2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Let me know what you think about my reviews.
User avatar
VideoGameCritic
Site Admin
Posts: 18104
Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm

2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby VideoGameCritic » April 21st, 2015, 7:40 pm

Here's a game I thought I would love, but it left me disappointed. Comments?

User avatar
Atariboy
Posts: 956
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:07 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby Atariboy » April 21st, 2015, 9:17 pm

Nice review, although it leaves me curious what you would think of the 360 original.

Not owning a Xbox One, I recently went for the 360 port from Sumo Digital, a studio best known for the home versions of Sega's Outrun 2 line and Sega's kart racers.

So far above six hours in, I thought they did a nice job of handling it. The graphics are obviously toned way down and you lose the nice weather effects, but they play to the strengths of the hardware. For instance, instead of racing down barren looking fields, they instead place far more of the focus on paved surfaces, which are the title's strengths on the 360. Another example is that there are actually quite a few unique cars here that aren't present in the XB1 version, indicative that Sumo Digital did much more here than just port Turn 10's effort, and in many ways, instead produced their own version of it from the ground up.

You lose Storm Island and the DLC cars, but as your review talks about, that's not exactly a negative for some since they're not annoyingly being bombarded with ads for that content. And on the plus side, if you have ripped CD's to your hard drive or have mp3's stored on a thumb drive plugged into your 360, you can of course race with your own music playing in the background on the 360 version.

That's something that the "next generation" consoles from Sony and Microsoft have yet to provide, as I understand it. And it's much of the reason why I choose to play this now, rather than hold off until I buy a Xbox One.

Sut
Posts: 845
Joined: April 8th, 2015, 4:23 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby Sut » April 22nd, 2015, 5:00 am

The in game hawking of micro transactions and DLC is an horrendous current trend on Xbone and PS4 and more so it makes me feel that the PS4 could be my last modern console there is more than enough games and systems in the last 30 years to keep me entertained.
I just don't like paying £50-£60 for a game then have it try to sell me more and more and more.

User avatar
ptdebate
Posts: 1072
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 8:39 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby ptdebate » April 22nd, 2015, 7:18 pm

Atariboy wrote:That's something that the "next generation" consoles from Sony and Microsoft have yet to provide, as I understand it. And it's much of the reason why I choose to play this now, rather than hold off until I buy a Xbox One.


One thing that you can do now on the PS4 is listen to music on Spotify while playing your games. Hopefully the Xbox One will follow suit.

User avatar
Rev
Posts: 1487
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 7:31 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby Rev » April 22nd, 2015, 8:17 pm

Man... DLC and micro transactions are a huge bummer. I hate the fact that games try to nickle and dime you after you bought the game for full price...

User avatar
Atariboy
Posts: 956
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:07 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby Atariboy » April 23rd, 2015, 12:12 am

ptdebate wrote:
Atariboy wrote:That's something that the "next generation" consoles from Sony and Microsoft have yet to provide, as I understand it. And it's much of the reason why I choose to play this now, rather than hold off until I buy a Xbox One.


One thing that you can do now on the PS4 is listen to music on Spotify while playing your games. Hopefully the Xbox One will follow suit.


That's a subscription based streaming service. Not at all a substitute, as far as I'm concerned.

User avatar
ptdebate
Posts: 1072
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 8:39 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby ptdebate » April 24th, 2015, 3:28 pm

Atariboy wrote:
ptdebate wrote:
Atariboy wrote:That's something that the "next generation" consoles from Sony and Microsoft have yet to provide, as I understand it. And it's much of the reason why I choose to play this now, rather than hold off until I buy a Xbox One.


One thing that you can do now on the PS4 is listen to music on Spotify while playing your games. Hopefully the Xbox One will follow suit.


That's a subscription based streaming service. Not at all a substitute, as far as I'm concerned.


Well, you only have to have a subscription if you want to be ad-free (basically the same system as Pandora). I already had a sub so this was something I was eagerly anticipating. And I don't think it's a substitute, I merely mentioned it because it's somewhat similar in concept. I'm not a person who purchases physical copies of musical works so Spotify is already how I get all my music anyway.

User avatar
Atariboy
Posts: 956
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:07 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby Atariboy » April 28th, 2015, 6:32 pm

How intrusive are the ads? About the same length and frequency as YouTube?

If it's not too bad, I'll have to give it a try if I can still listen to music for free in select games. Hopefully they have a good selection of oldies from the 60's.

I really hope that MS and Sony both rethink this soon. And a return to greater integration of it would also be nice. The GTA trilogy on the original Xbox is a good example of how they actually took a step back with mp3 support in some ways when the 360 arrived. Gone was the ability to switch your in-car radio to your "tape deck" in GTAIV and V.

In it's place was the 360's generic mp3 ability that was available in every game, which automatically muted the in-game music and substituted your own mp3's. So instead of it being seamlessly integrated into the experience like on the original Xbox, instead, you had music that played constantly rather than just when you were in your car.

The universality of it was great, but the implementation of it just seemed sloppy after coming off the original Xbox.

User avatar
ptdebate
Posts: 1072
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 8:39 pm

Re: 2015/4/21: Xbox One: Forza Horizon 2

Postby ptdebate » April 28th, 2015, 7:43 pm

Atariboy wrote:How intrusive are the ads? About the same length and frequency as YouTube?

If it's not too bad, I'll have to give it a try if I can still listen to music for free in select games. Hopefully they have a good selection of oldies from the 60's.

I really hope that MS and Sony both rethink this soon. And a return to greater integration of it would also be nice. The GTA trilogy on the original Xbox is a good example of how they actually took a step back with mp3 support in some ways when the 360 arrived. Gone was the ability to switch your in-car radio to your "tape deck" in GTAIV and V.

In it's place was the 360's generic mp3 ability that was available in every game, which automatically muted the in-game music and substituted your own mp3's. So instead of it being seamlessly integrated into the experience like on the original Xbox, instead, you had music that played constantly rather than just when you were in your car.

The universality of it was great, but the implementation of it just seemed sloppy after coming off the original Xbox.


I've never used Spotify without a subscription but if it's anything like Pandora then they'll play ads every 2 or 3 songs lasting about 15 seconds.


Return to “Review Feedback”