Forza Horizon 3 Reviews

Playground Games really outdid themselves for this game. They captured actual sky footage in Australia, to create a more realistic experience, made the map bigger, and of course, added more cars.

Australia. Playground Games chose Australia as the location for this game, and I must say, looks amazing. While the map isn't actually Australia as you will see on a map or globe, the team scaled the map down to have key locations in Australia in the game, rather than Australia in its entirety. We'll have to wait for Forza Horizon 4 for a possible location in its entirety. The outback is shown in detail, the sand effects are nice, and I love the water effects when you drive in water, such as by the 12 Apostles.

I like the Horizon Blueprint feature of this game. If you have no idea what this is, it is a feature built into most events that lets you customize the event however you want. You can choose what cars will be used in the event, change the weather, time, and number of laps (if the event is a circuit race). You can even blueprint your own bucket list events, and the game will also feature blueprints by your friends on Xbox Live, and complete strangers as well.

There are well over 400 cars to collect and drive, and I was surprised to hear that the Warthog from Halo would be one of them. Horizon Promo also returns in this game, so you can get payments for taking photos of cars. There's also an achievement for taking photos of 300 unique cars. The addition of the Warthog from Halo was also welcome, even if the vehicle doesn't seem as fast as it is in Halo.

The music soundtrack for this game is nice as well. Bass Arena and Pulse return for this game, and Hospital Records returns as well, but some new stations have also been added: Block Party, Epitaph, Future Classic, and Timeless. Groove Music is also an option so you can play your own music. Personally I preferred Ninja Tune Radio from Forza Horizon 2 but this time around Bass Arena is my favorite, due to additions from artists such as Diplo, Galantis, Nero, Benny Benassi, and more. One song that I have gotten a bit sick of is "Killer" by Adamski. The song seems to last forever, with parts of the song repeated over and over. This is just my preference, you may love the song.

I also love the addition of 'Skill Songs' in Forza Horizon 3. Every now and then, the DJ of whatever station you are listening to will play a Skill Song, where you will get a double skill chain during the duration of the song. (and after the song, if you haven't lost your skill chain)

Overall, this game is amazing. I'd give it a 4.5/5, giving the game 0.5 off due to a noticeably slower load time than Forza Horizon 2. After testing the load time on multiple Xbox One units, including the Xbox One S, I am going to conclude that the increase in loading time is just due to more resources than the previous games.

As a lover of the Forza series of games Forza Horizon 3 is no exception to this love.

The horizon games in my opinion are a lot less grindy and stay fresher for longer as you aren't constantly driving on the same tracks and you can choose to just drive around if you wanted to.

Adding co-op campaign is brilliant, being able to play with friends and not losing progress in the single player because of it really was a smart move and I hope to see this continue in future horizon games.

Now moving onto the world, I'm biased here being an Australian, but it is amazing. The horizon games keep on taking what worked well from the previous games and expanding on it. Having the four areas of country, desert, rain forest and city really keeps horizon 3 fresh. This was expanded on in blizzard mountain adding snow.

Speaking of DLC blizzard mountain felt like it just fit with the base game while definitely adding mechanic to the game, which really is what you want from a DLC. I was also super glad to see the Porsche DLC was free and not the second expansion as the whole Porsche expansion was getting old.

Finally my biggest fault of horizon 3 is the hot wheels expansion. I understand what they were going for and in theory it sounds really great. However playing the expansion made me feel physically ill and I felt the physics were thrown out the window at times. This made my experience playing the DLC not an enjoyable one and is the first thing in any of the horizons I'm struggling to complete.