Forza Horizon 3

Having now had my Xbox One for well over a year now I truly don't believe that the Halo or Gears of War series are the system's best exclusives -- or "killer apps" as they're sometimes referred to. 

Given how stellar both of those series are, that's a mighty big statement to be making, especially given how impressive Gears of War 4 (review coming soon!) is. 

No, no. I firmly believe that the franchise that owns the top crown of "Best Xbox Exclusive" is 100% the Forza series, specifically the Horizon installments. Especially when you consider the downfall of the Gran Turismo series and the failed launch of PlayStation's other exclusive, Driveclub, Forza has quickly and dominantly emerged as the champion of the racing genre in so many different ways. That's not a dig against PlayStation; keep in mind I've been a PS lover since the PS2 era. It's just not an area that they excel in anymore from an exclusive perspective. 

Forza Horizon 3 continues, and dare I say, perfects the racing genre to be one of those games you know you'll remember for a long time. I've always been a fan of the racing genre from the days of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 (countless hours spent there!), the insanely intense and addicting Burnout days, Gran Turismo's prime, and the most recent reboots of Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted. A good racing game is merely that: good. But a great racing game can really be something that you lose yourself in. Something where "just one more thing" becomes common place as you strive to collect that final car or beat that hard track time. 

Jet looking car vs. actual jet. Nicely done Forza

Just drivin my Audi on the beach. NBD!

The newest Xbox exclusive takes notes from all of these games, except maybe Burnout as that's a different beast all together, and crafts a game that, right off the bat, you can tell is going to be something special. In a year that has been outlandishly strong for games already (and we're not even through the Fall/Winter season yet), Forza feels, plays, and looks like a classic. It's the stuff that car enthusiast's dreams are made of. 

In my eyes, Forza Horizon 3 has a secret weapon: its setting. I love Australia and the land down under. Given our current terrible election choices, I half want to move there permanently and some of you may know that I studied abroad there for 6 months. Long story short, it's an amazing country and once I found out it was this third iteration's setting, I about near lost my damn mind. As if it wasn't already, it became a Day 1 purchase for me. Other than skipping Sydney all together as a part of the map (truly about the only odd creative decision in the game) the land of Australia is well represented here and its clear that the developers enjoyed the hell out of their time visiting and dealing with the landscape. There are fancy wineries and fields to breeze through, coastal cities to navigate downtown, a lush rainforest area, oceanfront driving that will take your breath away, and the open awesomeness that is the Outback. Each place of the map feels distinct and excited, but they're also blended together seamlessly. The map is not outrageously large, but it doesn't really need to be when it packs in so much greatness. There are hidden jumps, "Places of Beauty" that teach you a little something about Australia, and fun locations that can often be places that you can rack up the skill points. I'm leaving a whole paragraph for the graphics, but suffice it to say that Australia has never looked better in a game and the shifting weather patterns and day-night cycles truly amazes. Each festival location that you build also has their own personality, both at day and night. For example, the Outback location features air balloons during the day but at night it shifts to a major dance party with a laser/light show that you can see for miles away. Throw in some jaw-dropping iconic locations (i.e. the Twelve Apostles) and this is a memorable, well organized map that is truly one of the game's biggest strengths. 

Quite a joy to purchase and upgrade this
one in game; this is the upgraded version
of my real life car!

But what's a map if the game mechanics and driving aren't good? Truly, this seems to be the downfall of many racing games -- their driving is too realistic, their driving is too arcade-like, it feels like you're driving on ice or porridge, etc. With Forza, it's safe to say that none of these are the issue and, as someone who's played a lot of racing games, the developers have landed on very nearly the perfect combination of realistic and arcade racing. Forza Horizon takes some skill, especially if you modify the many difficulty settings, but it's also a game where you can get in a dune buggy and catch completely ludicrous air in the Outback. If the game is ever getting too frustrating its easily mitigated by just driving around at one's leisure and you'll surely have a blast. I do find that the spikes of difficulty between the overall difficulties are a bit steep though. I often raced on "Average" with a few help features turned off in order to gather more XP. But the times I'd raise the bar to "Above Average" (dictates the competency of the AI), I'd rarely win, much less place in the Top 3. I'm not the best Forza racer by any means, but I'm good enough to know that I should be able to hang tough with "Above Average" AI. The actual driving itself is superb however. Exotics handle great on streets with tight grip around corners and responsive speed adjustments, but struggle somewhat on more rugged terrain. Meanwhile, some of the buggies, including an amazing cameo performance by Halo's Warthog, are beasts on terrain but feel like they're crawling on open roads. Each class has its trade-offs but they're all a blast to drive and feel distinctively different. And if you're just naturally bad at racing games or just happen to f**k up at some point, the much appreciated rewind feature is back so that you're never that mad, though it does erase any skill points you've banked so it's not completely void of punishment. 

The Ford GT is sooooo hipster...

Forza is also typically the king of the hill when it comes to car choice as well. Whereas other games *cough Gran Turismo cough cough* may have 1000+ cars that include 500+ variations of Nissans (gag!), Forza boasts a smaller, but much more diverse roster. Probably most awesome cars from the last several decades that you can think of are here and the "filler" cars that you use before the tru exotics are also strong picks, making the slog to the elite vehicles much more bearable. I was a particular fan of how many Ferraris there were, but I also enjoyed the random cars that got added as they're a fun treat and often tons of fun to drive. I'm fairly up to date on cars and I don't think there was a single time that I wondered if a car was included and it wasn't. Moreover, car prices, at least based on how fast you accrue credits, are reasonably priced. There are some super expensive ones, but they're certainly not unobtainable. There's a new (?) auction system as well that allows you to sell your digital car to the highest bidder or buy a car for a sweet deal. I rarely sold my own -- I became a bit of a collector -- but I know that I locked down some sick cars for some even sicker deals. I think my only disappointment with the roster comes with the "Barn Finds" that are scattered throughout the world. Partaking in the barn finds are fun, but often you're left puzzled as to why a particular "mythical" car was so important for you to find/refurbish. The Forza host/commentator tries to explain how important the car is to automotive/Australian history (most of the Barn Finds) are Holdens for example, but I still had trouble being excited that I now had basically a station wagon with a class rating of D in my garage. I remember the same thing happened in Horizon 2 so I think that going forward the Forza team should focus on this. Make barns harder to find, sure, but put some really sweet rewards in there to make them a little more tantalizing.

The things I would do to actually own this car.

There's also the issue of content, and again, as you could probably guess, Forza Horizon 3 delivers in spades here too. There is no main game, per say -- you are assigned four different event locations that you can upgrade five times each. There are showcase events, exciting matches where you race other vehicles than cars (some better than others) and completing all five of these doesn't take long. If you consider that the main "story" then this is a relatively short game, but once I was done with those, I still easily had over 40-50 hours of content left, if not more. The variety of things to do is staggering from the aforementioned barn finds, danger jumps, drift zones, bucket list items, head-to-head matches, championship races, exhibition races, and just general Tom-foolery. About the only aspect that doesn't measure up is the night "street" races. This element feels so drastically out of place in the game that you wonder who made that creative decision (probably the same person who decided to leave Sydney out of the map). They're given some gravitas, if you will, as they're explained to you as non-sanctioned by the Forza committee, leaving the impression that these are going to be some drastically different races. They're not. They're simply races that occur at night and instead of flags marking your path, they have smoke. They're still fun, as it's just more races to compete in, but the attempt at adding some illegal aspect to the story feels unnecessary and a bit tacky. Factor in the insane amount of connectivity and stat tracking into all of this and you have a game that keeps you competitive and chasing just "one more" thing for hours upon hours. It actively tells you a plethora of stats, some you wouldn't even think could be measured, and then holds them up against your friends as you play. 

Oh Australia. How I miss thee...

Upon all of these core aspects to the game, Forza becomes a technical powerhouse that is immediately one of the more impressive games to show off within your game catalog. Graphically it's practically unrivaled, especially when things are in motion. All the varied environments are distinctly gorgeous with special attention being paid to each one. Oceans have moving whitecaps, jungle foliage gets denser or sparser depending where you are, and Outback dust swirls with realism. The cars themselves are works of art -- the development team able to capture every last detail with stunning clarity. I don't often drive in cockpit mode, but for every new car I'd cycle through and check out the cockpit detail as they're often nearly as impressive as the exterior styling of the cars. Sound is just as impressive with engines and car effects (i.e. screeching tires) sounding boisterous and loud, just the way they should be. Engines have different purrs and screams that are all just as sexy as the vehicles they're coming from. My only complaint is that the game music is fairly unremarkable and dated and the various radio station setlists are decently short so you'll be hearing the same song quite a bit. There's the option to listen to any Groove playlists you may have. I'm guessing you immediately are asking "What's Groove?" which shows how bad of an idea this potentially genius idea was. Groove is Microsoft's soon-to-be-failed music streaming service and I can unfortunately only pretend to imagine how awesome Forza with Spotify connectivity could have been. You know? The music streaming program with actual subscribers?

Welcome to the Festival

As is the case with most videogame reviews, especially for the great ones, I could continue, but I'll cut myself off. I believe I covered most of the biggest bullet points as to why Forza Horizon 3 is a game you can't miss. If you're a driving game aficionado, I'd even argue it's worth an Xbox One for as I do firmly believe its the system's best exclusive, not to mention its most consistent. This third iteration of the wildly joyous Horizon side of the franchise is packed full of things to do, painfully gorgeous cars to drive, fantastic mechanics, and it's all happening in the Land Down Under. 

Get to the Festival, friends. It's a roaring good time. 

CONS:

• The decision to not include Syndey was a really, really bad one. I painfully wanted to have a photo shoot in front of the Opera House...
• Significant difficulty spikes between AI "classes"
• Barn finds continue to be rather lame cars that you're not likely to drive
• Odd tonal shifts for "street racing" especially considering when it doesn't change the mechanics of the game at all
• Mediocre music playlists and a HUGE swing and a miss with Groove connectivity. Spotify would have been the game changer they were looking for 

PROS:

• Fantastic feel for driving -- it's the perfect combination of arcade and simulation. You have to be skilled to compete, but it's not so intricate or tedious that it becomes boring. Racing on the streets downtown is just as fun as hitting the hills of wine country or the dust in the Outback
• I may be biased, but this is one of the best open world driving maps ever created. It's got great balance/variety and areas that will take your breath away. It's icing on the cake that it just happens to be called "Australia"
• Really fun and "driving" (pun intended) ways of tracking growth/skill level. There's XP, Credits, Skill Points, and Horizon Fan count. It's a lot, sure, but it consistently makes you feel like you're accomplishing
• Stellar list of cars. I'd even go so far as to say this is the best, most complete list I've ever seen in a racing game. It's got a little bit of everything, but I also never found a car I wanted that didn't make the cut
• Prices on cars are reasonable and achievable
• Auctioning system is addicting but also really rewarding, making it easier to get a must-have car for a discount
•  There's an enormous amount of content here, a lot of it I didn't even cover. It's constantly pushing you to do just a few more things each time you play and the connectivity to where your friends are at is addicting as ever
• Seamless integration of many different user interface facets. Navigating the plethora of menus is easy to do and intuitive
• Photo mode for the win!
• Halo Warthog for the win!
• Some of the best graphics you're ever likely to see. The vehicles themselves and the environments are all jaw-dropping. Car interiors too
• Fantastic sound design that is loud and proud. You'll be waking the neighbors
• Perhaps most importantly, it's just a s**t ton of fun. Driving in Australia is a blast. Buying and testing out a new car is a delight. And it's a game that, once you start playing, is very hard to put down. A true exclusive treasure in the Xbox One's library

Rath's Review Score | 10/10 -- Instant Classic