Forza Horizon 2 - Xbox 360 and Xbox one

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

Another announcement before E3 , are they going to have anything left to announce on the day ?

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/06/02/i ... -announced

Quote:

IGN First: Forza Horizon 2 Announced

Open-world racing sequel heading to Xbox One and Xbox 360 this fall.

It’s time to crank up the stereo and hit the open road once again, as Microsoft has announced Forza Horizon 2, the next installment in their flagship racing series. Forza Horizon 2 is in development for Xbox One and Xbox 360 and due for release this fall.

The racer follows 2012’s critically acclaimed franchise spinoff Forza Horizon for Xbox 360 and 2013’s frontline Xbox One launch game Forza Motorsport 5. Development is being handled primarily by Horizon 1 studio Playground Games, though the team is collaborating closely with the Motorsport team at Turn 10 Studios; the two teams share a technology pipeline as well as select key personnel.

[Turn 10 and Playground] share this belief that we can create a true home for racing fans on Xbox One,” said Horizon 2 creative director Ralph Fulton.

In making the leap to Xbox One, Forza Horizon 2 will include hundreds of cars, according to Playground Games, headlined by the 2015 Lamborghini Huracán. A long-awaited weather system will also make its Forza debut, while Forza 5’s Drivatar system is also being adapted for Horizon 2.

As for the game’s setting? Contrary to recent rumors, it won’t take place in the bayous of Louisiana. Instead, the game will take place in gorgeous Southern Europe, leading to, in Fulton’s words, “incredible diversity” and “amazing vistas.” Music will again play a big part in the game, and a music festival will be the central event around which the game’s activities revolve.

Extensive improvements and features are in store for Horizon 2, which IGN will showcase throughout June as part of our brand-new IGN First initiative. We traveled to Playground Games in the UK and brought back a (metric!) ton of content that we’re excited to share with you all month long, including tomorrow’s full preview of our hands-on time with the game.

That sound you hear in the distance is the sound check for another music festival and the revving up of supercar engines…

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Meh, I played the first one for a couple of hours and got bored.

Trousers · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3073

WANT.

I played the last one to completion which is rare for me and a driving game.

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Mon Jun 02, 2014 16:50

"DLC will again play a big part in the game, and paying to avoid days of grind will be the central event around which the game’s activities revolve."

Surely?

(Hope not)

myp · **Posted:** Mon Jun 02, 2014 19:48

The only Forza I owned that I didn't finish.

Trousers · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3073

This is brilliant.

If you didn't get on with the first one then this still won't appeal but it's utterly beautiful, handles really well and is constantly throwing something new at you to try out. It's less po faced than the original and there's a lot more variety in the events and it records clips when you do something awesome.

The skill meter is very PGR / MSR esque and I've probably spent more time restarting as a result of a fucked skill chain than I have restarting because of a bad corner.

But none of you have an Xbox One and I don't think anyone liked FH1 so FUCK YOU ALL.

myp · **Posted:** Tue Jan 13, 2015 10:20

Forza Horizon was the only Forza game I played that I didn't finish. It looked great, but the handling was too arcadey.

Weirdly, I'm having more fun with The Crew despite the middling reviews.

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

FYI Microsoft have just announced Forza 6

http://kotaku.com/forza-6-announced-1679118723

Quote:

Forza 6 Announced

Microsoft just showed the first trailer for Forza 6. And by trailer, I mean commercial for new car that also happens to be in the game.

I'm not kidding; half the video is actual footage of the car itself being shown off at the Detroit Auto Show. The other half is a slow pan around the game's model of the GT.

It's Xbox One-only

myp · **Posted:** Tue Jan 13, 2015 10:25

£50 for the base game, £35 for the season pass, career mode excessively grindy to encourage you to buy in-game credits...unless they've learnt their lesson, of course.

Forza 4 was pretty much perfection, it's really sad.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Xbox One only is a good sign though, maybe now we'll start getting some next gen advancements.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10173

5 was bone only as well wasn't it?

myp · **Posted:** Wed Jan 14, 2015 15:45

BikNorton wrote:

5 was bone only as well wasn't it?

Yep.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Future Warrior wrote:

BikNorton wrote:

5 was bone only as well wasn't it?

Yep.

Was it? Huh. Well, there you go.

edit: oh, I was thinking about horizon 2

myp · **Posted:** Wed Jan 14, 2015 15:48

It used the Power of the Cloud^TM to provide fewer tracks, more DLC and more microtransactions than ever before!

Trousers · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3073

It was on offer for £24 this month as part of Games with Gold and all that. So with microtransactions that's only £75 then. Tits.

There's none of that in FH2. You can buy treasure maps or car tokens if you're insane as it's the exploration that makes for the fun.

ALSO I did an extreme off road championship last night which was basically like playing a Tony Hawk's game trying to string together a massive skill combo. Superb game.

myp · **Posted:** Wed Jan 14, 2015 16:42

I'm sure I'll get one eventually, but it'll be nearer the end of the hardware generation as I did with the PS3.

myp · **Posted:** Tue Sep 13, 2016 12:43

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Forza Horizon 4 is now out and I am finding it tremendously good fun.

I believe one of the criticisms is that it doesn't really move things along that much from 3 (or 2.....) in some regards but I haven't played any of the others so it's all fresh to me.

Also XB1X gets a choice between native 4K at 30FPS or 1080p upscaled at 60FPS. I tried the 4K mode but couldn't get on with the framerate at all (despite it looking GORGEOUS) so went for the 60FPS mode.

It's all very 'festival atmosphere' and filled with lovely young people who don't look fat and old and miserable like me, but that's fine because I was thin and young and miserable once. I really like the soundtrack although it might not be everyone's cup of tea, and it's got an infectious sense of silly fun that I find endearing.

Last night I got to race against a hovercraft. (Sorry about the audio there was some copyright weirdness going on.)

GazChap · **Posted:** Thu Oct 04, 2018 9:52

I had a quick 10 minutes on FH4 last night (on Windows, but I was seeing lots of Xbox-y friends driving past me so I assume it's cross-play)

I was quite disappointed, but that wasn't the game's fault. I'd bought it with the intention of streaming it to my TV on the Steam Link, but because it's a UWP game it is a right ballache to get streaming, and constantly stutters while it's doing it

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Oct 04, 2018 9:55

The perfect opportunity to post this... Mesmerising!

https://twitter.com/britishgaming/statu ... 2597253120

Whoever coded the car avoidance AI on these sheep deserves a raise pic.twitter.com/s2floHIQ4z
— Mark Brown (@britishgaming) September 21, 2018

GazChap · **Posted:** Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:39

TheVision wrote:

The perfect opportunity to post this... Mesmerising!

https://twitter.com/britishgaming/statu ... 2597253120

Whoever coded the car avoidance AI on these sheep deserves a raise pic.twitter.com/s2floHIQ4z
— Mark Brown (@britishgaming) September 21, 2018

It was that tweet that made me buy the game.

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:41

Brilliant! I can't stop watching it.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

I played more of this last night. It's fantastic.

Also, I am increasingly convinced it's got its tongue very firmly in its cheek when it comes to the over the top festival atmosphere and happy shiny people, there's some nice dry wit in there and a generous dollop of humour.

It's got on the right side of me 'feel wise', if that makes sense, but I appreciate not everyone will take it the same way.

Also, some of the most fun cars are the older ones, 1979 Talbot Sunbeam FTW!

PRO TIP - Don't rock up to a twisty turny winter road race in a Ferrari 458, those things aren't snow cars.

The slot machine game where you win prizes (anything from a pair of shoes to some of the best cars in the game) is ace, I suspect this may have been micro-transactions at one point but Microsoft thought better of it, so now you just get spins of the game as rewards for doing stuff. (Or maybe this is how it was intended to work all along.)

Anyway, this game is fab, and for a potential price of entry of just £7.99 for a month of Game Pass, you'd be proper bonkers not to.

GazChap · **Posted:** Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:54

GazChap wrote:

but I was seeing lots of Xbox-y friends driving past me so I assume it's cross-play

Did some races last night where I was up against lots of Xbox-y friends on the grid, but they all drove suspiciously like AI... I thought it was a little strange the first time round that all of these people just happened to be online playing.

What's the craic with that, then?

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

It populates the world with AI 'Drivatars' in offline mode but uses the names of people from your friends list.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Tried the demo yesterday, wasn't enough for me to chuck £50 at it, but if I can get a game pass for only a month, that'll do me!

Edit. Wait, I have an offer for 14 day free game pass trial, even better!

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Am downloading 64gb of game, for free! Legitimately! Bargain.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Well, this is thoroughly good fun. Looks great on my measly GTX960. 2 things though.
I'm finding it remarkably tricky to remember to drive on the left, too many US based driving games I think.
The farmers who own the dry stone walls are going to be pissed!

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Trooper wrote:

I'm finding it remarkably tricky to remember to drive on the left, too many US based driving games I think.

Trooper wrote:

The farmers who own the dry stone walls are going to be pissed!

I had a race against The Flying Scotsman last night.

This is as awesome as it sounds.

Also, we're planning a multiplayer session tonight with cross-platform play going on, and also we're going to try and use the cross-platform chat party thing as well - which apparently works!

I shall report back as to how it all goes.

(Not my video.)

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Well I can't comment on how the crossplay works as the one guy who was due to be joining us on PC kept having the game crash whenever he enabled sound, which gave the dedicated console players in our group much to chuckle about.

In the end we had four of us on, all playing on XBox One or XB1X, using the Party and Party Chat functionality of the console itself. (From a Party you can invite people into the game itself, whereby they join the same 'convoy' as you.) I do like the way you can just plug a headset into the XB1's gamepad, and yes I know that was a thing on 360 as well but I still like it now, so there.

The game itself, WHEN IT WORKED, was great fun. Unfortunately the Forza servers were clearly overloaded to absolute fuck, with the game struggling dreadfully to put us all into races together at times, we got quite used to seeing 'ALLOCATING SERVER' messages, or having one of us randomly ejected from the convoy and suchlike.

In the main it was OK, but it's definitely not quite working as intended at the moment.

The online world thing is very well done, gracefully transitioning from the open world to events and back again as required, so you can do whatever you want in an 'online multiplayer single player game' between events, for example. (i.e. Between events I was just chatting shit to the chaps and driving around to find Influence and Fast Travel boards, which is progress that remains relevant in the single player and/or offline side of the game.)

Once the online stuff works 100% it'll be awesomely impressive, but even in its current slightly clonky state, we got three really enjoyable hours out of it, and are intending to return for more next week.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Spent a lot of yesterday playing, currently at l22.

Great fun, with a few annoying niggles, but loads to do. I've found that if I change my way of thinking I really enjoy it, I've stopped caring if I actually win a race, as that way lies madness, and just play to enjoy the driving. Coming mid pack nets you 90% of the influence and cash anyway. Sometimes I win, sometimes I come last, but regardless I'm always working towards something.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38659

So if you own this on Windows, you own it on Xbox?

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

DavPaz wrote:

So if you own this on Windows, you own it on Xbox?

Crossplay means being able to play together online with people on Windows or Xbox.

myp · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:12

That would be crossbuy.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

DavPaz wrote:

So if you own this on Windows, you own it on Xbox?

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/games/ga ... f72b1a1ab6

Attachment:

LMGTFY.PNG

TheVision · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:14

DavPaz wrote:

So if you own this on Windows, you own it on Xbox?

Yes. (as long as it's a digital purchase) It's part of the Xbox play anywhere thing that Microsoft do. You can play it anywhere... anywhere you have a PC or an Xbox that is.

myp · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:18

So it is crossbuy.

TheVision · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:20

Nah. It's nothing like it.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Online is a bit shonky at the moment. You can wait ages for a ranked match to start, for it to kick you out completely if one of the 12 in the match doesn't respond, then you seem to go to the back of the queue again. Took me about 20 minutes to actually start a ranked matched just now. Then you have lots of people seemingly disconnecting quite a bit during the match.

Also, if you play unranked you cannot stop. Literally. Once the match ends, you get put into the next match with no ability to logout. You have to go through the whole startup sequence, which takes almost 5 minutes before you can quit the first race. It's actually quicker to turn off the game and restart to get out of the online match, which is crazy.

I think i'm L34 or something now.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Yeah TBH I've just been dropping the game into 'Horizon Solo' mode and focusing on playing the game's 'campaign mode' as it were.

I'd put it down to early gremlins and also the fact the game's servers are clearly getting hammered at the moment (as we witnessed on Saturday night), I'd imagine it'll get fixed up and calm down in the days and weeks to come.

That said outside of playing with my chums I'll be quite happy just doing my own thing anyway, as I'm not a massive fan of playing online games with random people.

I'm endlessly impressed with just how gorgeous the game looks, if you told me the 60FPS mode was running on a high-end PC - I'd believe you. (The 4K 30FPS mode, whilst actually having more of the shinies turned on, loses me somewhat with its motion blur and lower framerate, I don't really get on with it at all.)

There's a good Digital Foundry video about it, the XB1X version certainly isn't matching the PC's ULTRA or EXTREME settings, but it's really not a million miles off. And since a friend of mine couldn't even enable sound without the game crashing on his PC, there's something to be said for console convenience.....

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

8 hours of play over the weekend

Good stuff.
It plays really well, when you get in the zone it flows, and it looks gorgeous.
Loads to do, I get regularly sidetracked when I try and do stuff. The map is relatively small, but it is jam packed with loads of shit.
Online is pretty good fun (when it works). The forzathon live every hour is a hoot (random challenges for a group of a dozen or so players, playing in speed traps, doing the biggest jumps etc…), the “get to the end by any means necessary” races are great

. I’m a straight line, no matter what kinda guy, which more often than not ends up with me on my roof in a tree…
It really feels like the UK countryside when you are driving around.
The dude-ness of the horizon event has been toned down, less twats shouting at you all the time.

Not so good stuff.
As mentioned, the online in shonky at the moment.
The UI is a mess, there is so much to do that it can be really difficult to focus on anything, the map is layers upon layers of icons. You can filter, but that filter seems to get reset at random. And there is no easy way to just filter out completed stuff.
The choice of what you can change at any point seems arbitrary at best. I can only change my outfit when I’m at home, or at the festival, but I can change my car at any point? When can I tune my car? At any point or only at home, or at the festival? I honestly have no idea. How do I sell duplicates of cars in my garage? Can I do that? Can I only auction them? It’s all a bit overwhelming and obtuse.
Sometimes the handling falls in the bad spot between sim and arcade. Most of the time it is totally fine, but every so often you get into a tank-slapper that you had no option of avoiding and can’t recover from. It’s not sim enough for you to be able to instinctively be able to recover, nor arcade enough to stop it happening in the first place.

All in all, 2 thumbs up. I’m at work and want to be at home playing it again, even after rinsing it over the weekend.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

The 'videogame' story campaign missions are ace - you get to do Out Run!

(Note I do not do very well at it.)

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

We'll have to wait till summer to get good times on the challenges, which I can't decide if that is good or shit game design...

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

You can do the monthly 'Rivals' challenge which is on a fixed time of year. (Fixed car and tune as well.)

We have been jousting at it quite a lot.

Attachment:

402aa3b1-4975-4bac-a453-f60b21e73fdd.jpg

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

We had a really good session on this last night, with six of us in our convoy. The online stuff is a lot better now, although it was still taking a while to recombobulate our convoy after each event.

We'd all pre-agreed that the car limit would be B700, but beyond that you could do whatever you want for each of the main race types (road, dirt, cross country, drag). This led to some really eclectic starting lines.

My Robin Reliant van (with Only Fools and Horses skin, naturally) looked like it might win a short drag race but unfortunately ran out of steam.

We also had a go at the 'Infected' game mode which is a sort of last man standing affair in a cordoned off area of the map, one person starts off as infected, and has to infect someone else before the timer expires, then the two infected go after the rest, and so on.

Finally, as daft as it sounds the way you change the appearance of your driver, with emotes and clothes and all the rest of it, ended up being really entertaining, as we'd all apparently worked on making our people look as fucking stupid as possible, if the podiums were anything to go by.

Fab game in multiplayer, it filled up an entire Saturday night effortlessly.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

If you need an extra player, I'd be up for joining in on occasion, assuming the crossplay actually works...

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

A well deserved Top Ten Games of the Year nod from John Linneman over at Eurogamer. (It came in at Number 7.)

I've got back into this over the last week or so as they've dropped the expansion island which I'd already paid for as part of the Ultimate Edition.

https://youtu.be/cQt4kjlk7mM?t=225

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Game pass is only a quid for a month at the moment, so I thought why not and i'll give this another go.

Crashes on load, won't start at all anymore. Lots of people online with the same problem and no solutions. The joys of PC gaming...

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Get an XBox OneX innit.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22392

Turns out it starts if you don't have chrome running, because... <shrug>
You can play on keyboard, but as soon as you start trying to use a usb controller it crashes.

So... yeah.

Be Excellent To Each Other

Forza Horizon 2 - Xbox 360 and Xbox one
And now 4!

Who is online

Be Excellent To Each Other

Forza Horizon 2 - Xbox 360 and Xbox one And now 4!

Who is online

Forza Horizon 2 - Xbox 360 and Xbox one
And now 4!