I‘m not quite playing it just yet as it is still downloading, however since there was a deal going on Game Pass ($1 for 3 months, at least here in my region!) I’m about to dive in to some Forza Horizon 5.
I _loved_ Forza Motorsport 2, 3, and 4; I had a group of friends that were all fairly in to it and we had a weekly race night which was a blast! The last one of those was probably close to ten years ago by now, at a guess. The generational change from 360 to xbone broke everything up -- most people did not want to buy the xbone, plus the FM games on it were disappointing anyway!
I played a little bit of the earlier Horizons, but the online never quite worked right. It was fine for the Burnout Paradise style of group up with whoever happens to be in the same area, do an ad-hoc event, and move on; it was _impossible_ to organise a group of friends in to the same game and schedule an event together. As such, I messed around with them a little, had some fun, and never really thought too much about them again.
I'm no longer really looking for organised race nights with a group of friends, and it seems like I'm getting away with something by being allowed to pay $1 and just download it. It should run _ok enough_ on my PC if I mess around with some settings, so I figured I might as well give it a go.
At the very least I'll go drive a stupidly expensive car in to a volcano and call it a day.
I played some Forza Horizon 5 today! They succeeded in making a game that feels like the most inclusive frat party ever. Just incredibly corny vibes. One of the Cool Girl characters on the radio that talks to you constantly says at a scripted moment: “and now who’s ready for some FOO FIGHTERS!” and then one of their songs kicks in and blasts as you demolish a Mexican family’s house with a McLaren supercar.
While watching some streamers play Forza Horizon 5, I felt inspired to play a similar racing game… Cruis'n USA for N64! And it‘s great, certainly a classic that holds up in most respects. I didn’t know how silly it is. Like, why name a course “Iowa” when it's clearly modeled after Missouri with the arch at the end of it? And is the tunnel in Washington DC leading to the white house paved with $100 bills, supposed to be be political commentary? I guess Bill Clinton spent all that government pork on parties with cows and cowboys on the roof of the white house.
I appreciate how chaotic the traffic makes some of the tracks. The two-lane roads and tunnels get ridiculous, in particular the Redwoods and Death Valley, I'd get like 5-6 car pileups. There would also be times I'd set a track record by 5 seconds and come in 2nd place, so not progress. Not a big deal because it's not hard and the rubber banding is generous. Overall the game plays pretty solid with manual controls, and it's pretty relaxing.
The digitized girl with the fake boobs handing you a trophy at the end of every level in front of the American flag and girls in bikinis is just too much. Made me laugh and roll my eyes every time. But it all made sense when they showed pictures of the programming team during the credits. This game is an underrated pioneer of the horny game genre.
@“chazumaru”#p40636 this was real good to read and echoes the 3 hours I spent with it. I had dismisssd it for years as a Japanese Comedic (ugh) Dragon Quest and was really surprised it was in fact really fucking good Dragon Quest.
you‘re no longer looking at two screens at the same time during combat but it still captures the feeling of splitting your attention to focus on controlling different characters at the same time (similar to v’s playstyle in devil may cry 5). i like it
-
gorgeous art
-
[i'm into this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLuvK4zN0Yw)
-
[not into this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOptZfFgg8)
Agreed. I'm playing with English voices too because when the text is this localized it somehow makes less sense to me that it should act as subtitles for another language. I appreciate that it lets you turn voices off altogether but am frustrated it turns them off for cutscenes too…
I don‘t know Japanese but the English script for NEO all the way through felt authentically cringey in a way I recognized from when I was a teen. Good to hear it’s in line with the Japanese script. I loved it all. Much better than stuff like this being shoved into Trails games where it immediately feels like it clashes and brings me out of the experience:
@“sabertoothalex”#p47762 I don‘t think I have ever been so desperate to skip a cutscene as I have been watching the ones in FH5 lmao. I have been wanting to get really into a racing game cause I really haven’t sunk my teeth deep into one since the PS2 era (Burnout series, NFS Hot Pursuit 2, Midnight Club 3 were my favs) but idk if this one is for me. The open world racer thing is not my favorite, I am going to try out the new Gran Turismo when it comes out though.
I am really struggling with everyone constantly prattling about what a hotshot superstar I am in fh5 from literally the moment i arrived in mexico. I just placed fourth in three races in a row the same race three tries in a row, can we collectively please chill out
@“baftaboo”#p47923 I am really struggling with everyone constantly prattling about what a hotshot superstar I am in fh5 from literally the moment i arrived in mexico. I just placed fourth in three races in a row the same race three tries in a row, can we collectively please chill out
@“baftaboo”#p47923 oh absolutely. They’re always like “SUPERSTAR IS ON THE MOVE” as I drift extremely aggressively off the side of an overpass and flip the car. It’s so annoying but god that driving is fun
I bought a DSi to play through all the DS RPG‘s I missed when I couldn’t afford a DS, but I just end up playing Meteos over and over again. What a fun, quick, bag of heavily-seasoned chips of a game. All the little variations and details keep surprising me. That Tetsuya Mizuguchi, I‘ll tell ya…. he knows a thing or two about makin’ games!!!
I installed Horizon 5 on my mom‘s One S. Here’re my thoughts
* this machine runs the game like a champion
* *I* appreciate the cringe comedy of pretending I'm the star of a destructive country-wide music festival for petrolheads, but am embarrassed to be seen playing it by my mom
* Maybe I should learn Spanish. I want to visit Mexico. I want to run the Caballo Blanco ultramarathon and come in last place. I wanna
* I'm so much better at racing games in cockpit view, but that makes me sad because I want to be able to look at my ride
* The music is bad! I want to tune to an in-game radio station of local Mexican bands, or at least load my own tracks onto the hard drive like in the good old days. There are [some Mexican artists](https://nfssoundtrack.com/forzahorizon5/) on the OST, but not enough
Well a mere 20 years late, I finally started Grand Theft Auto III for the first time, ever, on my Switch. First impressions:
-
lmao, the Rockstar AAA Open World formula truly has not evolved in any meaningful way at all since this game, just added more bells and whistles
-
I’m struck all over again by the feeling of malaise I’ve encountered in every single Rockstar game I’ve tried: what’s the point? 99% of the open world feels like empty, dead space. Being big and having neutral NPCs spouting random soundbites like theme park animatronics doesn’t make Liberty City feel like a real place: the fact that you can’t enter buildings, talk to people who aren’t mission/item dispensers or do much of anything at all outside of jump, punch, drive and shoot makes sure of that. Your interaction possibilities with Big Level are so shallow… that’s probably why so many open worlds rely on collectible checklist shit!
-
People surely don’t play these games for the combat and movement mechanics, which have been middling bits and pieces on loan from more focused action games since day one.
-
Because they’re designed to let you ignore the missions, there is basically no escalation in challenge or buildup of mechanics in these games. The game at 12 hours in doesn’t feel much different from at 2.
-
I’m gonna say it: maybe the big move from a series of sandboxy discrete levels to an open world maybe wasn’t actually a step forward for _GTA_ mission design! These games are always at their best when all the environmental destruction factors are set against creative mission objectives to produce controlled chaos. Everything’s built around the missions to this day and the open world is mostly just minigames and dead air - yet the open world seems to restrict mission design as much as it expands it! Then again: I have not actually played the 2D games, so maybe my impression of them is totally wrong and idealized.
-
I mean, I can totally see this blowing minds in 2001 but, like, it’s really barely changed at all even in _RDR_.
-
Anyway, I sure hope the Switch version gets framerate patches.
I‘m loving this Tails of Iron game right now. Got some nice, soft dark vibes that make me think of Hollow Knight. I’m really liking the combat too, it has a good mix of overpowering your enemies but you gotta be on your toes and the boss fights give you good challenge. I'm really digging these 2D slap-em-ups like this and Legend of Tianding.
I finished Voice of Cards and got all the endings. The game only takes about 12ish hours to get to the last boss, which is honestly a big relief. Overall it was a solid JRPG which cuts all the fat, with it‘s tabletop-like format, backtracking is easy, very few random encounters but enough enemy variety and mechanics to keep it interesting. It’s got the classic Yoko Taro writing of an inconspicuous darkness mixed with some oddball comedy. It was actually the first game to make me laugh out loud in a long time.
The only complaints I have is it's not too challenging (this could be a plus for you) for about 80% of the game if you understand what you're doing. I think I only used maybe 10 healing items the whole time, there could be more tension.
I may write some more about it later, but for now it's probably my favourite game from this year.