official Forza Horizon 2

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

I have to agree with some of your points there. The intro was a little annoying, but let it slide. They're just trying to show the game off :p

 

I was annoyed with the race selection. I did the same thing as you and selected the race further away but was forced to race the first race that I went past. 

 

All of these were minor annoyances (and will only occur once with the final version, I guess they act as training) but the racing itself (and it is a racing game) was great fun. I loved drifting around during the rally stage, the bucket list is also a cool idea similar to something they had in FH1. 

 

From your first sentence it sounds like your more of a proper racer fan and not one of the arcade types which is exactly what this is, it could be why you didn't enjoy it. Good thing though, you've tried it now and you can cancel a pre-order if you had it  and wait for it to hit the bargain bins ;)

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

<snipped>

Those are all pretty legit beefs.

See I am the exact opposite, I come from really loving arcade type racers, to eventually learning to like the more simulation type racers, so I still no doubt enjoy a more forgiving arcade racer. And since that is all I really expected, I liked the demo overall (although as I said, it was not perfect by any means).

I can absolutely agree with the fact the cut scenes were dumb, in fact the whole "vibe" of the game was a little too dude-bro for my liking, from the whole party festival to the music, but I honestly usually ignore most of that stuff and just want to race.

So well see. I do not think this game is perfect by any means based on the demo, but it seemed pretty good. I do hope we can fast travel to races though in the full version.

[Skiver Veteran]

Those are all pretty legit beefs.

See I am the exact opposite, I come from really loving arcade type racers, to eventually learning to like the more simulation type racers, so I still no doubt enjoy a more forgiving arcade racer. And since that is all I really expected, I liked the demo overall (although as I said, it was not perfect by any means).

I can absolutely agree with the fact the cut scenes were dumb, in fact the whole "vibe" of the game was a little too dude-bro for my liking, from the whole party festival to the music, but I honestly usually ignore most of that stuff and just want to race.

So well see. I do not think this game is perfect by any means based on the demo, but it seemed pretty good. I do hope we can fast travel to races though in the full version.

 

If It's anything like FH1 you will be able to, but its one of those you need to find and unlock specific places to be able to fast travel to, so you can't go straight to an event. I have a feeling there was a cost to it also. 

 

I love the music, right up my street but the festival stuff is just un needed distraction.

 

I used to play games like NFS but I never really enjoyed them, discovered Forza and never looked back. Project C.A.R.S has me far more excited then!

[Hedon]

This is the best arcade racer since PGR (at least based on the demo). So I am looking forward to the full game. It's nearly perfect.

[Hedon]

The demo is good. Damn good. However after reading the thread on Neogaf I expected to play the best video game of this year, and I never felt like that while playing the demo.

I am no doubt keeping my preorder, and I know I am going to absolutely enjoy playing this game, but I do feel like people are hyping the game up way to much based on what I have read so far.

I cannot help but think that people are hyping it up since the One has not really had a true killer app yet. But we will see.

Again I need to reiterate, I am absolutely looking forward to the full retail release. Hell I am even thinking of picking up a new wheel. But I was not blown away like I expected to be.

Best racing game I have played since PGR2, and the best game I have played this gen (along side Destiny) on both consoles.

[Vandalsquad]

the best game I have played this gen on both consoles.

 

I'm down with this. After everything pushed out at launch. And every buster next gen game since (Watch Dogs, Titanfall, Destiny) this is good. Real good.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

As someone who's not currently a console owner, but who would buy one if the right titles come along, I'm going to have to read up about this game. I was excited for 'The Crew' as it's from the same guys who did Test Drive Unlimited (and damn I lost serious amounts of time on that purely because of the open world element) but The Crew is already looking like a washout for me with far too much focus on the stupid Fast & Furious story line, and not enough on actual physics / gameplay, etc that I really love.

 

Be interested to hear more feedback about this, especially the open world / multiplayer element as people get the demo and try this feature out more.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Game looks great. We've got two good racers coming out this fall, fans of the genre are spoiled. 

[Ironman273]

So is there going to be an official Neowin club?  Should an "official" thread be started about it?  I definitely want to join if/when we start a club.

[Hedon]

So is there going to be an official Neowin club?  Should an "official" thread be started about it?  I definitely want to join if/when we start a club.

We should. We can have 1000 people in the club.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Still have my game on pre-order so would be up for a club :)

[simonlang]

so far from playing the demo, this game looks and feels incredible.

 

thats exactly what i want to hear! :)

i did a calculation today, where the xbox one would cost me about 30 euros a month, makes it affordable for me. it all now depends on the first tests on forza horizon 2 but if it's anything close to what i remember from forza III and IV, i will have to get it.

[vcfan]

some review scores

 

polygon 7/10

EGM 7.5/10

joystiq 4/5
gameinformer 8.3/10

nationalpost 8.5/10
cvg 9/10
ign 9/10
venturebeat 9/10
eurogamer 9/10
crave 9.5/10

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Looking very promising!

[simonlang]

any plans on a neowin racing league by now? :)

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

any plans on a neowin racing league by now? :)

 

I think Ironman volunteered to set one up :P

[Ironman273]

I wouldn't mind but I know I probably don't have the time that others here do.  I'm also probably an average driver in the game.  If it doesn't matter who sets it up I'll be happy to start one since I'm already preloaded and ready to play on the 30th  :punk:
 
Here's a cool review:

Forza Horizon 2 Is As Close To Living Your Car Fantasy As You'll Get

 

Hi, I'm an autojournalist. Car companies fly me and my colleagues around the world to drive their fancy new cars. Sometimes on tracks but usually just on amazing b-roads in Spain or Italy or whatever. Forza Horizon 2 is about as close as you'll get to living our dream life, just without the deadlines, consequences, or cholesterol from all the free steak.

(Full Disclosure: We've done car packs with Forza in the past and I hope we'll do one for this game but I don't know if we will or not. These are editorial deals and money does not change hands. Because we're the biggest enthusiast car website in the world they also sometimes advertise here, but so does their competition. They gave me a free copy of the game to download and play, which I've done.)

 

The developers have stretched the capabilities of the Xbox One to build a massive world that's almost better than reality in how it looks and feels and reacts to your every action. It's as every bit as impressively detailed and hyperreal as Forza 5, like you've been wearing polarized sunglasses this whole time and have just removed them to see how green that green grass actually is. Or, in this case, how blue the blue of a vintage Alpine actually is or how pink the pink marble of a building in Nice is.

 

 

As the game opens you find yourself behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Huracan as a disembodied British voice tells you that you're one of the first to be driving this car, although he warns you that you shouldn't be too hard on the car as the fans will want to see it all cleaned up.

 

Then, suddenly, you're in the Italian Riviera and there's a McLaren P1 on your right and a LaFerrari ahead of you. As you twist down the two-lane highway there are fireworks in the distance. You're at the Horizon Festival. And then it dawns on you that you're not an autojournalist, you're something far worse. You're a Gumballer.

 

 
If you aren't aware, there are (generally) very wealthy people who buy expensive cars and drive across continents trying to impress upon everyone else how awesome they are and, if Forza Horizon 2 hits one perfect note of accuracy, it's in making it clear that some exotic car owners are relentless tools. The kind of people who could kill someone in their exotic car and run away.

 

Your "guide" through this entire affair is the insufferably douchey Brit from earlier and he fills every cut scene with the air of someone who was kicked out of multiple boarding schools for setting younger, more vulnerable children on fire.

 

 

Try to block him out and try to ignore the almost nonexistent plot (you're a white guy who likes cars!) and you can hope to approach what makes this game so enjoyable. If you focus hard on not focusing on any of that, you're just a human being in one of civilization's most scenic corners, driving the sh** out of some cars.

 

Then it's not autojournalism or Gumball. It's C'?tait un Rendezvous, which is all any of us really want to experience.

 

 

I like driving on the track and look forward to the opportunity when it presents itself, but it's always a bit of a bummer that the best driving games only put the best cars on racetracks. I want to drive a Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II and I want to drive it along the coast of the Mediterranean or up a mountain pass or through a vineyard, dammit!

 

If this game's developers learned anything from the previous game it's that, like Roy Rogers, we don't like being fenced in. The original Horizon takes place at a festival in Colorado and, despite the many miles of road, there were fences everywhere to keep you penned in and near the roads. No more. Not only can you cut across most of the map, it actively encourages you with a new type of race that sends you across fields, around abandoned churches, and into drainage ditches. Oh, and the golf course is back and even bigger!

 

 

Just with that they've built a game worth owning. As much fun as I had playing GTA V no one would say the driving dynamics are particularly great. Serviceable, maybe. While Horizon 2doesn't play like iRacing it's much closer to a sim experience than a pure arcade one, even if the moment-to-moment racing is more like Crazy Taxi. Also, Crazy Taxi was awesome.

 

The game also distributes credits and free cars like RAs pass out Chinese-made prophylactics at a co-ed dorm, giving you every opportunity to win cash for doing basically nothing. It's not set up to have you fail. If you want a nice car you'll have one soon enough. And since leveling has less of an impact on what you do in the game, you can have a nice car and race in great events quickly.

 

With more than 700 challenges grouped around different car types, you can, for instance, spend an entire afternoon racing every major generation of rally car ? even if you don't have quite every car type in every group yet. The first hour of play is slightly on rails as they want to make sure your "get" the game before letting you advance too far, but eventually they back off.

 

Another point in Horizon 2's favor is that you're not racing against computer generated AI but "Drivatars" generated by the profiles of real gamers (mostly made up of your friends). This makes it all the more fun, even if, or maybe because, the Drivatar behaviors are sometimes strange. More than once I saw the Drivatar of someone I know (on the Internet or IRL) randomly crash into another person while free-roaming around the world. This randomness is more entertaining than everyone staying in their lane, as is forcing Ray Wert (clever gamertag, bro!) into the wall, repeatedly, in a race or just on the street.

 

 

But who wants to play Drivatars when you can play real people? The reason why you'll buy the game is that all your friends will give in and get it, and then you'll be the only one not racing online through a dock suspiciously full of ramps trying to avoid the "infected" player in a giant game of car tag with $1.3 million cars.

 

I spent a decent amount of time with multiplayer and it was the best experience i had, even if the points system tends to reward "clean driving" and getting along over finishing first. That's worth dealing with since you now have the opportunities to race multiplayer with traffic ? something noticeably absent in the first game ? either in a road trip session that makes most of the plans for you or in an online free roam where a group "leader" picks what you do.

 

There's nothing quite so rewarding as chasing a heavily modded Civic in a kitted out Rally Fighter through an abandoned warehouse.

 

 

I haven't finished the game yet but I assume I will, so here are some quick notes if you don't like reading or whatever:

• Why do you only get to play as a white dude? I can paint Janet Reno on a super lowered Ford Raptor but I can't make my avatar look like Janet Reno? (Which, how awesome would it be to get your ass kicked by Janet Reno?)
• The online mode scores you based on XP you earn, not just the place you finish in, so you can beat other people by getting to races first and driving cleaner than your opponents. I don't know if I like that.
• You get extra points for taking pictures of cars. This seems sort of unnecessary, but whatever.
• There are clubs you can join and Jalopnik is JALP and we'll maybe find a way to give out something to people who do well, or something, maybe, in the future. Join Jalopnik!
• Trucks. There are way more trucks in this game than in the past. I love this. More trucks! Weirdly, no European-style trucks. Maybe we can fix this.
• Man it's pretty. Just, it's gorgeous. If there's a better looking console racing game, I haven't played it.

Ultimately, you're going to give in and buy the game if you have an Xbox One and anyone you know buys a copy. Like the minigame of "infected" itself, getting to close to someone playing the game turns you into one of them.

 

Source: Jalopnik

[HawkMan]

So, I've done one race in the demo now...

 

I'm only sure of thing, I need to buy this game, though I may not be able to right away, its certainly my next Xbox one game.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I thought the demo was really fun and the graphics are breathtaking. Already preordered the download of the 30th, can't wait.

[HawkMan]

Goddamit. Just as I was having some luck beating you (ironman) in this rivals, I get a update message and problems with the update....

[Ironman273]

Goddamit. Just as I was having some luck beating you (ironman) in this rivals, I get a update message and problems with the update....

Oops....  :innocent:  :devil:  :whistle:  :hump:

[HawkMan]

Oops....  :innocent:  :devil:  :whistle:  :hump:

 

I wuld have expected such low play from pheis.... but you.... ;p

[Zumiiiiii]

Really enjoyed the demo, and can't for its release  :woot:

[MikeChipshop Member]

Another hand in the air for the "who's getting this game?".

Really enjoyed it, and will happily join the Neowin club.

[simonlang]

just finished watching a 20 min gameplay

 

:D  i want mooooreeee!