My BF told me you should stick with games from Sony and on play station. He said you never complain about anything on PS or from Sony so it must be just PC and MS games that give you problems all the time.

He said you can never enjoy a game on PC even more so if its from MS such as flight sim, he said even when you love that game you still have to complain about it all the time.

He says he never sees you complaining about your downfalls or pitfalls with Sony games only when it comes to MS and PC and its even if you really like them games why is that?.

Maybe you should tell your BF to check his own bias as I critique all around regardless of platform.

Perhaps your BF missed my complaints about the AI stupidity in Tlou2 which I even made a video of


Or my continuous complaints about GT Sport's matchmaking and penalty system. Here one of the many 'tongue in cheek' digs at the penalty system

It's only gotten worse after that sadly. No more penalties, chaos in races

Perhaps your BF needs to realize critique isn't the same as complaining. Especially the games I love, like FS2020, are the ones I would like to improve. Hence showing the flaws and talking about the problems (on the official forums, and leaving bug reports at zendesk), voting on issues to get them noticed and improved. As well as figuring out workarounds with others.

If I didn't enjoy FS2020, would I have spend 4000 hours on it and write the biggest most detailed travel blog about it on the official forums
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/exploring-the-world-in-the-beechcraft-bonanza/266981
And if you read that, you'll notice I don't sugar coat the bugs, but I do try to put the sim in its best light, best screenshots possible, and updates as things got added and fixed.

So maybe tell your BF to check his bias. There are no such thing as perfect games. The more passionate I am about a genre (racing is my biggest passion), the more critical I am about the games. Because I want them to improve, not slack off, which is what the Forza Horizon Series is starting to do imo.

I 'finished' the game, or rather don't feel like playing any more of it. 17+ hours driving time was my limit with FH5, 3 hour less than FH4.

I made it to level 79 (whatever that means), completed all road, street and dirt races, half of the cross country (grew bored of that rather quickly). The long races were nice, yet nothing really stood out as bad or excellent. No favorites, nothing to dislike either.

The good points:
- Amazing graphics, crash into a tree and you'll sit there staring at the sunlight bouncing off the highly detailed tree bark.
- Great weather effects (which were sadly very much underused during my play time)
- Great map with nicely varied locations, a joy to explore.
- Great sound, as @ZyroXZ2 said, turn off the radio to fully enjoy the car audio soundscape.
- Sense of speed is fully there, when you go fast, it feels like you're going fast.

The bad points:
- Handling is a bit over easy as well as twitchy. With twitchy I mean, I could not get it to gently steer around a high speed corner. I tried different settings for sensitivity but a small movement of the analog stick already has a big reaction. Thus I ended up 'tap' 'tap' 'tapping' along high speed bends, instead of a steady steering input.
- AI or lack of I in AI. They break the laws of physics, stick to their path, don't really interact with you, it's the worst yet in the series.
- Still no rear view mirror in bumper cam (and others). You need one for racing, ridiculous it's still not there.
- No traffic on the PC. The odd thing is when I lost my internet connection, traffic suddenly appeared everywhere, including cars to race. Then as my internet came back, the map was empty again.
- Stability issues, even though it runs much better from SSD, I still get occasional 1 second long freezes. Not often, maybe related to server communication as the game also froze for a bit when I lost my connection.

As a racing game I would give it a 6, there's very little draw to keep going based on the racing.
As an open world driving game an 8 in its current state, 9 if the traffic and connectivity issues are fixed.
So for now, overall a 7 (I would score FH1 8, FH2 9, skipped FH3, FH4 8 FH5 7) FH2 is still my favorite in the series.

Playing FH5 made me long for a new PGR for street racing. A new DriveClub for racing hyper cars over rural roads. A new Burnout for arcade madness with actual damage. A new Motorstorm for off-road mayhem. A new Rallisport Challenge for arcade dirt road racing on long tracks. FH5 gives you a bit of all that, but doesn't really excel at anything. FH5 is like an all you can eat buffet. There's nothing particularly excellent, but you won't leave hungry.

Before I uninstall and move on, I'm gonna do the The Colossus one more time with some nice beats on and the engine sounds turned up!

Well, the only semi valid point you made in this whole statement is that Burnout games have actual damage but comparing Horizon to Burnout is like comparing apples to oranges all the cars in Burnout games are fictional and have zero restrictions on them when it comes to how much they can get damaged.  Pretty much all the cars in Horizon games are based on real cars and the few that are not still are bases on cars from other games and have licenses attached to them which also restricts how much they can get damaged.  At least you admitted that you actually didn't finish FH5 or FH4 and more than likely you also didn't play FH1 and FH2 enough to actually give them valid review scores.

That's the definition of bloatware lol. And yep, all the repetitive side quests are bloat just to make the game longer. All the clothing options do slow down loading, use more memory and more disk space. Bloat.

Anyway it's not that much in actual size (360MB) but it is tons of small files, the bane of HDD usage. I guess the skies aren't dynamic as there is a 10.5 GB directory with HDR skies. 14.3 GB in cars, 2.8 GB in cinematics, the map is by far the largest at 53GB, the important stuff :)

It's a fun driving game now it doesn't take minutes to load after every race. A class handles the best imo, S class feels very off, too twitchy / arcady and the AI doesn't know what to do with the fastest cars. The AI isn't really racing anyway, just moving cars along a path. They are very much on rails, but I'm used to racing real humans so any AI is going to feel poor. They could pay a bit more attention to where you are though, but oh well. Dirt roads feel very satisfying to slide around, I actually like them more than the paved roads in FH5.

Traffic is a mystery. I completed all the road racing events, now on to street racing and in those races there is NPC traffic to avoid. But only in the races. Back on the open map there is no one, nothing. I very rarely see another player which is usually a stopped ghosted car (I guess in the menus). I only saw a driving human twice last night. Very pretty open world yet completely empty (bar the odd animal and spectators here and there). It must be a bug as other people do get traffic on the map, very weird.

Stuff unlocks fast and you indeed don't need to do the story missions, just the expeditions to unlock the next type of races. I wonder where the speed cameras are though? I only have one speed camera, one speed trap, one danger sign etc on the map. The speed traps are fun challenges. In FH4 more would pop up after you did them, yet I still only have the one speed trap from the start.

Btw do you get to fly a plane? It's listed as Racing & flying in the store!
(Oh I guess that's the category MS puts it under, only one flying game, had to go somewhere lol)

I love how each post i read in your voice now Zyro :)

I 'finished' the game, or rather don't feel like playing any more of it. 17+ hours driving time was my limit with FH5, 3 hour less than FH4.

I made it to level 79 (whatever that means), completed all road, street and dirt races, half of the cross country (grew bored of that rather quickly). The long races were nice, yet nothing really stood out as bad or excellent. No favorites, nothing to dislike either.

The good points:
- Amazing graphics, crash into a tree and you'll sit there staring at the sunlight bouncing off the highly detailed tree bark.
- Great weather effects (which were sadly very much underused during my play time)
- Great map with nicely varied locations, a joy to explore.
- Great sound, as @ZyroXZ2 said, turn off the radio to fully enjoy the car audio soundscape.
- Sense of speed is fully there, when you go fast, it feels like you're going fast.

The bad points:
- Handling is a bit over easy as well as twitchy. With twitchy I mean, I could not get it to gently steer around a high speed corner. I tried different settings for sensitivity but a small movement of the analog stick already has a big reaction. Thus I ended up 'tap' 'tap' 'tapping' along high speed bends, instead of a steady steering input.
- AI or lack of I in AI. They break the laws of physics, stick to their path, don't really interact with you, it's the worst yet in the series.
- Still no rear view mirror in bumper cam (and others). You need one for racing, ridiculous it's still not there.
- No traffic on the PC. The odd thing is when I lost my internet connection, traffic suddenly appeared everywhere, including cars to race. Then as my internet came back, the map was empty again.
- Stability issues, even though it runs much better from SSD, I still get occasional 1 second long freezes. Not often, maybe related to server communication as the game also froze for a bit when I lost my connection.

As a racing game I would give it a 6, there's very little draw to keep going based on the racing.
As an open world driving game an 8 in its current state, 9 if the traffic and connectivity issues are fixed.
So for now, overall a 7 (I would score FH1 8, FH2 9, skipped FH3, FH4 8 FH5 7) FH2 is still my favorite in the series.

Playing FH5 made me long for a new PGR for street racing. A new DriveClub for racing hyper cars over rural roads. A new Burnout for arcade madness with actual damage. A new Motorstorm for off-road mayhem. A new Rallisport Challenge for arcade dirt road racing on long tracks. FH5 gives you a bit of all that, but doesn't really excel at anything. FH5 is like an all you can eat buffet. There's nothing particularly excellent, but you won't leave hungry.

Before I uninstall and move on, I'm gonna do the The Colossus one more time with some nice beats on and the engine sounds turned up!

Seeing as how I race 90% of the time in cockpit view, there's a rearview and oftentimes sideview mirror to use lol... But you CAN always just flick the right analog stick backwards to actually "look" back.

Also, I find "simulation" steering to always be far better in the settings.  I agree that they've made the handling too arcade, but if you change it to "simulation", it might be easier to handle turns.  I also turn off all handling aids, too, and I NORMALLY play with a steering wheel setup (this is actually my first Horizon PURELY on a controller!... In earlier entries, I'd use the controller to make navigating the open world easier, but then put the controller down and use the steering wheel once actual races starts), but part of the issue is that the analog stick will never properly mimic steering input.  This means the game HAS to actually modulate and account for your inputs because obviously full lock is very easy to achieve on an analog stick, thus any inputs from a stick are being greatly exacerbated if there wasn't any modulation.  I mean, imagine flicking the stick back and forth and realize just how hard it would be to full lock a real life steering wheel like that lol... In summary, anytime simulation physics are used (even if massively sped up in FH games), a controller is going to be relatively terrible.

Cockpit view leaves too little of the road on my 1080p 15" screen, plus it feels like I'm sitting in the back seat with all that car in view. When I'm driving I don't see the dashboard unless I look at it. Hence a full screen view works much better for me. A big virtual mirror at the top of the screen is far better than flicking the stick to look backwards. My peripheral vision keeps track of what happens behind me in GT Sport, drawing my attention to the mirror when a car approaches from behind or does something unexpected. Flicking the stick to look backwards means taking my eyes off the road in front.

A virtual rear view mirror doesn't need to be detailed as it's just there in my peripheral vision, but it does need to be there all the time to remain aware of what happens behind. So yeah sorely missed. Cockpit view works in VR, but on a screen it just reduces the view of the road.

Changing to simulation steering and turning assists off is the first thing I did. I haven't tried the other mode yet, heck maybe it's better lol.

Btw in GP Sport steering wheel users have the advantage in being able to flick in the other direction in chicanes faster than on a controller. There is 'lag' built in for the controller (which can be mitigated by dialing the sensitivity up, or rather the speed at which the steering wheel follows the analog stick movements) yet with a wheel you have 1:1 control. And with a wheel you can set how far you need to rotate the wheel for full lock, not like a real car where you have to turn quite a bit to go from one extreme to the other.

What I don't get from Forza Horizon is that in GT Sport I can perfectly take parabolica (Monza) at any speed with precise control of the analog stick and have much better control when overtaking. In FH5 there doesn't seem to be a way to finely control long sweeping corners or getting in tight gaps between competing cars. I end up moving the stick a bit and back to center, repeat, for long sweeping corners. I use a wired 360 controller, maybe it's just too old. Or maybe PD found the magic formula for controllers...

Anyway GT Sport is a cesspool online nowadays after PD abandoned the penalty system. I haven't been able to get one race this week without idiots trying to ruin it by ramming, cheating and creating accidents. It went from a 9 to a 5 for me, hence trying out other racers. At least the AI keeps up with you in FH5, unfortunately they do that by dive bombing and blocking, all the things that I hate from online drivers in GT Sport.

If anyone can make race AI that races by the rules, sign me up.
https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/the-rules-of-racing/
Sadly PD can't even make a penalty system that enforces the rules online, they kept getting it wrong and gave up.

Anyways racing is on hold for a bit, Halo Infinite is quite nice!

Coming from GT, I can tell you that you're comparing the wrong games.  Horizon is the "arcade" racer, Motorsport is the "sim" racer.  Try Forza Motorsport 7 (FM7) if you want a better comparison to GT.

Having said that, I think you might have been onto something: I didn't know you were using an older X360 controller.  There have been improvements in analog precision with newer controllers, I would recommend getting a new Xbox controller.  Granted, per above, an analog stick never really meets the correct precision of a steering wheel, and the only reason a corner will feel "smooth" in a sim racing aspect with a controller is because the game is "assisting" you whether you realize it or not.  It's impossible to map the wheel 1:1 with the stick and not end up in the ditch 50% of the time.  In FACT, if you WANT to experience what happens when you do that, I believe Project CARS or something did 1:1 with the analog stick (so that you were literally turning the wheel the same amount your analog stick was getting pushed with full lock being all the way), and it's nigh impossible to do well.

GT, FM, FH, etc. in which they expect the core of their playerbase to be on controllers have modulation and assistance on the analog stick because it's an absolute must.  This is why GT has that "lag": it's there on purpose to absorb rapid movement or you'd be whipping that "steering wheel" like a madman if it gets mapped 1:1 or doesn't assist you in some form or another.  It's why I duly laugh when people start getting all serious with sim racers on a controller lol

After Finishing Halo Infinite (was great) I'm now back to FH4. It's spring season and the handling is still superior to FH5 imo. Maybe it's the car (mainly driving the Corvette in FH4) but it feels more active, less forgiving and therefore more rewarding to stay on the road. The AI is also a bit more believable. (Can't keep a steady shallow curve in FH4 either though with the analog stick)

Only odd thing about FH4 is, you can't turn the music off completely. There's still music between races, got to put my own music up louder lol.

I don't know what's up with PSN lately. I lost nearly 5K DR today trying to race, getting disconnected race after race. Then tried lobby racing with friends, got stuck in place, then later got booted and only kept getting errors trying to connect to the lobby server. Messaging didn't work, party just endless churning psn logo. The holidays are coming and the psn hamsters are tired :(

FH4 also disconnected once but restored quickly, now I have tons of drivatars and NPC traffic on the roads. It's like the first Burnout, dodging heavy traffic. This is fun. The game can't keep up with the near miss notifications :)