Introduction
Forza Horizon 3 is an open world driving game developed by playground games. The game is based at a car festival with different people putting on different styles of racing all throughout the map. There are closed-circuit street style races, point to point races, off-road rally style races, and cross-country style races. Each race type requires different cars and skill sets. As you earn enough influence through different races and different tasks you progress through different seasons. These seasons change the physics of driving and provide new challenges such as snow rain driving.
The audience for this game is car and racing game fans. Beyond this, the game difficulty can easily be adjusted to cater to a wide variety of gamers ranging from casual to hardcore gamers. With the difficulty to the lowest settings the game is very easy and not challenging. With that said, when the difficulty is turned up to simulation level, the cars are very difficult to control. Couple this with increased opponent difficulty and the game can become almost impossible even for the most hardcore racing game fans.
Gameplay
The layout of Forza Horizon is very enjoyable. The open world map allows players to freely drive around and enjoy the cars they have purchased. The different styles of racing also keep the game fresh by needing different skill sets to compete in different races.
The game progresses at a speed that does not allow the user to get bored. It has a good pace that progresses the user through the seasons and makes more races available for completion. The slowest part of the game is saving credits to purchase more expensive cars. If the user has their eye on a car that is over 1,000,000 credits to purchase, they will find themselves racing for a long time to save this because in the best-case scenario you only win about 20,000 credits per race. In this aspect, the game can get a bit boring just racing and saving specifically for one expensive car.
Interest curve & Learning Curve
The interest curve for this game varies larger depending on the player’s interest in cars. The game could potentially become boring for users who do not have a strong passion for cars as the game becomes relatively repetitive. The nicer cars require much more money to purchase so acquiring these cars requires a large amount of time and effort to save up that much money.
The learning curve for this game is quite shallow with the game on the easiest settings. But as the player progresses and seeks a new challenge turning off the driver aids greatly increases the difficulty and makes the game much more complex to learn. With the driver aids on the game is very simple and only requires input to accelerate, brake and turn. When all of these aids are removed, the player must learn how to brake without locking up the wheels, accelerate without spinning the tires, and turn without spinning or hitting the wall. Learning these skills is much more difficult and has a steeper learning curve. Another difficult thing is when using the very fast cars the reaction time the user has is drastically cut. This makes using the very fast cars against the computer, who has almost instant reaction time, very difficult.
Decision Making
There are many decisions to be made in the game, the largest being what cars to use and purchase. Each car has its own characteristics such as better handling or straight-line speed. The player has full choice and all the cars in the game and is automatically matched with similar cars for individual races. The player also has the luxury to select which type of races they compete in. This varies from on track to off-road races and all depends on the player’s preference.
Mechanics
All of the core mechanics in the game can greatly be altered by changing the difficulty settings. This allows the player to adjust the core mechanics to become suited to their level as a player. More hardcore players might turn off all driver aids and assists to create the most realistic driving environment. While more casual players might leave the driver assists on to decrease difficulty and make the game more playable. When all of the assists are off the physics in the game are extremely realistic.
Acceleration
The driver aid that effects acceleration most is the traction control setting. With this setting turned on, the car will automatically adjust the amount of power so the wheels do not spin while accelerating. When this setting is off, the player must feather the throttle while accelerating to attempt to manually minimize the wheel spin. This increases the difficulty just by changing one of the car’s settings.
Braking
Similarly, to acceleration, the braking in the car is controlled by the anti-lock braking setting. When the brakes lock up in a car the car slides and will not decelerate as rapidly then if the brakes are applied at a pressure that will not allow them to lock. With the anti-lock brake setting on, the car with automatically alter the amount of braking applied so the brakes do not lock up. When this setting is off, the player must manually adjust the amount of brake pressure applied to limit brake lock. Minimizing brake lock will greatly decrease the stopping distance of the car allowing for later braking and faster lap times.
Turning
The driver aid that assists in turning is STM or stability control. With this on, the computer assists in preventing the car from oversteering, or sliding around corners. When this is turned off the player must control the car from oversteering and sliding around the corners but allows faster lap times due to all the power of the car being available.
Play Balancing & Feedback Loops
The game is kept balanced by grouping similar cars into categories for specific races. Each car’s performance is graded into categories that allow you to install custom upgrades to your car while keeping it in the same bracket as other cars you will be racing. This allows you to upgrade your cars to be competitive in any given bracket.
The game can also be balanced by the player by adjusting the difficulty levels. There are a wide variety of difficulty settings such as automatic and manual shifting for your car. Other difficulty settings include traction control, antilock brakes, and stability control. Turning these settings on or off can provide a much easier or harder experience for the user. Another setting is the opponent difficulty which has five different settings. Adjusting any of these can be done to make the game as challenging as the user desires.
The game has feedback loops to control the difficulty and other cars you are racing. The most obvious place this shows up is with the hardest computer difficulty selected. In this mode, the fastest driver you are against almost seems to have a rubber band kind of affect to always keep them close to you, and when you make one mistake they rocket past. This makes the hardest difficulty nearly impossible.
Forza Horizon 4 does not have much randomness in the game. With the opponent difficulty set, the speed and skill of the opponents is pretty consistent in every race. The game relies more on the user skill and user consistency to win. If the player wants to challenge themselves by turning up the opponent difficulty, then the importance of user skill is very important. The player must be skilled and very consistent in order to beat the computer while also minimizing driving mistakes.
Analysis
Forza Horizon 4 does a good job of being a fun game for the users under the definition of Koster’s Theory of Fun. The game is challenging and allows players to build their skill and continually improve.
Forza Horizon 4 provides a platform for people in all categories of Bartle’s Taxonomy of Players, which are killers, achievers, explorers and socializers. The game meets the needs of the ‘killers’ within races, either online against real players or against the computer. It meets these needs by feeding into the killer instinct and allowing players to triumph. The ‘achievers’ needs are also met by the game. This is mainly done through different levels of completion in different race types or skill challenges. The player’s progress through each of these are tracked and can be viewed to show your progress through the game. The needs of the ‘explorer’ type player are easily met with the open world design of the game. This allows the player to freely drive around and explore different areas and even search for new cars throughout the map.
Lazzaro’s Four Keys of fun show many parallels to Bartle’s Player Types. The four keys are easy fun, hard fun, people fun, and serious fun. Easy fun is handled in the game by the open world where you can freely explore and enjoy the game on a more casual level. Players can also exercise their creativity by customizing and designing different livery for their cars. Hard fun can be achieved by more serious players by increasing the difficulty to create an extremely challenging environment where they can triumph over their competitors. People fun is achieved through the online element to this game that allows the player to interact with other people playing on the open map as well as sharing their designed liveries in the marketplace. The game also provides serious fun through giving players the ability to drive and interact with cars they probably will not ever be able to drive in their lives. Forza Horizon 4 is a fun game because it combines all of the elements above into one game.
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