Cross-platform, open-world racing game

Forza Horizon 3, developed by Playground Games, is an open-world racing game and the first of the Forza Horizon titles to make its way to PC. The game is set in fictional Australia. Players are dropped into an open world to tear through, encountering quests, challenges, and collectibles. There are plenty of multiplayer features, like racing with friends and a 4-player co-op campaign. Players can play with friends that are on PC as well as Xbox One.

Plenty of content

Forza brings a ton of content and freedom to this title. Players will find a plethora of challenges to complete. You’ll need to complete some of them in order to earn money and XP.

Where Forza really works is in its suspension of disbelief. It’s easy for developers to take the game too seriously and demand a more buttoned-up approach. Here, though, you can tear around in a field, kicking up dust as long as you desire. If you get bored with that and need some competition, you can find events to participate in.

You’re also able to challenge AI to races on the spot. This instant responsivity to the player is what makes the game so fun. You have total control over your tasks, goals, and gameplay. You’re in complete command of this ship, and you can steer it however you’d like.

The semi-sim driving feel is immersive enough to make you feel like you’re driving a car. However, it’s not so detail-oriented that you can’t just pick it up and play it. This marriage between fun and realism is where Horizon 3 lies.

You can customize the liveries for your cars. You’ll also need to upgrade them with kits if you want them to be more competitive in the harder races. You can purchase kits with the money you earn from challenges. Each kit is tied to the car you purchased it for, so you’ll have to spend more money on each car you want to upgrade.

The only problem with that is it applies even if you have two of the same car. You’d need to buy separate upgrades for both cars, which can get redundant and irritating. A good alternative would have been to buy parts for certain car classifications instead of for the cars themselves.

Environment and graphics

The environment is just as much of a character as the cars. You’ll find destructible stone and wood railings that add to the physical immersion of the world. Physics aside, the world is just plain gorgeous.

FH3 is going to require a hefty rig to run. You’ll need 8GB of RAM at a minimum, and a GTX 970 to even start the car. However, for a game that looks this good, that’s incredibly light on requirements.

What’s the point of Forza Horizon 3?

The game’s overall objective appears to be ‘have fun’. You can engage in bucket list challenges that require specific cars and specific actions in certain race types. You’ll find dozens of hidden cars in abandoned barns, called ‘barn finds’, throughout the countryside. There are 350 cars in the game, waiting to be collected by players.

There’s a light premise: You’re the director of a racing festival, and it’s up to you to make it a success. You’re given the power to hire drivers to your team or fire them if you need to. It’s with this pretense that you’re immersed in the world, but the game sort of shoves this aside, opting to engage you with the sheer number of activities available.

Other racing games

Forza titles often draw a comparison to the Need for Speed series. Horizon and NFS may be similar in their slightly more arcade-focused approach, but FH3 takes the edge against even the best of the modern NFS titles. Forza has much more content.

NFS: World is the free online game in the NFS franchise. It features a multiplayer open world. There’s also a level system and a ton of new and improved cars to try and unlock.

Forza Motorsport, the other franchise with the Forza name, is a bit different from Horizon. They have similar driving / semi-sim qualities, but Motorsport focuses more on track-based racing and events. Horizon deals more with an open-ended experience, in contrast.

An engaging experience

Fans of racing games should pick this title up. It has great visuals and engaging control response. There are plenty of cars to collect, and the barn system is engaging enough to pull you away from tasks.

This method of player distraction always works in a developer’s favor. There’s so much to do that one objective can pull you away from another, and you’ll spend hours playing the game before you realize that you never did finish that first challenge.