IGN: 9.0
What I will say, however, is that Forza Horizon and Playground Games have rewritten the rules of the road. Thing is, Forza Horizon is exactly the type of game we’ve been trained not to expect. We’ve been conditioned to accept concessions. Increased scope for lesser quality visuals. Technical prowess for reduced content. We deal with Test Drive Unlimited 2’s visual shortcomings because it’s so enormous. We take the likes of the technically robust DiRT Showdown and make do with all the track recycling. None of this is the case with Forza Horizon. I don’t know how a game of this size, with everything going on, can look this good and still support a rewind utility, fully functioning car interiors and a full day/night cycle. I don’t know how the frame rate for this enormous game remains resolutely locked, because whether you’re racing under headlights or screaming down the freeway at over 400 kilometres per hour it never, ever dips. It might as well be witchcraft. I don’t know how it does it. It just does.
In fact, most everything about Forza Horizon looks improbably good. The fingers of sunlight reaching out towards you at dusk. The scattered leaf litter and gravel being kicked up in the wake of speeding vehicles. The bustle of the Horizon Festival itself and the way the shadows of the always-rotating amusement rides dance across your dashboard. It’s a world brimming with detail everywhere you look, from the leafy country lanes to the ribbons of asphalt lining dusty red canyons. It’s devastatingly gorgeous. It’s like Emma Stone playing bass guitar in her underpants.
It looks just as fantastic at night, too, which comes around every half hour or so. It’s especially cool to note the distant soft glow of the Horizon Festival, fireworks bursting overhead, as you approach under darkness from afar.
The cars are equally impressive. The high bar set by Forza Motorsport 4 has been maintained and, in some ways, surpassed. With a full day/night cycle now in effect Forza Horizon’s cars feature illuminated, working dials in cabin view. Pop up and hideaway headlamps are fully animated too, like those featured on, say, a BMW M1 or a ’69 Charger. As the sun sets your headlights will automatically emerge from the hood or from behind the retracting grille.
