Forza Horizon 5 Review! You might assume I favor the game...

[ZyroXZ2]

kirby007 said:

Your vid made me realise i haven't been customizing the inside of my cars, also good score

Sadly, you can't customize the inside that probably only 1% of people look at because they drive in cockpit mode like me

kirby007 said:

ye the progression of the story is locked behind non story races/events

SvennoJ said:

Yes, more have shown up now. It's still hard to find the races. I accidentally entered an online tournament and cancelled again, then some user created race (was crap). Just the pure blue race icons I'm looking for. The problem with the map filter is there's no way (that I know) to just see the new events for selected categories. Select NEW and everything NEW shows up. Only select races and the old ones stay on the map. I did already turned all the other stuff off, Forza link, Anna, all notifications etc. It's a lot of work to just do some offline racing!

FH5 certainly has tons to do. I configured it to what I want out of it turning this all off: Head to head requests, Anna, Converible HUD, Forza Link, Names over cars, Ghosts, Skills, Notifications, Online Even Notifications, Horizon Arcade Notifications, Convoy Invite Notifications, Accolade Notifications, Horizon Promo Icon, Lens Effects, Radio Volume, GPS Volume, GPS Voice, Radio DJ, Horns, Microphone, Motion Blur, Accolades, Festival sites, Seasonal Events, Seasonal PR Stunts, Seasonal Collectibles, Showcases & Expeditions, Speed traps, Speed Zones, Danger Signs, Drift Zones, Trailblazers, Bonus Boards, Barn Finds, Stories, Landmarks, Houses, Eventlab Events, Multiplayer Events, Online Friends, All Online Players.

I changed the steering linearity (too sensitive at speed), deadzones (default too big) and fov to get a better experience. I race in bumper cam and the default FOV turns all the cars into stretch limos when overtaking, FOV 50 works better. The cars are still stretched yet any lower makes it look zoomed in. I still need to tweak the settings better, push the stick a little and the car veers off the road. Deadzone 0, Steering linearity 30 is working better.

So after reading the thread a bit, yes: it can be daunting with how much stuff FH5 shows you that you can do.  The good news is that most of it is optional: nothing is really "locked" behind anything other than your rank.  You can pretty much do anything and rank up (speed zones, barn finds, races, events, etc.), and as you rank up, you can then keep unlocking more Horizon tiers which then unlock more stuff to do.  For reference, I did barely any story races, and instead focused on the endgame races (aptly named things like Goliath, Colossus, Marathon, etc.) because it's always been the endgame races that are intense, long races that take you across massive sections of the map.  For reference the Goliath is a 13 minute race

In fact, I didn't even do story races until after I had already completed all the showcases and endgame races.  The way the game is, it's sort of like BotW: as long as you're doing something, you'll progress.  As you progress, you have more to do.  You actually have all the cars you need to do literally everything right from the get-go.  How you do it is up to you: you basically have options.  And yes, most user-generated races kinda suck, but it's nice to have the option to create races and send them to your friends.

That also goes along with your statement about "wtf happened to gaming", though: options.  Put a dress on a man?  Sure, if you want to.  I see some people get bent out of shape over these things, but the modern era is all about options and open-endedness.  If someone WANTS to cross-dress, then the option is there for them.  It doesn't hurt me, it doesn't make my car slower, it doesn't make my food taste worse.  People get so caught up in mixing their political/sociological beliefs together that it's like they forget that they're not the only people on the planet.  I don't take you to be that type, actually, but yea, it's all about options.  The option is there for a trans to have a male character with a female name/voice wearing a dress.  It doesn't hurt me, and until the day it does, I see nothing wrong with it.