Forza: Horizon for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Before you know anything else about this game, you must know that this is not Forza as you have come to know it. This is the love-child of a Forza/Dirt romance, and personally I absolutely love it. By that, I mean that Horizon has more of an arcade feel to it than you have known through the rest of the Forza series, but it's not in a bad way at all, it fits the game style perfectly.
Anyway, here we go....

The Good:
- The cars still look and sound just as amazing as they do in Forza 4
- The open world exploring is a lot of fun in incredibly fast cars
- Both dirt and road races
- Street racing, not in a cheesy way though

The Meh:
- Instead of menus, you drive to the different shops to customize your car, not a bad thing, but more time consuming

The Bad:
- The only thing that keeps this game from a full 10 for me is that there are not as many cars in Horizon. DLC will probably fix this, but there should still be more

Long Story Short:
If you are a fan of Forza or a fan of DiRT, then you will love this game. It is what Need For Speed should have become, and I will most likely end up owning this one.

The reviews pitting this as a "Forza/Burnout Hybrid" are pretty accurate as Horizon introduces a point system to your driving that gives it a very arcade-y feel. The new feel can definitely be fun, but it honestly took away from the racing for me as I found myself too often focusing on the points rather than how well I was racing. As always, the game is beautiful (maybe more-so than Forza 3 or 4 with of the extra open world scenery), vehicle customization is extensive, and the driving mechanics are spot-on.

What made this game a 5 for me is the lack of content. The open world driving is entertaining, and there is a TON of space there, but the event racing is severely lacking. You progress too quick through the different wristband colors (which is how you unlock harder/faster races) and for some odd reason the uncompleted races count toward your next wristband. Even the last wristband takes only about 10 short races to get to and you can be in the "Horizon Championship" (the final race) in what feels like no time at all. This doesn't have to do with what difficulty you play on ( I did everything on 75% bonus with hard opponent difficulty) but with the lack of content.

What I've grown accustomed to since I was 10 years old playing Gran Turismo on PS (Forza has since become my Gran Turismo since I switched to XBOX) is a massive game, that will take a LONG time to beat, and includes races of at least 20-30 laps (and some races with 100s of laps!). In contrast, Horizon's longest races top out at 5 or 6 laps and there are only a handful of R1, R2, and R3 races. Maybe the worst part of all is that I built up cash so fast in this game that I could buy any car I wanted within a couple hours of playing, only to use that car in possibly 2 races.

Overall, this game is a fine rent and you might appreciate the change of pace from previous Forza games for a little bit, but if you enjoy the parts that I do from Forza 3 or 4, you'll be sending this one back within a few day