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I dug out my old Logitech Driving Force GT from the closet and blew off the dust. I haven't gotten into a new (to me) racing game since Gran Turismo 5. The hardcore simulationist trend doesn't interest me, I miss proper career modes and I have just had some awful bad luck with games being broken. I just occasionally revisit some classics.
So after many enthusiastic recommendations I grabbed Forza Horizon 5. My first impressions were great. The intro was a lot of fun, with the big set pieces causing me to fight my wheel as it bucked after being long out of practice.
But this was not representative of the actual game. The vast majority of the content is filled by fairly normal races with long stretches driving to them, back and forth across the same stretches of empty open world. It's sort of like a Ubisoft game, but just cars.
This still could have been a good time. I like the driving model well enough, there is a large selection of cars and the environment, while bland, is certainly much less of an eyesore than what awaits me if I go back to play Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the umpteenth time.
I've got some criticisms of the actual racing (the way it generates opponents and their vehicles sucks, the tracks are boring), but what really killed it for me was this slowly creeping, eerie discomfort that built up in the back of my mind over hours until it became overwhelming. The vibes are fucked.
This is Fortnite, the racing game. It's full of cameos and tie ins with influencers. Brands are plastered everywhere. Microtransaction adverts in most menus. Everyone talks in this creepy, corporate approved "wholesomeness" and aware of how "epic" what they're doing is. There is a really uncomfortable tension between this huge festival that completely empties Mexico of pedestrians and how much the game fetishizes Americaness.
I wanted to scream during a sub-plot where you race a bunch of rich douche bags who are beefing with some guy at the festival. The game throws out shit like "they shouldn't be discriminated against for their money, they can't help the fact they are rich" and talks about fucking therapy. All the writing is this bad, I hate every single character in these inexplicably unskippable cutscenes.
The radio selection is dogshit too.
It's absurdtpo me how basically no racing game company realizes that one of the key points to have your game be fun is to have some kind of progress. Contemporary racing games literally just throw cars at you in hope to make it fun by constantly giving you new toys.
I get that this is a thing that sells to the masses who /want/ those shiny new toys, but man. Imagine if a big studio actually took the time to improve on the vintage NFS progression formula :(
I hate that a lot of the ones with a progression settle on XP to unlock tiers of cars rather than money and buying them too. I liked going to the used car dealer ship in Gran Turismo and seeing what I could afford.
Forza Horizon 5 is bizarre for this. It has an acquisition system, but right after the intro you pick one of three cars, all new and not cheap. Then you get a custom rally car from the next race. A bunch of unlocks are going to give even you more cars afterwards, and will keep doing so regularly.
Like hang on, maybe let me work up from one of your cheap, older cars first and work my way up?
But this is also the game that unironically calls you "superstar" from the jump and sucks you off constantly.