Forza Horizon 5

[Dave]

I saw a few familiar faces on the leaderboards when playing over the weekend, who else is planning to pick this up once the regular version unlocks for everyone tomorrow?

What a gorgeous game on the Xbox Series X and the quick load times make it easy to pick up for just a couple races if that's all you have time for.

I know the lack of weight for cars has been a complaint in the past, but at least to me it feels like there's a little more heft to the cars this time around. It's still pretty easy to drift, slide, and regain control...it is a Horizon game, after all.

I saw that over 1mm people already have times posted on the leaderboards, which is pretty amazing for a game that required a $45 (if a GamePass subscriber) or $100 spend to play prior to tomorrow. Pretty crazy.

[sportdan30]

I've been having a blast so far. Been doing a lot of cross country races to start. Love racing downhill and off a ramp for some major air. Game is absolutely gorgeous and the terrain is so much fun to drive around.

[dbdynsty25]

The Forza Horizon series is my favorite racing game series ever...so I can't wait till the GamePass unlocks tonight. The reviews seem to all be outstanding, so definitely looking forward to it.

[Leadfoot5]

Having an absolute blast with it on the Series X. Been fun seeing all the DSP Drivers as well...

[Lancer]

Can you start playing? I thought you had to wait until tomorrow Tuesday?

I have GPU so was wondering.

[Diablo25]

Can you start playing? I thought you had to wait until tomorrow Tuesday?

I have GPU so was wondering.

If you got the Deluxe or Premium edition you could play 11/5

[Diablo25]

The Forza Horizon series is my favorite racing game series ever...so I can't wait till the GamePass unlocks tonight. The reviews seem to all be outstanding, so definitely looking forward to it.

It’s badass. Been playing since Friday. Beautiful game with tons of cars and tremendous replay value. Series X goes beast mode with this game.

[Lancer]

I have it downloaded and ready to play but have not because I really wanted to save this game for XB Series X but don't have one.

I'm sure on Xbox One it'll play and look fine with HDR but i can't imagine how great it looks on XBX.

I will wait it out maybe for 2023 to play when stores actually get XB X in stores.

[10spro]

The series X shows its muscle on this game for sure. Dead gorgeous. You can just literally snap any moment of a race and save it as a a screenshot.

[DChaps]

I have created a club for us - Digital Sportspage Forum (DSPF), as DSP was already taken unfortunately.

Forza Horizon 4 was probably in my Top 5 console racing games of all time, right up there with Indy 500 for the Atari 2600, Mario Kart for SNES, Gran Turismo for Playstation, etc. In it's 3 year life cycle, my only real complaint was that they added too much stuff without adding the Goodwood Festival of Speed with Hill Climb as an expansion.

So far enjoying FH5 on Xbox One X, beautiful game in a huge world.

[DChaps]

With the weekly seasonal challenges and monthly updates of FH4, I found several very good Youtube channels that focus on the how-to's, guides, tunes, etc. for the Forza Horizon series, as opposed to just game streaming. These below already have good FH5 content out and are some of my favorites, particularly Waznewz. Very dry wit and seems to actually hate the game and developers even though he has spent thousands of hours driving the games and producing good tunes, guides, etc. His cursing, sighs and whining are actually quite hilarious while still providing helpful guides. Any that I am missing?

Waznewz
https://www.youtube.com/c/Waznewz/

Skippy4631
https://www.youtube.com/c/Skippy4631/

STEVEthePIRATE
https://www.youtube.com/c/STEVEtheP1R4TE/

Don Joewon Song
https://www.youtube.com/c/DonJoewonSong/

AR12Gaming
https://www.youtube.com/c/AR12Gaming/

HokiHoshi
https://www.youtube.com/c/HokiHoshi/

Jakexvx
https://www.youtube.com/c/Jakexvx/

[Danimal]

Is there a way to edit your character? I accidentally made a guy with a female voice.

[Dave]

I did the same thing, haha. I believe the ability to edit character appearance/voice comes with your first house--that's when I made the changes, just not sure if it happens sooner.

[pk500]

Game is gorgeous, even on an OG Xbox One. It resets the bar of what is possible graphically even with an aged machine.

The driving model? I know it doesn't matter to many of you since this is an arcade game, but it does to me. And it's meh. Still a bit floaty, still a bit lacking in grip and friction, even on asphalt. Here's how I would rank the Forza Horizon driving models, from best to worst:

FH 1 -- Original still is the best. Basically took the Forza Motorsport game of the time and increased the slides, and that's about it.
FH 4 -- I think 4 was the closest to 1. Very, very nice.
FH 5 -- Solid. Wish it had a bit more grip and weight, but still very fun.
FH 2 -- A big overcorrection by Microsoft toward a Ridge Racer driving model, which continues today.
FH 3 -- Crap game, all around. Driving model, location in Australia, super arcadey.

[dbdynsty25]

Agreed PK - the original is by far the best driving model...it was perfect for the type of game. 5 is fine...nothing spectacular, pretty good in the grand scheme given the vast variety of surfaces it has to model.

[sportdan30]

Is there a way to edit your character? I accidentally made a guy with a female voice.

Yes. At the beginning, you only have two options. But you can change it easy enough somewhere in the settings.

[sportdan30]

Are you guys playing on quality or performance mode? I haven't switched it from performance mode because I love the smooth 60fps. But, I am curious how much better this game looks (if it even can) on quality mode.

I'm not much in to manually tuning, so I download others. Does the person for whom I download their specific vehicle tuning, get the (CR) credits that I pay?

[Danimal]

Is there a way to edit your character? I accidentally made a guy with a female voice.

Yes. At the beginning, you only have two options. But you can change it easy enough somewhere in the settings.

I went through the entire settings and there is no character option. I think I need to progress more like was noted above.

It's cool my progress on the PC and XBSX are the same. I can jump from one platform to the other.

[vader29]

Is there a way to edit your character? I accidentally made a guy with a female voice.

Yes. At the beginning, you only have two options. But you can change it easy enough somewhere in the settings.

I went through the entire settings and there is no character option. I think I need to progress more like was noted above.

It's cool my progress on the PC and XBSX are the same. I can jump from one platform to the other.

Just started the the game and on the confirm character choice screen it says your character can be changed at any time by visiting a festival site or your house,

[Lancer]

Game is gorgeous, even on an OG Xbox One. It resets the bar of what is possible graphically even with an aged machine.

The driving model? I know it doesn't matter to many of you since this is an arcade game, but it does to me. And it's meh. Still a bit floaty, still a bit lacking in grip and friction, even on asphalt. Here's how I would rank the Forza Horizon driving models, from best to worst:

FH 1 -- Original still is the best. Basically took the Forza Motorsport game of the time and increased the slides, and that's about it.
FH 4 -- I think 4 was the closest to 1. Very, very nice.
FH 5 -- Solid. Wish it had a bit more grip and weight, but still very fun.
FH 2 -- A big overcorrection by Microsoft toward a Ridge Racer driving model, which continues today.
FH 3 -- Crap game, all around. Driving model, location in Australia, super arcadey.

I liked FH2 the best out of them all. The first one on xbox one.

It does look good on xbox one. but i can't imagine how unreal it must look on xbox series X or S. I am tempted to uninstall it and save the experience whenever I get a next gen system.

[Danimal]

I'm having so much fun with this game, I don't usually dig driving games more then a few hours but this one has me hooked.

[pk500]

I'm having so much fun with this game, I don't usually dig driving games more then a few hours but this one has me hooked.

This game definitely hits that accessible sweet spot. Beautiful, fun, tons to do.

One of the reasons FH 5 is so robust may be because this is the first Horizon game that didn't have a Forza Motorsport installment released between it. Forza Motorsport 8 wasn't released between FH 4 and FH 5, breaking the usual development pattern. Turn 10 developed and released the middling Forza mobile game since FH 4, but it seems that all of its console development muscle was flexed for nearly two years on FH 5 this time.

[Rodster]

I'm having so much fun with this game, I don't usually dig driving games more then a few hours but this one has me hooked.

This game definitely hits that accessible sweet spot. Beautiful, fun, tons to do.

One of the reasons FH 5 is so robust may be because this is the first Horizon game that didn't have a Forza Motorsport installment released between it. Forza Motorsport 8 wasn't released between FH 4 and FH 5, breaking the usual development pattern. Turn 10 developed and released the middling Forza mobile game since FH 4, but it seems that all of its console development muscle was flexed for nearly two years on FH 5 this time.

Different studios.

Forza Horizon = Playground Games

Forza Motorsport = Turn 10

[Lancer]

I've always loved the Horizon series as it's just plain fun. I loved FH2 because of the entire Italy/European backdrop and that game was just about racing. I feel in FH3 they concentrated more on the side stuff and not as much as just racing. They came back good w/ FH4 and FH5 looks to be a classic but I forever will hold FH2 dear in my heart.

PK - what's up w/ this licensing garbage? So MS can't sell FH2 anymore on their store or anywhere. Only way you can get it is if you owned it digitally or have to buy a physical copy off ebay somewhere. Can you explain to us not in the car industry?

[GB_Simo]

Are you guys playing on quality or performance mode? I haven't switched it from performance mode because I love the smooth 60fps. But, I am curious how much better this game looks (if it even can) on quality mode.

Quality mode. It's absolutely jaw-dropping at times and, while I haven't tried Performance mode yet, the game running at 30fps hasn't caused me a single issue.

I have created a club for us - Digital Sportspage Forum (DSPF), as DSP was already taken unfortunately.

I've sent a Join request. I will confess, however, to having absolutely no idea what the clubs are for in this one. Is it the same kind of idea as the FM games, where our Rivals times get grouped together, aggregated, ranked against other clubs and all that? I've started running some of the events in Rivals mode so we've got some kind of presence on the leaderboards, just in case.