Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox 360)

I'm a Forza fan, so my review is going to be biased in one way or another! My only moan is that the XB360 version hasn't got the weather effects like the XB1 version, and I know the XB360 is quite capable of these effects, especially in some of the other games I own, so I put this slight detail down to idle software developers.There are 200+ cars to collect, and over 300 races in different divisions to complete once you finish the game, which really amazed me. I do hope that Turn 10 release a Season Pass and other DLC for the 360 version in the near future as they did with the first Horizon, as this will add more cars and races.Online is great, being able to race others across Europe is fun, just as long as you race against others that don't race dirty.

Forza Horizon was my idea of a brilliant game. Open world driving at it's best with a great soundtrack, and half-decent driving physics - more than can be said for most open-world driving games.So surely, after a fair bit of development, Horizon 2 should have been better? Sadly, not the case, which meant I came away thinking that £30 was a bit of a rip-off.1.) Soundtrack. In Horizon, Bass Arena was my station of choice and the amount of music was great - you'd have to play for a good while to hear it repeat a song. This game 'has' more stations and more songs, resulting in fewer songs per station. Yeah, that's the case for the Xbox One version, but the 360 gets the three stations from Horizon, and as a result far fewer songs. I played for about three hours on my first stint, and heard 'NRG' by Duck Sauce more times than I care to mention. Also, the voiceovers both in Cutscenes for Barn-Finds and on the Radio say the same thing over, and over, and over again. And the voices are really, really annoying.2.) World. Realism has always been a pretty big thing in any Forza game, and when they made Horizon they did the right thing by inventing a fictional area and setting the game there. So why have they not done that with this one? If you're going to put real places in a game map, at least try and make them look realistic. Last time I checked, Nice is a generously sized urban city. Not a small and winding coastal fishing town.3.) DLC. This was a problem with FH1 as much as it is with this one. The game cost £30 and I got a few hundred cars included with that, pretty much all of them with full cockpit views. So why do I then have to spend £4 for five cars - £0.80 per car? By that logic, the game should cost more than £100, so I fail to see why the cost is this high.Okay, I'll concede. Some of those points are pretty minor things that most won't care about. From my perspective, this is a 2/5, but I'm a perfectionist so I'll add a star to counter it. Should you buy this game? No. Horizon 1 is not that different and can be picked up for far less than this, and I'd recommend that from a value for money point of view.

"I'm stuck between 4 & 5 stars.... but I think 4 stars is fair."No, it is worth a 5 star rating"This is not Forza 2.3.4 or 5, obviously. This is pretty much an arcade game and frankly arcade graphics - Forza 3 or 4 has far better graphics than this and that is what, 3+ years old now. The graphics on Horizon 2 remind me a great deal of Dirt 2."This game has actually persuaded me it is time to upgrade to XBox One... because on 360 if you look closely at the interiors you can see the quality is there, but you are missing it"Game play? Well, oddly enough like Dirt 2 you navigate by a map, you highlight where you wish to go to and then you are 'Sat Naved' to the place. That works OK. The way you can generally drive about I quite like and the off road/short cut stuff adds a certain element of fun in a race."The map still works well. You can sat nav to any point on the map basically."You do not seem to earn credits very quickly and seem to spend them easily. I'm at level 35'ish right now but still only have about 7 cars and none of them very fancy. Unlike Forza 4 you do not seem able to buy cars or credits. I find that a bit irritating to be honest, there should be a way to fast track to bigger and better cars imo. If you are the average person who plays 'a bit' it would take you a very long time to get the cars at the top end vehicles such as Lambo, Porsche or Ferrari. Trying to buy a car is also messy imo."I am now at level 999... the highest you can go. That imo is crazy. You get Bronze, Silver and Gold arm bands, but that is it. Why not have 'Platinum' at level 1999 and Titanium at level 2999? The amount of code would be minute to do that. It is still imo way too difficult to get points to buy cars and I play a LOT obviously. I can well imagine an occasional player would soon be very frustrated."The races are way too short. 3 shortish laps usually or a 'end to end' run. What is then really odd is after the race you can do a 'rival challenge', on the same course which is fine. Except that rival can be in a car twice as powerful as you. I had one where I was in a class B and the rival was in a class S which was frankly a futile exercise."I still find that is the case, the only reasonable length race is the 'Horizon final', plus the rival thing is still very odd most of the time, with your time being say 3:59 with a class A car and then you get put against a X999 car which does the lap in 3:25... why?"You get night and day time. Myself I don't have great eyes and frankly find the night stuff I could really live without. It is a bit like the original Grid with the Japanese night racing down the mountain - I could never see a thing on that and I find this much the same"I still do not like the night races"Car handling/physics? Pretty 'dead', a bit like Forza 2. Again it is odd you can add 'race' suspension, brakes and so forth but seem unable to adjust them - maybe I am missing, something but I keep looking!"If you go back to Forza 4, then the handling on Horizon 2 is far, far easier. Plus, you cannot adjust the brakes and suspension etc, you get what you get. However what does appear to be very clever is that traction control on a 1970's Dodge works very differently to traction control on a modern Ferrari for example, the Dodge will still spin up and get out of shape if you push it at all.The screen refresh rate is OK as I know from my eyes what I can and cannot play for long periods. This seems to be about like Forza 3, not as good as Forza 4 but better by a mile than Gird AS."You can make and apply endless paint and graphics to the cars. It is however not like Forza 4, or rather it is but is an extremely 'clunky' version. I do a lot of graphics on Forza 4, but on Horizon 2 it is hard work - again it reminds me of the original Grid quite a bit."It is clunky, but you get used to it and I have sold maybe 100+ decals sets for cars so far"If it had been a LOT more like Forza 4 but with open world, it would have been fantastic"I do not use on-line at all, in any game as I detest it so cannot comment on it.But what this game really lacks is the ability for the user to define a race course and opponents. As in why can you not use the sat nav to pick say 6 points or 8 points to create your own race course?

Very happy with this game. Don't understand all the poor unrelated reviews this game is getting. The xbox one version is obviously the better one but the company said the 360 won't be as powerful and advanced as the xbox one and said it runs on the same engine as the first horizon game.The game it's self has one of the best driving i have played in a long time not including the first Forza Horizon. There are plenty of cars in the game (over 130 not including the barn finds) more then enough to choose from. The graphics are stunning and proves the 360 still has the capability of having good looking games. The lack of dlc for the 360 version ( for now) is a good thing because I feel dlc can be a game killer, it wasn't originally designed to add silly little items like extra cars and so on dlc was ment to enhance and extend the players game with more story. Dlc these days has gone to far.If you loved the first forza horizon this is a great buy and plays just as good as the first with a few changes.