Forza Horizon 5 / driving games

[Famous Mortimer]

Anyone playing FH5? It was on sale on Steam a few weeks ago, not played it since I had the XBox Games Pass thing when it first came out.

I'm about back at where I was in terms of skill (somewhere between the Highly Skilled and Expert settings) and have a nice number of cars, although I've noticed there's some tricky business with the seasonal objectives. Like, the car you need to do the series of challenges in is the reward for owning X number of BMWs, which rules you right out if you're a relatively new player (it occasionally shows up in the Auction House for over $10,000,000).

Also, I've just tried the player-created "touge" challenge, which is a good ways outside my skillset, apparently. It feels like the CPU gets a slightly faster car than whatever you pick and drives the route flawlessly. I can't get within 10 seconds of them.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun still. Are you playing it, or are you on some other driving game?

[El Unicornio, mang]

I played it for a bit, it's good but then I've liked all the Forza games. The radio station characters and music add a lot to it, I think. Was really into 3 but a crashing bug which they couldn't be arsed to fix made it eventually unplayable.

Currently playing Assetto Corsa (with a bunch of car and scenery mods) and City Car Driving with VR. Fun but can only do it for about 15 minutes at a time due to the motion sickness.

[oustropique]

Forza Horizon 5's challenges got on my nerves for similar reasons, so I've gone back to Burnout 3: Takedown.

Incredible game, rinsing it slowly but surely. I've only ever played Paradise before but I like the simplicity of it just being tracks to race on and not a whole map. The rubberbanding is annoying but takedowns are so fun that I can look past it.

Any good recommendations for other combat-oriented racing games? I also want to give Road Rash: Jailbreak a go for the first time in about twenty years after watching the Digital Foundry Retro video on that series.

[Famous Mortimer]

The radio station characters and music add a lot to it, I think.

The obvious hole in 5 is the lack of the sarcastic Australian classical music guy; they could have even got some "mileage" out of him being exasperated at moving to new countries and keeping finding himself in the middle of a Forza festival.

[The Crumb]

Forza Horizon 5's challenges got on my nerves for similar reasons, so I've gone back to Burnout 3: Takedown.

Incredible game, rinsing it slowly but surely. I've only ever played Paradise before but I like the simplicity of it just being tracks to race on and not a whole map. The rubberbanding is annoying but takedowns are so fun that I can look past it.

Any good recommendations for other combat-oriented racing games? I also want to give Road Rash: Jailbreak a go for the first time in about twenty years after watching the Digital Foundry Retro video on that series.

Flatout 2 is great fun, albeit much more chunky and slidey and less tight and zippy than Burnout. More of a classic demolition derby feel.
There's also an upgraded version of 2 called ultimate carnage or something. The sequels beyond 2 are made by another dev and apparently shite.

Wreckfest is like the spiritual sequel to Flatout, it does away with a lot of the arcadey elements but is a well made game in its own right. Spectacular car damage.

Unrelated to combat racing, I've been really enjoying the new WRC. A technically rocky launch, but a really fun game. The locations and giant stages can be spectacular. Love going from punishingly technical Greek mountain stages to bombing through a Chilean forest at top speed.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Played FH5 for a while. It's good, and unlike previous Horizon titles the Force Feedback actually works so you can play it with a wheel, but the gameplay loop didn't really hold my attention all that much for some reason.

Currently splitting my time between serious business racing sims (both Automobilistas, rFactor, iRacing) depending on what leagues and such I'm doing with mates. I've been playing super serious racing games with a wheel for about 8 years now and I've concluded that I'm just not particularly fast. I win races very occasionally.

[Chollis]

Played FH5 for a while. It's good, and unlike previous Horizon titles the Force Feedback actually works so you can play it with a wheel, but the gameplay loop didn't really hold my attention all that much for some reason.

i've had the same problem with 5 after absolutely loving 4 and I'm not sure why. I definitely preferred the lovely Scotland/Northern country setting, Mexico is too exotic for me. I also keep wasting money on cars that i don't like and then can't be bothered to keep playing to get more cash. Can I get most of my money back on them via the auction house?

[Wonderful Butternut]

i've had the same problem with 5 after absolutely loving 4 and I'm not sure why. I definitely preferred the lovely Scotland/Northern country setting, Mexico is too exotic for me. I also keep wasting money on cars that i don't like and then can't be bothered to keep playing to get more cash. Can I get most of my money back on them via the auction house?

Dunno, not an issue I've had to be honest.

There has to be at least one car that you don't hate. Just race the shit out of that for money.

[Famous Mortimer]

The one thing that feels like they resent having to have it in the game and want people not to use it is the auction house. Just the obvious QOL changes they could make, like automatically returning your credits after an auction ends that you bid on but didn't win; or having the name of the car in the "search" section be the same as it is everywhere else in the game.

[beanheadmcginty]

I wish there was a Jonny Smith DLC for this where all you do is go around the country searching for barn finds.

[Famous Mortimer]

Well, I'm consistently on expert now, and the game's even asked me if I want to go up to pro a few times (not yet).

I'm doing the seasonal objectives, and once again it's an Eventlab that's doing me in. It seems to be aware of how difficult it is, giving you fairly detailed instructions on the sort of car you'll need, but even with all that, I've not come anywhere near the front after multiple attempts. It feels like a challenge for the drivers on the Unbeatable setting - if I wanted that, I'd up my difficulty.

The developer-created stuff is almost always excellent, but the user-created stuff that they're bulking out the game with goes from embarrassingly easy (the Super 7) to almost impossible (the touge races and stuff like this). Ah well. I'm glad I'm not too much of a completion-hunter.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Any good recommendations for other combat-oriented racing games?

I found it too combat-oriented for my liking (because I was rubbish at it) but you might want to check out Onrush. I think it was made by some of the same people as Burnout.

[The Culture Bunker]

Really wish they'd remake or whatever for PS5 Midnight Club: Los Angeles. That was my favourite PS3-era racing game, with Ourun: Coast2Coast my PS2 top pick.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Well, I'm consistently on expert now, and the game's even asked me if I want to go up to pro a few times (not yet).

I'm doing the seasonal objectives, and once again it's an Eventlab that's doing me in. It seems to be aware of how difficult it is, giving you fairly detailed instructions on the sort of car you'll need, but even with all that, I've not come anywhere near the front after multiple attempts. It feels like a challenge for the drivers on the Unbeatable setting - if I wanted that, I'd up my difficulty.

The developer-created stuff is almost always excellent, but the user-created stuff that they're bulking out the game with goes from embarrassingly easy (the Super 7) to almost impossible (the touge races and stuff like this). Ah well. I'm glad I'm not too much of a completion-hunter.

Are you tuning your cars for the events? A lot of the seasonal events expect you to cheese out a win with an overpowered tune, mainly because the CPU cars are similarly overpowered.

[Famous Mortimer]

I have a fiddle with them, but I mostly use community-created tunes (which I suppose is the same thing).