Forza Horizon 5

Developers : Playground Games

Publishers : Xbox Game studios, Bextor Studios

Platforms : Xbox, PC

So racing games, I've created my thing. And I've just been counting down the days waiting for this game to release and I finally to buy the game and download it. And I played a good several hours of the game and unfortunately, it's just kind of disappointing and not quite up to my standards. Let me explain. So when you first begin the game, you're forced to watch all of the stupid cutscenes of some big airplane flying overhead and dropping cars out from its cargo thing imagine out of his backside and and parachuting down to the ground. And although this looks kind of cool at first, it gets a bit tiresome and you can't skip any of these cutscenes or these cutscenes of you arriving in Mexico at the Forza racing events. They go on the nearly half an hour. You can't skip any of the cutscenes you go watch all these cringy characters talking to each other.

         I don't even know why they bother with all these characters and dialogue and trying to set up like a backstory for a racing game. I just want to race the guy honestly couldn't care less about the story and the backdrop and the setting and the characters and why we're here in Mexico and then there's also this character creation menu which is really pointless yes to choose from the most ugliest character models I have ever seen in the video game. I just could not make a cute looking female out all the hairstyles are dumb. And for some reason you can choose prosthetic limbs as well. Really, why does it matter what my character looks like? When I'm supposed to be inside of a car 99% of the time, you can't even see the character because the camera angles from behind the car or inside of the car. It really doesn't matter what your character looks like, but for some reason, they felt the need to waste your time with making you create the character and then you can also choose the character's pronouns he or her day or them is so cringe so after you finish making your character which is complete waste of time you finally get back into the car and you can start doing some driving again. And basically the concept of the game is supposed to be like an open world online racing game and it has a big map and on the map there's different objectives you can try to fit any drive towards the objectives and then you get some kind of mission usually involves just driving from point A to point B. While some characters talk in the background and the characters in the background will start talking and give you some information on the background of why you're doing this mission. 

        Some story which is so stupid just can't they just keep it to racing and forget all this story building kind of stuff. It seems so unnecessary. And when you're driving in the open world, you'll see other players driving around too. They have Gamer tags hovering above the cars and you would think Oh look, there's other players driving around too. And I'm not sure if they're actually really other players, because the way they drive is very robotic, and it looks just like AI. They all drive at the same speed. They're very easy to overtake, and they don't really take any effort to avoid you if you're about to crash into them head on. It seems like the game is trying to trick you into thinking or feeling or believing that there's like a world full of other gamers you're driving along with and it just feels kind of cheap.

        To be honest I don't know why they felt the need to try and pull off this open world gimmick thing with other players driving around you when they didn't even implement it properly and genuinely just it feels like they're trying to trick you with bots and it doesn't feel fun at all. Okay, so let's get into the meat of the game the actual driving and racing. Is it fun? Well, no not really. Compared to Mario Kart eight. The drifting and the handling of the cars is very clunky and unresponsive and just annoying. And one of the main features of the Forza racing series is the drifting drifting is supposed to be like one of the very hard skills to be able to master in the game, and it just feels really annoying to pull off. It's very difficult to keep the car under control and stop it from swerving uncontrollably in Mario Kart eight the drifting just feels way better, way more satisfying, and it's just easier the handling of the cars just feels extremely frustrating. I don't know if this is actually what cars feel like in real life because I don't drive a car, but it just feels like the roads are very slippery and you're constantly slipping and sliding around. And the steering is so bad. It's very hard to turn around corners. The problem was I just didn't feel like I was having fun driving these cars. I felt annoyed I felt irritated. My stupid car kept swerving off the road into obstacles and the actual driving mechanics are very basic. 

            Basically you have a brake and a drift button and the entire game you just holding down the W button in America eight is way more action packed. You've got all the boosts you get the boosted drifts, your other game items and the weapons and the missiles and the traps you can launch and use against other players in force of five you've got nothing all you can do is break and accelerate. It just feels like the entire game involves holding down the W button and facet has barely anything to the gameplay is so basic and bare bones. I felt bored straightaway. And that brings me to the controls in the game. The controls in the game have very uncomfortable now maybe if the game was designed to be played with one of those fancy steering wheels and the pedals and the light professional gamer setup which I do not have. You know I'm a PC gamer. I don't have these gaming controllers or console controllers or joysticks or whatever. I play purely with mouse and keyboard. And number one, the mouse is completely not used in the game apart from swiveling the camera all the way round which is pointless. So you don't even need to touch the mouse during the game. You got to use your W A S D keys to accelerate w is to go forwards. S is to break and you turn left and right with the A and D buttons and then you got the spacebar but it's drifts. So you got your left hand on the W A S D and then you got your right hand on the spacebar and it just feels really uncomfortable. The control system in GTA five for the driving is so much better you just use W to accelerate and then you can use the mouse to control the steering and the camera that's such a much more convenient and better way of controlling a vehicle.