DO NOT BUY Forza Horizon 5 - Very Disappointing

Hello, welcome back to a new video game

review. So today I'm going to be reviewing

the brand new racing game Forza 5.

Very excited to play this as an avid fan

of racing games. I am somewhat of a

professional Mario Kart 8 player, so

racing games are kind of my thing, and

I've just been counting down the days

waiting for this game to release, and I

finally got to buy the game and download

it. And I played a good several hours of

the game, and unfortunately, it's just

kind of disappointing and not quite up to

my standards. Let me explain. So when you

first begin the game, you're forced to

watch all of these stupid cutscenes of

some big aeroplane flying overhead and

dropping cars out from its cargo

thingamajig out of its backside and then

parachuting down to the ground. And

although this looks kind of cool at first,

it gets a bit tiresome and you can't skip

any of these cutscenes. All these

cutscenes of you arriving in Mexico at the

Forza racing event thing, they go on for

nearly half an hour. You can't skip any of

the cutscenes. You go watch all of these

cringy characters talking to each other.

I don't even know why they bother with all

these characters and dialogue and trying

to set up like a backstory for a racing

game. I just want to race the— I honestly

couldn't care less about the story and the

backdrop and the setting and the

characters and why we're here in Mexico.

And then there's also this character

creation menu, which is really pointless.

You get to choose from the most ugliest

characters models I have ever seen in a

video game. I just could not make a cute

looking female, and all the hairstyles

look dumb. And for some reason you can

choose prosthetic limbs as well. Really,

why does it matter what my character looks

like when I'm supposed to be inside of a

car 99% of the time? You can't even see

the character because the camera angle is

from behind the car or inside of the car.

It really doesn't matter what your

character looks like, but for some reason

they felt the need to waste your time with

making you create a character. And then

you can also choose the character's

pronouns. He or her, they or them. It's so

cringe. So after you finish making your

character, which is a complete waste of

time, you finally get back into the car

and you can start doing some driving

again. And basically the concept of the

game is supposed to be like an open-world

online racing game, and it has a big map,

and on the map there's different

objectives you can try to finish. And you

drive towards the objectives and then you

get some kind of mission. Usually involves

just driving from point A to point B.

While some characters talk in the

background and the characters in the

background will start talking, give you

some information on the background of why

you're doing this mission, some story,

which is so stupid. Just can't they just

keep it to racing and forget all this

story building kind of stuff? It seems so

unnecessary. And when you're driving in

the open world, you'll see other players

driving around too. They have gamertags

hovering above their cars and you would

think, oh look, there's other players

driving around too. And I'm not sure if

they're actually really other players

because the way they drive is very robotic

and it looks just like AI. They all drive

at the same speed. They're very easy to

overtake and they don't really take any

effort to avoid you if you're about to

crash into them head-on. It seems like the

game is trying to trick you into thinking

or feeling or believing that there's like

a world full of other gamers you're

driving along with, and it just feels kind

of cheap, to be honest. I don't know why

they felt the need to try and pull off

this open world gimmick thing with other

players driving around you when they

didn't even implement it properly and

genuinely. It just, it feels like they're

trying to trick you with bots and it

doesn't feel fun at all. Okay, so let's

get into the meat of the game, the actual

driving and racing. Is it fun? Well, no,

not really. Compared to Mario Kart 8, the

drifting and the handling of the cars is

very clunky and unresponsive and just

annoying. And one of the main features of

the Forza racing series is the drifting.

Drifting is supposed to be like one of the

very hard skills to be able to master in

the game, and it just feels really

annoying to pull off. It's very difficult

to keep the car under control and stop it

from swerving uncontrollably. In Mario

Kart 8, the drifting just feels way

better, way more satisfying, and it's just

easier. The handling of the cars just

feels extremely frustrating. I don't know

if this is actually what cars feel like in

real life, because I, I don't drive a car,

but it just feels like the roads are very

slippery and you're constantly slipping

and sliding around, and the steering is so

bad it's very hard to turn around corners.

The problem was I just didn't feel like I

was having fun driving these cars. I felt

annoyed, I felt irritated. My stupid car

kept swerving off the road into obstacles,

and the actual driving mechanics are very

basic. Basically, you have a brake and a

drift button, and the entire game you

holding down the W button. In Mario Kart

8, it's way more action-packed. You've got

all the boosts, you get the boosted

drifts, you've got all the game items and

the weapons and the missiles and the traps

you can launch and use against other

players. In Forza 5, you've got nothing.

All you can do is brake and accelerate.

It just feels like the entire game

involves holding down the W button and

that's it. There's barely anything to the

gameplay. It's so basic and bare bones, I

felt bored straight away. And that brings

me to the controls in the game. The

controls in the game are very

uncomfortable. Now maybe the game was

designed to be played with one of those

fancy steering wheels and the pedals and

the like professional gamer setup, which I

do not have. You know, I'm a PC gamer. I

don't have these gaming controllers or

console controllers or joysticks or

whatever. I play purely with mouse and

keyboard. And number one, the mouse is

completely not used in the game apart from

swiveling the camera all the way around,

which is pointless. So you don't even need

to touch the mouse during the game. You

got to use the WASD keys to accelerate.

W is to go forwards, S is to brake,

and you turn left and right with the A and

D buttons. And then you got the spacebar,

which drifts. So you got your left hand on

the WASD and then you got your right hand

on the spacebar and it just feels really

uncomfortable. The control system in GTA 5

for the driving is so much better. You

just use W to accelerate, and then you can

use the mouse to control the steering and

the camera. That's such a much more

convenient and better way of controlling a

vehicle. And that brings me to my other

point. In Forza 5, all you do is drive a

car, and the driving is worse than the

driving in GTA 5. It's more frustrating

and annoying to handle the vehicles. So

why don't you just get GTA 5? GTA 5 has

has racing as well. It's got a huge open

world, which is an actual open world,

which feels lively and populated. The open

world in Forza Horizon 5 feels so lifeless

and dead. There's no pedestrians, there's

no actual people on the streets apart from

the spectators. The city just feels so

fake. If I had to describe what Forza

Horizon 5 is like, it's like imagine you

just took the driving bit of GTA 5, got

rid of everything else which made it

amazing, and then just made the driving

bit even more frustrating and annoying to

play, and then you've got Forza 5.

Seriously, why don't you just get GTA 5?

Because then at least you can get out the

car, you can walk around the city, and you

can also attack people and have fun doing

different things in the game if you get

bored of the driving. I don't see any

point of choosing Forza 5 over something

like GTA 5, or maybe even any of the GTA

games, to be honest. So yeah, I don't

really see the point of this game. I'm not

a huge fan of this iteration of the Forza

series. If you wanted pure racing, I'd

prefer to play Mario Kart. If you wanted

realistic racing and driving, I'd prefer

to play GTA 5. So those are my thoughts on

the game. I don't recommend buying this

game. It's very expensive as well, it's

£50 for basically a watered-down version

of the driving portion of GTA 5. It just

seems kind of silly to pay that much money

for a crappy version of a different game.