Forza Horizon 2 - Xbox One

I've said in the past, I'm by no means a core racing fan (Mario Cart counts right?), I've played the occasional Forza and Gran Turismo game in the past but traditional circuit racers have never really caught my attention long term. I'd been hearing good things about this game for a while and I certainly had my doubts, but after playing the recent demo on XBL (which was excellent by the way) I readily admit this is a dang fun game! It helps that the game is beautifully rendered with lots of pretty colors and expansive vistas, as well the sounds and visuals are all top notch. There's also a pretty good selection of in-game music to pick from. Racing along cliff sides or tearing through a vineyard is good clean fun; personally, the best feature for me is finding short cuts or new ways to navigate the existing maps. Not being limited to just the road is an excellent change of pace. Making a daring cut through rough terrain is a risky move in some instances, but most often you'll be thrust full force into unfamiliar terrain. For those looking for a more hardcore racing experience you'll be happy to note there are a mass of options to tweak not just the settings and difficulties but also the way is which the car drives (very expansive with many options - too complicated for me). At a glance the game can be tuned to be very sim-like and I don't think most motor heads will be disappointed. Admittedly I'm pretty terrible at the game but the softer difficulties are still very fun albeit with a strong arcade feel once the difficulties are tuned way down (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). There's a wealth of micro events and challenges to keep you entertained and a variety of non-standard races (i.e. racing hot air balloons and jets - somehow it works and is awesome). 1) I love how different cars handle on different surfaces. I was driving an upgraded Audi TT and that thing was so difficult to drive off-road, hated any races that required me to leave the street! I then bought a Lancia Stratos (have loved this car since Forza Motorsport 4). The Stratos is AMAZING off-road. This thing is an absolute blast! Every moment I can, I take detours through the forests. Most cars are pretty easy to handle on the road, but I love that once you take a shortcut, you better hope your car was made for it! 2) The bucket lists are pretty fun, not amazing. Every now and then you'll do one that puts a huge smile on your face. I recently did the one with the Lancia Delta (pretty sure it was the Delta), where it was night time and you had to cut through a forest to get to a checkpoint in time. This race was pretty difficult, took me a few tries, but WOW was it intense and exciting! There have been a couple of bucket lists like that, so I'm glad they're in the game. 3) I really like the physics in this game. Of course its not a full on sim like FM5, but it sure is close when you use a wheel with sim steering. I'm glad that they added a small arcade feel to it, keeps the game fun and exciting, instead of having to use X to rewind every time you came into a turn slightly fast and messed up your lap time by a second or push the gas a little too hard causing a spin out. 4) Slow credits. That's one of the painful things about this game. Its taking me a really long time to save up credits to buy some of the more expensive cars. The most expensive one I have right now is the SLS, and that's because I won it in a lottery spin. I like that I have to work for some cars I want, but at the same time it seems a little too slow. Maybe its because I've only got a green wristband right now? Once Turn 10 figure out their server issues, the Tier rewards will help out a lot, which should make everything ok. 5) The last thing that I noticed and am not a huge fan of is that every time I start up the game I start at a car meet. This is annoying when the car meet is pretty far away from where I left the game which was right next to the hub with races to join. That's all for now. I plan on playing a lot more over the weekend, will update next week if there's more to share! Original: Forza Horizon 2 is the game I've been waiting a very long time for! After having played Test Drive Unlimited for countless hours, I didn't think anything would come close to the happiness it brought me. When the original Forza Horizon was announced, I got excited, thinking that a racing game was finally coming along to take TDU's place as my all time favorite open world racer. While Forza Horizon was an awesome game, it still fell short in a lot of areas. The fact that it wasn't really open world, you couldn't drive very far off any roads, made it not fulfill what I was hoping for. Forza Horizon 2 is exactly what I've been waiting many years for. There's finally a game that's topped what TDU did for me. While the map may not be as big as TDU, the graphics, car list, sounds, car tuning, etc., more than make up for it. When I first started up the game I couldn't believe how good it looked, driving those super-cars along the coast was jaw dropping! I picked the Camaro as my first car (love some good ol' American muscle), started driving to the first destination, saw a field to my left, and decided to take a detour. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun in a racing game! Driving through fields, vineyards, dodging trees, it all just left a huge smile on my face. I ended up completely forgetting about my destination and spent a good 30 minutes just driving around and loving every minute of it.

First of all, I have only played one real-life racing game in my lifetime and that was Gran Turismo 5 on my Playstation 3 Super Slim, so I'm not that big on racing as a genre. However, I love the Busch Brothers as my favorite NASCAR racers and realistic racing is fun to watch, so I cannot complain about it, lol. However, I was a kart racing kid back in the PS1 days and Crash Team Racing is definitely my all-time favorite racing game ever and it was freaking fun. Second of all, I've played occasional real-life racing games in the PS1 days, the time where my father played realistic racing, but traditional circuit racing games have never caught my attention long term. However, again, I've brought Gran Turismo 5: GOTY Edition (my first realistic racing game and real racing experience in 10+ years) for the PS3 three years ago and I had fun playing it but I wasn't addicted to it because the game was hard to complete some challenges, so I gave up. It was worth $20 and a good game but not addicted, IMO. Later, I decided to play a Forza game because I have never played any of Forza before, so I'm interested in playing one on my Xbox One. Earlier this January, I owned & currently playing Forza Horizon 2 (my second realistic racing game) on X1 and got to play real-life racing once again. You know what? I got addicted to this game! Like wow, it is so realistic and fun to play! I have expected to play a boring slim racing again but nope, it's just a entertaining game and it officially changed my life in gaming. The visuals, soundtrack/radio, gameplay, pacing, living open world, online community and more contents to mention. Forza Horizon 2 got everything!!! Right now, I'm very happy with my purchase and I have been enjoying it, so far. I only have like 10 championships left for the second finale, so there is still time to finish some things to do before racing again. I would recommend this game for anybody who is a NASCAR fan and want to get into playing realistic racing games. PS. At least, Forza Motorsport 6 is already out and Forza Horizon 3 is officially coming, so I'm interested getting both of them anytime soon. Game on!!!

This is the best arcade racer I've ever played. Hundreds of cars to choose from. You can drive around the open world map freely, or you can compete in sets of races to get championships, OR you can do various challenges that offer a ton of variety to the game. You can race friends or strangers online, take part in many different road trips cross country. You have an insane garage that can be filled with cars that are all shapes and sizes. The online community is still robust and filled with people. You can join clubs and/or buy a VIP membership and get even more content. Car Packs have your favorite cars from things like the Fast and Furious movie series. The cars drive really well and the physics is on-point. I don't want else to say. Buy this now. I'm rambling, BUT this game is so insanely good that it will cause you to be incoherent out of the excitement it garners. Go try it for yourself. You won't be disappointed. Two warnings. Buy the XB1 version and stay away from the 360 version. Also, if you like sim racers that stick to tracks, over an open world arcade environment, buy Forza 6 (not Forza 5) instead. This isn't to say you don't have a plethora of tuning options and customization options in Forza Horizon 2 --- it's just they're two different games (FH2 and FM6) meant for two distinct kinds of gameplay.

Forza horizon 2 is a spectacular racing masterpiece. The graphics is incredible. The vast open world is amazing! Literally drive anywhere you want. Yes there are some walls and limits but for what you can do, it's truly amazing - race though vineyards, open fields and forests in million dollar hypercars. Realistic? Please! Fun? HELL YEAH! There's SO much to do in the game. Such a huge variety of races and events to participate in. Driving in free roam you have the chance to witness and enjoy the beautiful world participate in side events, look for hidden barns with rare cars inside, take photos of cars you see and get XP. Make sure you register for the Forza rewards program. You get monthly prizes (XP, cars) depending on your overall progress in all Forza games combined.

Bought this game on Deal of the Day with GCU. Well worth the price I paid for it, even though I'm finding it difficult to find time to play because I'm juggling BF4, TitanFall, Sunset and COD AW, on top of all the other smaller games I"m trying to play. I had reservations with FH2 because the first one to me was just kind of bland and not that exciting, not to mention it was one of the last games I played before moving on to the X1 from the 360. Forza 5 didn't blow me away either, especially with the lack of tracks. Anyways, FH2 is 100x better to me because I love the setting of this game, the cheesy Horizon festival has been more muted this go around, the driving feels a little more difficult (Racing is not my go to, so yes I play with the handicaps) and I really like joining the drive clubs and playing online with my team. If you're sitting on the fence, but have seen the pretty positive reviews from others, I'd say purchase this game. Its a great step in the right direction and has me pumped for future entries in the series.

This is a great driving game with hundreds of licensed cars and a vibrant open world to drive them in. if you didn't get to play the first forza horizon game then here's the idea behind the game. your in open world around Italy I believe. the settings are gorgeous but not 100 percent accurate like in some games. you are in the horizon co!test which is like Woodstock for cars. you drive around the open world entering different racing events. similar pull up to certain areas in the world and hit a button to start. there are point to point races. lap races around tracks. and my favorite events where they do something unique and put your fast car against things like an airplane. there's lots of variety and so many upgrades you can buy it will make your head spin. if you like racing and don't need a driving simulator as much as you just want to have fun without being to unrealistic then this is a great game. I don't usually play racing games but this one has converted me!

being a huge fan of facing games, owning all pre gen console nfs and gt5 on ps3, i became fustrated with a lack of good racing game for the ps4 and sold it as forza titles poured for the xbox one. the closed circuit, although competitive, tend to bore you a bit faster with the repeated scenery, courses, and car availability. the horizon series are open world, allowing you more control of your adventure, and can quickly upgrade to much better cars and upgrades. im taking a star off because the graphics of the game are too much for the xbox one s to handle as i get frame spikes random during game place and even on the auto play scenes. of course the issue is in the console and not on the game, but it does make it less enjoyable to play. overall content wise, its a great game to own. few of the add ons i have ever purchased for any game that wasnt purchased deluxe edition.

Has soooo much to explore and pretty nice balance between direction and freedom and tons of cars of all styles to play with. I enjoyed a great deal of the races, but I felt like off-road races got too hard to track and control. Even after you tune a car specifically for it, it's too easy too stray from the racing line, which was carefully chosen to balance your weight, so leaving it the slopes plus slippery grass can run you into trees. It's most obvious when racing online that nobody is good at off-road, so the problem is the race type, not skill level. You also can't just avoid it, because even a supercar series will have an off-road race or even two. But I don't want to sound too negative, there is tons of fun here and I played over 50 hours. It has a nice soundtrack, too. If street car series didn't have off-road races, so that you had the option of avoiding them, I would have rated it 4 stars.