14 DAY TRIAL // 
Forza Horizon 2 will be instantly familiar to those who played the original Xbox 360 title that arrived in 2012, and the current project developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft does not aim to change the experience in any major ways and focuses on simply tweaking the core gameplay, while also upgrading the graphics and moving the action to Southern Europe.
The title still offers a very impressive mix of arcade and simulation style racing set in a big and engaging open world that welcomes a wide variety of players, with a lot of well simulated cars and plenty of beautiful moments.
Forza Horizon 2 is a spectacle and every aspect, from the core gameplay mechanics to the choice of tunes for the soundtrack, is carefully chosen to create a complex title that a Xbox One fan can play for hundreds of hours to get all cars and complete all events.
Story
Forza Horizon 2 once again asks the player to prove that he is the best driver that attends the major festival event, which this time around takes place in areas of Italy and France, and that means races need to be won and cars will be collected as the player explores more of the open world and finds the events that suit him best.
There are no characters worth mentioning in the racing title because humans are actually not important to the experience of the player. In fact, the two constant presences, whose names I did not even try to memorize, actively tend to stand between the player and the impressive races that they can enter.
The Horizon festival also plays a smaller role than the name of the title might suggest, and the general hipster atmosphere does little to enhance the experience of the player in any way.
Both northern Italy and southern France are good choices for open world racing, although they do not offer the same wide open areas that Colorado offered for the first installment in the series.
Forza Horizon 2 manages to capture the lazy atmosphere of the coastal cities and the inland farming area and the way in which thunderous cars can transform the entire zone.
Gamers can easily create their own narratives built around the cars they buy or the friends they develop rivalries with.
Gameplay
Forza Horizon 2 carefully walks the line between arcade and simulation and delivers a driving system that’s only slightly updated from the one in the first title, which is a testament of how good the results of Playground Games’ work were in 2012.
Each of the more than 200 included cars handles a bit differently and requires at least one race to get completely accustomed to, and there is a lot of variety when it comes to races, based on the choice of vehicle and on the region of the map where the player has progressed to.
The apparent goal of Forza Horizon 2 is to win enough championships to reach the final event and be crowned the best racer of the event, but the racing title is actually much more open and actively discourages gamers from simply rushing towards the end.
The championships are cool by themselves and the use of the Drivatar tech makes them pretty challenging, but the biggest attractions of the game are the Bucket List challenges and the special events.
The former are linked to supercars spread all over the world, each of them with a unique mission attached, and there are plenty of thrills to be found in taking over a new vehicle in order to complete the associated task.
The special events are unlocked after championships, and although they do not involve any actual competition, they are designed to be spectacular, with the first one having the gamer race a squad of acrobatic planes, the level of insanity growing from that point on.
Plenty of racing takes place over the open ground, with no regard for roads, and those are the most exciting of the bunch, even if the developers need to move a little into the realm of fantasy physics to make them happen.
Regardless of the event or the terrain, Forza Horizon 2 constantly evaluates the things that gamers do, and everything, from near misses to drifts and good driving without crashing, adds up experience points which can be used to open up particular perks that enhance the experience.
The game also offers random rewards when leveling up and there are also barn cars to be found all over the world.
If all the above is not enough, simply moving across the game world is exciting and fun and I spent 2 hours with the rivals concept, simply trying to perform better than the ghost of an opponent over the same track.
The design of Forza Horizon 2 is very engaging and there’s little to criticize about the game.
The circuits created for the championship events can feel a little chaotic at times, with twists and turns that seem designed to diminish the feeling of speed that the title is promoting, and there are moments when the offroad performances are so impressive that any sense of immersion disappears.
But the problems are very small when compared to the joy of racing in beautiful environments that Forza Horizon 2 delivers most of the time.
Graphics and audio
Forza Horizon 2 is the kind of video game that can be used in order to show customers the quality that the Xbox One can deliver when it comes to graphics, with a heavily tweaked engine that takes the already impressive core look of Forza Horizon 2 and makes it even more appealing.
The best moments are when the sun is either setting or just rising up from beyond the horizon, throwing shadows everywhere and filling the world with a reddish glow that makes the racing action feel more dramatic.
Rain-soaked moments are equally impressive, although the weather system can feel a little bit random at times, with water pooling across the roads and creating a haze that makes it harder but also more interesting to use the inside-the-vehicle perspective.
The vehicles included in Forza Horizon 2 are fully simulated, inside and outside, and are beautiful to look at both when they are standing still, eager to express their power, and when they are on the road, sometimes affected by cosmetic damage.
The sound design of Forza Horizon 2 matches its looks and the radio stations offer varied and cool music, all of it clearly selected to enhance the feeling of speed and competition, and I found myself especially enjoying the classic music choices.
Multiplayer
Forza Horizon 2 allows players to go online and compete directly with friends and to join an online session with just one button click, with the same core mechanics as in the single-player and with the added benefit of being able to outrace real humans.
The Drivatar concept is still present and automatically creates a profile for each gamer and uses it to populate the games of others. One problem that seems to have remained unsolved from the original title is that their level of aggressiveness seems a little too high.
The Good
- Driving model
- Variety of cars and events
- Progression system
The Bad
- Some tracks are weirdly designed
- Drivatars can be too agressive
Conclusion
The game has plenty of activities to keep players engaged in the long term and the tendency to push micro transactions introduced with Motorsport 5 has been eliminated almost completely.
There’s an immense feeling of joy and freedom that the racing experience from Playground Games can create, and the title can offer it to both veterans of the racing game genre and to newcomers looking for a fun title to spend time with.
