CU3 &CU4) – Forza Support (forzamotorsport.net)

They've fixed a pretty decent amount of stuff and sorted out most of the glitches and exploits mentioned above in this thread. I'm finding the online connectivity to be a lot more stable now. Not perfect, but WAY better than it was.

There's server maintenance tomorrow morning at 10AM that should improve things further.

[Steve]

I'm loving the seasons in this game so far.

Seasons in FH4 were cool, but a lot of people hated winter cos the ground was covered in snow and ice. There also wasn't a huge amount of variability when it comes to weather.

As FH5 is set in Mexico, spring, summer, autumn, and winter translate to hot, wet, storm, and dry seasons. It's just ticked over into autumn, so storm season, and some of the weather effects are great. I love driving around in a storm, with rain and lightning. It looks so good!

[Steve]

The achievement for completing round 3 in all 5 Horizon Arcade themes is a PITA! I just need to complete the Air theme to do it, but either no players turn up or it's buggy and doesn't work properly.

I'm close to the 1,000/1,000 though!