![]() While you can still tackle events in your own time and order (to an extent), it takes several hours before the map looks anywhere near as full as FH5’s does after 20 minutes. First, you must enter the festival and then strive to work your way up the tiers of wristbands. This carries over into the structure of the game. There’s still the hub over at Race Central, with crowds of people, light shows and fireworks going off, but it feels like the inaugural year of what is now a gargantuan event on the racing calendar. No, I don’t mean soft and fluffy – I mean the festival itself feels smaller and comparatively low key, and the outposts are much more diminutive. What is really cute is the way the Horizon festival itself is fledgling. I’m not saying there’s no place for that – I love a virtual holiday as much as the next person – but this offers a genuine racing challenge. This really does feel like an old-school racing game in that respect, favouring close contact, spectacle-rich racing over glossy, popcorn gaming. It’s pretty amazing just how bashed up the licensed vehicles can get, with windows that smash out and fenders that fall off onto the track. What’s also undeniably better in this original game is the damage model, which is more pronounced and violent in its impacts than the versions that followed. I’ve had far better, more exciting and challenging races this week than in many modern racing games from the past five years and I do put it down to old-fashioned, no-nonsense AI design. In this game, the AI drivers just have simple names like ‘Ray’, and race very convincingly. This tighter racing feel is exacerbated by the absence of the ‘Drivatar’ system, which is still finicky in the 5th instalment, sometimes seeing the leader pull away from the pack, rarely to be seen again. This makes for a much tighter racing experience than in modern iterations, and one that relies much more on car control than geographical awareness. The tracks mostly have clearly defined limits, and your skill at manoeuvring between the apices is tested with no mercy. You can’t just plough through scenery to maintain the shortest route between checkpoints, though there are off-road areas that can be exploited if you’re brave. The key difference between the first Forza Horizon game and its sequels is the solid nature of its walls and most fences. Forza Horizon remains the only old Forza game playable on new machines, but at least it’s a good one. It’s nothing miraculous, but it does look nice if a little high in the contrast department as Forza games were around this time. I should just note that I’m playing it on an Xbox Series X, which does have some graphical improvements over the original Xbox 360 release thanks to Microsoft’s backwards compatibility program. And you know what? Surprisingly, it really is.
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