The quality of Forza Horizon 3 can almost sneak up on you.
Despite being set in a new country, there’s a lot that’s familiar
and a lot that can be taken for granted.
However, the third entry from Playground Games
gets so much right
and it’s packed with an overwhelming amount of great racing,
events, and features that all come together in a well-designed open world.
The festival returns as the central means to move forward and unlock new events,
but this time you’re not just a participant,
you’re the festival boss.
By gaining more fans,
you can expand the festival grounds and open new sites across the region,
thereby unlocking more races and challenges.
It all makes sense, and you’re given a lot of choice.
You decide which new areas to unlock first.
You choose which radio stations you want to sign.
And most of the time, you have complete freedom
to pick which events you want to participate in.
The game doesn’t force you into a linear car progression either,
but adapts to your preferences,
mixing in different classes of vehicles along the way.
As with past Forza Horizon games,
the handling hits a sweet spot that’s grounded, but approachable,
flexible enough to handle bouncing over off-road terrain with ease.
It’s not as technical as Forza Motorsport,
but you have to take care when cornering and braking.
Some cars put up more of a fight than others,
and they can be satisfying to master.
The game also does a good job of keeping the challenge alive.
If you go on a winning streak,
you'll get a prompt to raise the difficulty,
and we soon came to a setting that feels like a proper challenge.
The map is enormous and diverse,
taking you to sunny beaches, lush forests, city streets,
and a number of other areas in-between.
A lot of racing games have bragged about size
only to have miles of boring terrain,
but Forza Horizon 3 packs its spaces with fun tracks and wild stunts.
Even just driving off through the desert can be exciting
as you hop across the dunes
and it often pays to ignore the GPS and blaze your own trail.
As in the previous games, there are a number of collectibles to pursue
like driving on every road, photographing every car,
and finding all the bonus boards,
some of which are legitimately tricky to smash.
Barn finds also return,
tasking you with searching areas
rumored to have classic cars rusting away in barns,
just waiting for a wealthy car enthusiast like yourself to restore them.
If you’re not into the collectibles though, they’re entirely optional.
There’s more than enough racing to fill the time.
Races come in a number of different forms,
from short lap-based circuits
to lengthy point to point routes and multi-race championships.
There’s also an entire sub-campaign of street racing to explore.
Bucket list challenges return,
requiring you to complete specific goals with a specific cars.
Speed traps and speed zones are joined by ramps
daring you to jump as far as you can.
Plus, showcase events are back too,
and they’ve been wisely trimmed down.
There’s no chance racing a helicopter or a train won’t feel a bit gimmicky,
but with fewer events and more interesting goals,
they don’t lose their charm as easily as before.
The tracks are just as important,
and they’re often full of surprises
with sharp corners and frequent changes in elevation.
They often sweep through drastic changes in scenery,
as you can turn a corner to reveal a stunning view.
Or you may just find yourself happily plowing
through backyard fences and brittle saplings.
While there are numerous events to complete,
Forza Horizon 3 increases that number exponentially
by allowing you to tweak any event with its new blueprint system.
When you drive up to an event,
you won’t just be offered a race created by the Forza team,
but an entire range of player-created variants
including different cars and rule-sets.
For even more customized racing
there are spots to create bucket list blueprints as well,
giving you freedom to create your own point to point races,
jump challenges, and more.
Then you select the music to play during your event
and set out to establish a target time for others to beat.
It’s not as robust as a full track editor,
but it eliminates some of the messier elements,
and we’ve come across some truly fun creations.
Like Forza Horizon 2,
AI cars take the form of other players' Drivatars,
assuming their driving habits
and giving you recognizable names to compete against.
Now you can also recruit a team of Drivatars to increase your earnings.
Higher level players give you more rewards,
and as you max out your ranks, it can be fun to recruit new drivers,
just to see one of your friends get fired.
In addition to legacy community features
like downloading paint designs and taking photos,
you can join or create clubs to connect with a smaller community
as well as join forces for ongoing competition between clubs.
The Rivals system also returns,
letting you work your way up the leaderboards
by racing other players’ ghosts on each track.
Since it’s just you, the road, and a time to beat,
Rivals is where you can get the most technical,
trimming corners and perfecting your lines around each course.
For online multiplayer, there are two main options.
The co-op campaign lets you join up with a host
and work together to complete events.
While online adventures allow you to match up in quick competitive games
that may include free-for-all races, team races, and playground games.
These are bundled in groups of four,
with players voting on each group between sets.
The trick with online adventures is that when you start,
you can often get thrust into the first set of events
without knowing what’s coming,
which can result in suffering through a few races
with a car that’s doesn’t quite match.
Playground events include infected, king, and flag rush modes.
They don’t break new ground, but they don’t feel like throwaways either.
Each playground map is fun and carefully crafted to allow strategy as well as mayhem,
giving you room to make quick escapes or to ambush other players.
While there are a lot of benefits to the open world nature of Forza Horizon 3,
it can have its annoyances as well,
particularly when you’re trying to better your drift scores
only to be interrupted by a pack of AI racers barreling towards you.
At times, the foliage pop-in can be a bit distracting,
and while the microtransactions
aren’t as egregious as some past Forza games,
it’s a bit lame that you can buy a treasure map
to identify all the game’s secrets
or that you get double credits when you level up if you become a VIP.
Forza Horizon 3 is also one of the first titles
in Microsoft’s new Play Anywhere program.
Switching from Xbox One to PC or vice-versa is seamless,
taking just a moment to sync your save file.
It of course features more graphical options and a sharper look,
but the most appealing feature of running the game at 60 frames per second
seems like a false promise.
On a fairly meaty PC,
we encounter frequent frame drops when trying to run at 60,
even when we lower it to medium settings,
and we’ve heard similar results from others with more powerful machines.
The stuttering effect is so frequent and disrupting
that we feel better off sticking with the more stable 30 frames per second.
We’ve also seen additional glitches that only appear when running at 60,
making it seem like the game just isn’t built for the setting.
The high-end PC settings don’t live up to our expectations,
but the handling, courses,
and community features are all top of their class.
Forza Horizon 3 is the type of racing game
that just about anyone can pick up and have fun with,
but it still includes depth for committed players.
Put that together with a beautiful environment
that you can explore at your own pace,
and Forza Horizon 3 is one of the strongest and most well-rounded open world racers
we’ve ever played.
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