When the original Forza Horizon released on the Xbox 360 in 2012, I was skeptical that the then newly established studio Playground Games (founded in 2009) would be able to break into the open world racing genre that was being dominated by Need for Speed and Burnout. Long story short, we really liked the game.
Fast forward two years and we finally got to play the successor to the Xbox exclusive which is of course now running on brand new hardware with the Xbox One (We did not play the Xbox 360 version of the game). The theme of Forza Horizon 2 is still the Horizon Festival which has moved from the fictional Colorado to a fictional southern Europe with Italy and France being the locations. Players once again are to complete various races, road trips and special events to gain XP to level up and progress through the ranks with the ultimate goal of reaching the Horizon Championship.
The world of Forza Horizon 2 has a good variety of roads, highways as well as cross country off-road terrain that had me driving around just for the fun of it many times before realizing, I was not completing any objectives at all apart from the addicting skill chains. If you have watched Top Gear before you know what it means to set out and find the perfect driving road and while Forza Horizon 2 may not have found the ultimate set of driving goodness, it comes pretty damn close to it. As players explore the world of this open world racer, they will come across large open landscapes filled with forests, fields, vineyards, mountains as well as lakes and special locations like a golf course, an airport and an old castle.
Forza Horizon 2 will have you compete in various championships which it doesn’t force down your throat in a rigid way but allows players to choose which type of cars you will be competing against. The game has quite a good selection of cars which range from Pick Up Truck off-roading monsters to hyper cars like the McLaren P1 as well as your usual selection of hot hatches, classic rally cars and Touring GT racers such as the fantastic Lamborghini Huracán that graces the cover of Forza Horizon 2.
The different race types of these championships are also pretty standard within the genre and include point-to-point checkpoint races, circuit races and cross-terrain races against opponents that are based on the Forza Drivatars that we have come to know from Forza 5 but they seem to work a lot better in Horizon 2. The races are balances reasonably well and make for a good challenge but I never had any real trouble getting into first place in any of the events. In between championships players have plenty of other options to spend the time as the world of Forza Horizon 2 is littered with XP and Fast Travel boards to crash through or compete in Bucket List events which are time or score based. These challenges will put players into a Lancia Delta S4 and find the closest path through a forest or rack up points while linking skill points together. These skill points will let players gain XP to level up by drifting, speeding, passing cars or causing wreckage mayhem. Linking these skill moves together will increase your multiplier and allow for even greater scores. I found these incredibly addicting and spent more time than I would like to admit racking up points while racing through the environment.
Barn Finds are back too where players can find extremely rare cars hidden in the world to then get them fixed up and participate in races or simply cruise through Southern Europe or compare cars at the car shows around the world – here players can check out friends and other Forza Horizon 2 player’s rides. Another challenge making its return are the Drivatar races where you can race against any Drivatar in the world and gain XP and currency to level up and buy new cars which can be customized, upgraded and tuned at the Garage as we were used to from the original game. In between Championships you will also be asked to compete in Special Events like racing against a train in a Lancia Fulvia or beating the floating air balloons in a cross-country race in a Ford Pickup truck. These races are then followed up by road trips from town to town where the championships are held – this is where you really get to check out the scenery of Forza Horizon 2 which can be quite epic and provides for great photo spots. Taking your favorite ride and parking it near the riviera makes from some nice shots.
When it comes to the actual handing – the meat and potatoes of any racing game – Forza Horizon 2 lands somewhere between Need for Speed arcade madness and the simulation style model from Forza 5 but it does lean towards the sim spectrum of the two which is refreshing. Don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely go crazy and throw down a ten second drift followed by a jump across a vineyard but pulling it off isn’t as simple and requires some skills as the physics model keeps the simulation grounded enough for my taste.
Forza Horizon 2 also includes multiplayer apart from the asynchronous aspects of competing against your friends on leaderboards for races, speed traps or skill chains. You can participate in races against your friends or hang out at Car Meets as well as take online road trips together.
As I was going through Forza Horizon 2 it became pretty clear to me within the first few hours – I was going to really like this game. I was proven to be correct as I completed the Horizon Champioship and that last achievement popped up as my smile was everlasting. While I would have liked a bit more spice to the roads in Playground Games’ follow up to the excellent first game, I still loved every minute I spent with Horizon 2. The game provides players with a fantastic selection of cars, events and music as well and I was never bored of firing up the engines on my ride. The Xbox One has quite a heavy hitter for their fall line up and every racing fan should take note of Forza Horizon 2.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Forza Horizon 2 was developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft for Xbox One and Xbox 360 on September 30th. A retail copy of the Xbox One version was provided to us by Microsoft for reviewing purposes.
