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Over the Horizon? Why a game from 2018 is still number one – The Traxion Podcast, episode eight

Forza Horizon 4, aka the game that keeps on giving. Created by Playground Games, supported by Sumo Digital, as we approach its third year on sale there are still monthly car additions. On top of that, the game was recently released on Steam and an even larger PC audience can now experience the UK-based open-world…Continue reading “Over the Horizon? Why a game from 2018 is still number one – The Traxion Podcast, episode eight”»

Over the Horizon? Why a game from 2018 is still number one - The Traxion Podcast, episode eight

Forza Horizon 4, aka the game that keeps on giving. Created by Playground Games, supported by Sumo Digital, as we approach its third year on sale there are still monthly car additions.

On top of that, the game was recently released on Steam and an even larger PC audience can now experience the UK-based open-world racer.

All three of our podcast team have played this game recently, with Justin Sutton being our resident Forza Horizon 4 expert and leading us through why its appeal is so enduring but also, what could be improved in the future.

The Traxion Podcast is available on all major podcast outlets. Simply search “Traxion Podcast” on your favourite podcast service and subscribe to get instant notifications when the latest episode releases.

Hosted by Justin Sutton, John Munro and Thomas Harrison-Lord.

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The Traxion Podcast episode eight, full transcript

Here’s the automated transcript and all its glory.

Justin Sutton:

Hello and welcome back to the traction podcast, where today we’re going to be discussing something very near and dear to my heart. Specifically a game that just launched on Steam, not that long ago, actually, but it’s somehow topping the racing game charts, as it were. And yet it’s from 2018. My name is Justin and joining me today are of course, Tom and John say, hello guys.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Hello guys.

John Munro:

Hello everybody.

Justin Sutton:

The game I am talking about as you guys will know this already, of course, but the people at home will not know this. The game I’m talking about is of course, Forza Horizon 4, which has been, extremely successful on Steam. No, I mean, I could have told you that was going to happen. I could have predicted that, nobody likes using the Microsoft store. I’ve been using it to play Forza Horizon games for years now. And I can tell you, it’s terrible and I hate it and I wish I could have gotten the game on Steam. So I’m thrilled that it’s on Steam. It’s fantastic. It’s doing very well. As we know, the big stat, the key stat here, that we pulled in and we talked about was that there was more than 14,000 concurrent players on Steam in its first 24 hours.

Justin Sutton:

Which is the highest of any, of any racing game it’s done extremely well. It’s done extremely well outside of Steam, as you guys will know as well too. It’s just a hugely popular game. It has in fact, been played by 24 million players since lunch. And I assume that includes game pass though. I assume that that’s factoring in people, who’ve got the game pass, so it’s not people who purchase the game, but number of people that have played the game, and we’re all at different levels of experience. So, just for the people at home, I am obsessed with this game. I don’t play it as much as I used to, 2021, I’ve just been too busy and playing other games and stuff like that. Cyberpunk took over my life for a little bit and then Tom, you’ve played it a bit, quite a bit, some hours and stuff, for Traxion, right. But you’ve played, you’ve played it and, and gotten a feel for it and, and that kind of stuff. Whereas John, you are brand spanking new.

John Munro:

Absolutely. Yeah. Look forward to talking about it.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

When did you start playing it John?

John Munro:

I actually started playing, this weekend. So when we were recording this literally the weekend, we’re recording this. So, and I promise I did this in preparation for the podcast, not because I was just wanting to flunk off and have some fun, but no, it was, yeah, it was really, really good fun. And yeah, I’m looking forward to discussing it, as I say.

Justin Sutton:

Absolutely. So the first thing that I wanted to talk about actually is kind of the worst part about this news. Tom, I’ll go to you first on this. How do you feel about a game from 2018 being $60?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh yeah. No, don’t like it, don’t it, because ultimately, on other platforms, on other versions that say there’s been a game is released, it’s got maybe a season pass, or DCL or updates over a couple of years, and then there’s normally like a Game of the Year Edition or Ultimate Edition or Complete, which bundles it altogether for a reduction. We’re all sort of programmed to expect that. And here’s a game that comes out. Sorry. When did it first come out again? Justin?

Justin Sutton:

2018, late 2018. It was like October 2018.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So we’re a couple of years, in many DLC packs in and yes, while there is some Steam bundles with those packs, it’s effectively full price still.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So if you want the extra DLC, that’s still an extra cost. So the actual, top of the range Ultimate Edition, which you’d normally expect for, if that came up for $60, fine, but it’s actually a hundred, $100, £85 or 99 Euros, that’s a lot, but apparently it doesn’t matter because people bought it anyway, but it still seemed a lot to me.

Justin Sutton:

It is a lot. And I mean, I paid the, I bought the $100 version when it came out in 2018. I pre-ordered it months in advance. In fact, I was so hyped for it. I played Forza Horizon 3 out the ying yang so, I was prepared to drop triple digit figures, despite not really making that much, in 2018 actually, I was quite poor that year, but I still dropped a hundred dollars in advance, months in advance for this game.

Justin Sutton:

And so here’s the weird thing. It is definitely still worth that price. But as you said, it’s really, it’s just really bizarre. You would expect some kind of, maybe keep the $60 base price. At that very least though for the launch on Steam, maybe what they should have done is a 10% discount or a 20% discount or something like that, just to celebrate the launch of some kind, just to incentivize people. Of course it doesn’t transfer over either your data. So if you played on the Xbox or through the Microsoft store and you buy the Steam version, you can’t just log into your account and pick up where, where you left off. You have to essentially start from scratch. So for people like myself who have been playing for hundreds of hours already on the Microsoft store, there there’s no real incentive for me to, drop $60. I mean, I guess I could just to play with friends who were on Steam, but again, I would be essentially starting from scratch. So that’s not ideal. John, did you pay for it or did you get it through work? Actually?

John Munro:

No, I did. I paid for it. I just wanted to, I was like all of a sudden, I was joking what I said earlier, I basically you talking about Forza Horizon in these podcasts, and as much as I’ve read about it, I’ve never really been an Xbox person. I’ve never owned an Xbox. And I just wasn’t really in with the Forza series, I was spending a lot of time on SIM racing stuff. So for me talking about it and it sounded really fun to me and it kind of the, of it brought it back to my childhood. So I kind of just thought, you know what, I’m going to give it a go and give it a play because it does sound like something I’d enjoy. And I didn’t, I actually didn’t buy it through Steam. I did get it through the Microsoft store because of the crazy pricing on Steam. I got it for £25 with one of the DLC.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So it’s half the price.

John Munro:

Yes. Less than half the price.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Less than half the price.

John Munro:

Yes.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Now on the Microsoft store on PC, the week after or two weeks after it was on Steam. So they want it to be a success or not, I don’t understand.

John Munro:

But this is the thing, right? So I think what a statement that is from the community of Forza players, that they will, when it’s released on Steam, a game that’s already available on PC, for less money. This game that as you say, it’s two and a half years old can go up on Steam and still become in 24 hours, the most played concurrent racing game of, I think it was all of all time, for that 24 hours. In terms of after launches, despite it being so highly priced and available for much less money for the last few years like that to me is a statement in itself about how much appetite there is for this game. Or maybe just how naive we are as consumers.

Justin Sutton:

Well, I think part of it is also a love for Steam too. I think the gamers get very locked in. You know what I mean? Like if you try to, I mean, look at Mixer, Mixer wasn’t all that great because people wanted to stick with Twitch and YouTube and stuff like that. Gamers get locked in. People love Steam. They already have, in some cases, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars of games on their Steam library already. Why would they want to play on any other platform? And, I totally, I do totally get that. I totally get that too.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, for me. So Justin you bought it day one on PC through the Microsoft Xbox store. Right. And John, you got it on a discount recently and there’s lots of people playing on Steam. I haven’t bought it, but I have game pass at the minute. And I think that’s quite interesting. I don’t know if you want to talk about that Justin or not, but, it’s, so, to clarify now, now that I’ve played it and put a lot of hours into it, I’m at a crossroads because I don’t want game pass anymore. This is the thing, it’s a really good service for lots of people out there and I know there’s huge fans, but the, the games on there at the minute aren’t for me. So I’ve had these multiple £1 or $1 trials, just so I could play like Forza Horizon 4.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So I’ve got through it a lot. And now it’s at the point of, right I’m gonna cancel game pass. I don’t want to pay eight pounds a month or £8 a month, $10 a month just to play Forza Horizon, right. Because over time that’s going to be even more than the Steam price. So now it’s like, do i call it quits and start getting on Steam, or then I’ll do a cave in and buy it on the Microsoft store. Again, I’m not sure where I go next to it. That’s the current scenario

Justin Sutton:

You can play with everybody no matter which platform you get it on, just to clarify for the people at home. So, so yeah, even if you’re playing on Steam, you can play with your friend who’s on Xbox or was playing on PC through the Microsoft Store. That part is not a problem, which I think is perfect. That’s great that they’ve done that. I think that’s kind of like bare minimum of what they needed to do with a Steam release. I really would’ve liked it if I could have, transferred over my stuff. I happily would, I think I would have actually paid, some sort of price. I don’t know if, I would’ve had to pay a hundred for the ultimate version, but I would have paid money probably to transfer over to Steam, just to be able to use Steam, to update the game, to manage the game, to invite friends through the game and stuff like that. The Xbox app on PC, Isn’t the best in terms of managing the party and stuff like that. Yeah.

John Munro:

If I could come in on that one as well, Justin, I think that, for me, because I was new to the series, it felt like a really big financial commitment to go through the Steam on the full price, which is why I went for going for the Microsoft store for like, the thing for me It wasn’t about, Oh, this game is now available on Steam. I need to get it. It was okay, everyone’s talking about it. And it’s got me excited for it. And now I feel like it’s time to try it. So the Steam part was irrelevant for me. However, what I would say is now having used it for a few days and actually realizing how much I’m enjoying the game. Now, I think if you said to me, would you pay, £10, £20 and transfer it to Steam?

John Munro:

I probably would because I am one of those people that we talked about where I collect games on Steam, it’s an easy access place to go. As you say, the updates are simple. It means that you can forget about a game for 10 years and still see it in your list 10 years later and re-download it and try it again. There’s so many things going for Steam as a platform that for me now that I know I am enjoying the game enough and it’s worth it for me, I would have happily paid full price and I would have it on Steam but, I didn’t want to take that risk on the first attempt. I think there’s definitely, you can see why people have done it and paid so much for it, but it just, it does seem mad when you don’t really know the circumstances of that. You just, when you think of it, as, as simple as, okay, here’s a two and a half year old game that’s already been released, but it’s on a new platform and it’s more than double the price, to think that it’s so popular seems a bit crazy. But when you start thinking of all the different things about it, it kind of makes a bit of sense.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Just one final point, sorry. Cause I know this is not a podcast about the pricing of Forza, right. It’s a more about the celebration of why it’s good. But I just, one small thing I’d like to mention is even with the ultimate ultimate edition, you don’t get the new hot wheels DLC, which is $10. So that could have been another good incentive on Steam on launch. Right. But anyway, didn’t happen.

Justin Sutton:

No, you’re exactly right. I wanted to kick things off with that kind of downside to it because that is really the only major downside to it coming out on Steam is, the price on Steam is a little bit crazy and you can’t transfer over if you were playing. And also just, again for people at home, if you’re a PC only gamer and you’re looking to get into Forza, and you know other people and stuff like that, then absolutely pick it up on Steam.

Justin Sutton:

You can, John says he wishes he had gotten it on Steam. So yeah, totally do that. But if you’re, for example, somebody who has both an Xbox and a PC and you want to be able to play on both of them and stuff like that, the play anywhere stuff that only works through the Microsoft store. So you’d have to buy it through there.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Which makes sense.

Justin Sutton:

Exactly, exactly. Another thing I wanted to talk about and another reason why I think this game is still so successful in 2021, is it looks fantastic and maybe you guys, will disagree with me on this. It’s maybe not the best looking racing game. We did just have that article, not that long ago about, taking pictures in Assetto Corsa Competizione and my God, that looks good. It’s hard to argue against that possibly being the best looking racing game that’s out right now, but for us Horizon 4 still looks really good. And it’s had two years of being optimized and patched and updated and all these things. So it runs even better than it did when it initially came out. So you can really jack those settings up and still get a really high frame rate and stuff like that. Would you guys agree or do you think maybe it’s too cartoony too saturated with the colors?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

No, no, no. It looks great. And for the type of game, it is amazing. The detail in the cars is very high. I think it looks a lot better than the last Forza Motorsport. It looks better than a lot of other games coming out recently. And for me, it’s the great, combination of the looks, but also sort of the destructibility of the environment, which is quite cool. You know, it looks good. And also it’s deformable, which is nice.

John Munro:

Yeah. I can’t believe how many cars are in this game, but not only that, how well they’re modeled. I remember there was a big thing a few years ago with Gran Turismo. I think it was Gran Turismo 5, where they had certain cars have spent lots of time and modeling the interiors and other cars that hadn’t put as much time into. And there was a whole big thing about how long it takes to actually get the modeling, right. When it comes to interiors and stuff like it might not have been Gran Turismo 5. It might’ve been a different one, but the thing about it Forza…

Tom Harrison-Lord:

No it definitely was. Yeah.

John Munro:

Yeah. So the thing about Forza for me that shocked me, is not only how good it looks and as you say, the destructible stuff is incredible. The quality of that is so, so high and the fact that it’s, so everything is so moveable is phenomenal. I don’t know how they managed that.

John Munro:

But for me, it’s the detail of the cars and the interiors and stuff as well, every single car you get into, I’m instantly going to cockpit cam because I want to see what it looks like. And every one has character. Every one has unique things about it. It’s not just a few generic things with a few different badges, if you, I don’t know if this is, I don’t know if I’m factually correct here, but it seems to me like almost every single car has its own unique cockpit to match the real one. And I think that it looks fantastic. I would not complain about the looks whatsoever.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah, it really does. And we are going to get into the wheel stuff a little bit later. Cause you touched on going into cockpit view. We are going to touch on that just a little bit further, but I’ve seen even people that kind of use the looks and the aesthetic of the game, for content creation, you know what I mean, with Forza Horizon, I see content creators who are doing drifting videos and stuff, set to music and they have the drone stuff. There’s photo mode as well. You see a lot of really, really good photos coming out of Forza Horizon. If you follow the Forza Horizon, Twitter account, like I do, you’ll see they’re very active in supporting people when they’re posting pictures of the game and stuff like that. And I think that kind of actually takes us very nicely segues, very nicely into customization.

Justin Sutton:

So Forza is very well-known for being able to customize your car, not quite to the level of like Need for Speed Underground when it comes to like, bumpers and changing the actual shape of the car. Exactly. You can paint it like crazy. There’s no like underglow kits or anything like that. So again, that’s where it kind of differentiates itself from, maybe the Need for Speed games and stuff like that. But, I can, I’ve not been one to go in and do a paint job cause it can take so long just to even craft a single logo that goes onto a paint job. It can take hours of your day. So I’ve never gone too much. There’s some cars in my garage where I painted it red and then I gave it some stripes, two white stripes going down the middle and that’s it. That’s about all I’m willing to do, maybe paint the rims and tint the windows and yeah, and that’s it.

Justin Sutton:

But some people, they really go into a whole other level when it comes to this game where they will, they will craft their own, paint scheme and they’ll put the wide body kit on and they’ll take the car to a very specific location in that open world. They’ll wait for a certain time of day and a certain season. And they’ll go into the photo mode and they’ll take that picture of that car with their paint scheme. And it’s just so much customization goes into it and the user-generated stuff. Yu can, I mean, we haven’t even touched on this either, but you can even make your own tracks now as well. That was something that was introduced, not at launch, but very, very shortly after clearly they had been working on it and I think they had hoped to get it out in time for launch, but I think it just missed the launch window.

Justin Sutton:

But in addition to doing your own paint jobs, which you could do another in the previous series games, as well, but now you can also make your own track as well in that open-world environment. Tom, I’ll start with you is that you mentioned, that’s the level of customization customization you’re going for on your cars, just some stripes or something simple like that. Have you gone so far as to have you used the photo mode? Have you made your own tracks? Stuff like that?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. So the photo mode’s really cool. It’s just up on the D Pad, I think by default and it does that sort of, nice effect which masks the detail, which makes it look better where it’s like a panning shot, which a GT Sport also does really well. You look at the photos and you’re like, Holy moly, the game doesn’t look quite that good. But just generally in racing games, a lot forget to incorporate a really good photo mode. And that really helps promote the game, cause people then that creates a culture and a following and people share it on social media. And like you said, you follow the account on Twitter. So it’s really good that they’ve used that in this game, but haven’t got around to creating my own tracks.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

And I was wondering actually, if you could explain something, so sometimes I’ll rock up to an event in the game and then it gives me the option of creating something there? Or what actually, what’s the Super7 stuff that was realeased? I’ve not dipped into that, I think it was Sumo Digital did something at the end of last year. So I don’t know if you’ve played that?

Justin Sutton:

Weirdly. I actually haven’t done too much with the Super7 stuff, but it’s sort of taking that track customization, that track creator and just upping it to another level. Cause previously, it was very simplistic. What you would do is you would go to a race, one of those starting points and you could create your own route starting there. So you can’t have your own race start just anywhere in the world at the top of a mountain or in the middle of a river or anything like that. You have to do it…

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Wherever you’ve travelled already.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah, exactly. And wherever there’s an event from, Turn 10 or, Playground Games an official event. If there’s an official event there, you can start a race there. The Super7 stuff takes it up a little bit because with the regular track creation, you have a starting point and then you put down checkpoints as you go, and then you pick the ending point and that’s pretty much it. It’s really, really simplistic. The Super7 stuff adds another level with like ramps and you can position items and all kinds of things like that. Yeah. So it, it just ups it even. Exactlyexactly, which I think works really well with Forza’s, those kind of Forza Horizons brand that they’ve been going for, with the recent releases of just pure insanity, things that would never happen in real life whatsoever, you know? And I think that’s part of the appeal of it. John being so new, I won’t ask if you’ve actually created a track. I can’t imagine you’ve actually gone.You have all that out before you, the whole of Forza Horizon 4 and you’re like, I’m going to make a circuit. No, I can’t imagine that happen. Have you driven any custom tracks or anything like that or have you stuck to only the first party stuff?

John Munro:

I’ve not. So the thing about Forza Horizon 4 as a new user, and I’m sure some of you listening will have experienced a similar thing, is there is so much going on that it’s quite tricky to allow yourself to try everything. So I’m actually, I’m almost having a fight with the game constantly to try and keep myself on track and actually keep myself focused on doing certain things because I’m almost finding it quite and I don’t mean this in a bad, I’m loving it so far, but I’m finding it quite tricky sometimes to, to get through, wade through all of the new stuff that’s flashing up and trying to get me to try this and do this. And it’s hard to sometimes tell, what’s the base game. What is my progress that I’m trying to make here compared to what are these new one-off events, one day events, single day photo challenges, Oh, here’s an event, but it’s got timer on it and ends in a day.

John Munro:

I don’t know if I gain anything from doing that well, there’s a lot going on and it’s really good, but making a track is something I haven’t tried. What I wanted to do first was play the game and try and get through the general career mode and the way that it was intended. And it makes it a bit boring, but I’m really looking forward to trying some of the custom stuff, especially your massive long rally stage Justin, because what I will say is some of the dirt races stuff I’ve tried so far, we were talking about livery customization, one of the first, the first dirt car I picked up. In fact it was a ’92 Escort and i looked at the liveries and there’s a bunch of different real-world rally liveries that people have created. So I’ve got like a mid nineties, British and Scottish rally championship, the Michelin pilot Escort for the 1980’s.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh the Malcolm Wilson one?

John Munro:

Yeah, for the Perthshire rally and I’ve got that livery on it. And when I was driving some of the rally stages, especially the one down the mountain, it was just awesome. Awesome to do. And that made, that really added to, I think, as well, having that kind of customizable paint job stuff. I’m rubbish at it personally, but I love the fact that you can download other people’s and stuff like that.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

If I could just jump in here, I know it’s talking about the personalization, but just one small point. Yeah. As a newcomer, there is a lot to do, especially, but that’s because we’ve come to it two years late. Justin would have less of a distraction because you’re playing through, then a month later, there’s a new thing. Then there’s two years later, there’s this other mode. I would say there was a slight, it’s slightly confusing. Overwhelming because you’re starting out two years later,

John Munro:

Because if I’m Justin, I’m going to want new stuff. I’m going to want something to make, take the game experience further. So for me, like the first barn find for me was such a thrill. It was like, Oh, wow, I need to go. And find it, this is going to be tough. I didn’t know where to look. I was all over the place. I was probably excited about it, but I’m sure that kind of stuff is, if you get used to it and you do a lot of it, you’re looking for new things. You’re looking for a Super7, for example, you’re looking for the DLC and the Lego and the stunt, extra stunt driving challenges and stuff like that. And also just before we move on, as well as on the customization stuff, the photo modes, another example of that for me, where there’s just, it feels a little bit overwhelming because I discovered that if you take screenshots of cars, you can build up the collection that way.

John Munro:

So I started thinking, right? So what to do is every time I get a new car, I’ll take a photo of it. And then I can start building up this collection because I get rewards. And to be honest, what it has meant is that I’ve kind of forced myself into this kind of drag, where I get new cars all the time and constantly, whenever I jump in them, the first thing I need to do is take a photo of them. And I’ve got to the point where I don’t even care how bad the photo is. I just need to press the buttons and take it. So my experience with, with photo mode is just time wasting frustration, trying to get an objective, but I can see how much, I can see if you put the passion into it and you really cared about the photos, which I’m not at the stage of yet. I can see how good it can be because the quality is great. And the only thing is I couldn’t find a way to change the height and it’s clearly a setting there, but coming to it for the first time, I find it so awkward to try and work out how to actually change the height. But other than that, no, it’s, it’s cool. And the customization is awesome.

Justin Sutton:

It’s not super intuitive. The controls on the drone camera and stuff like that. I found that as well. Also top tip for, getting as many pictures of cars as you can, make your own events, set it to anything goes, and then right at the start of the race, take a picture of everything in of you and everything behind you. So two settings.

John Munro:

It’s funny that you say that, right. It’s funny, because I realized that the first time. So I jumped in a new car at the start of a race and I thought, well, I’ll take a photo of it during the race. Right. And it popped up with like seven new cars, but now, it’s got to the point though. And this is, this is what I mean about being a bit overwhelming, where I feel like it’s an objective in the game to try and take photos of all these cars. Right. But it’s now, I got to the point where every time….

Justin Sutton:

You feel obligated.

John Munro:

Yeah, every time I do a new race, I pick a car I’ve never driven before. And I take a photo at the start. So I never do a normal race start anymore. Every race start is me getting a photo. So it kind of almost just makes it a little bit much.

Justin Sutton:

I will agree. And also, the UI isn’t ultra friendly, like I’ve tried to share my rally, custom routes and stuff like that with people in the past. And now they have the share codes, but the share codes don’t work with every event. Like I’ve got events where if I go and hit the button to get the share code, it just gives me an error. No matter what, I’ve tried it on. Xbox, I’ve tried it on PC. It’s just that I made that event during a time when share codes didn’t exist or something. And so now it just refuses to give me a share code and yeah. And if I go to my blueprint area in the menu system, there isn’t just a list of all the custom routes that I’ve created. And I’m like, why don’t we do that?

Justin Sutton:

Just give me a list of, here’s all your races that you’ve made. Like it’s so simple. And it’s just tiny things like that in the UI that have really, really bugged me. Like they seem to over-complicate things a lot. And it’s like, maybe they’re just going for style elements. Like they want it to be these cool tiles and stuff. And they don’t want just, the alphabetical list because they think an alphabetical list looks boring and dull or something like that.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I think it’s a legacy of Microsoft, when I was trying to put tiles on it within right.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. Windows 8.

John Munro:

Where I found was an issue was like, the festival playlist stuff. So I’m still learning how the game functions and how it progresses. So when I got through all the seasons, I didn’t know how the seasons were going to progress. And suddenly I had this thing popping up with tiles, festival playlist, I thought, right. Are these the next mandatory events that need to complete? Is it now coming up in a list? And it took me so long to actually try and differentiate between like what’s base game content that really builds you up. And what’s just daily events and stuff like that. And it’s almost as if they’re trying so hard to make it look nice that you become a bit lost to how to actually function it. I find that with the menus as well, I find that the menus are a little bit, there’s too much going on.

John Munro:

There’s too many different options, even though I don’t have most of the DLC, I’ve got eight different option, menu options with different DLC bits that I can’t access, but they’re all there anyway. And if I win a car, at auction, how do I get that? I’ve got to go into a particular, my auction page and go into the bid and then go in the car and then get it. It’s not as if I can just, it’s not, it’s not obvious. It’s not simple. And that’s where the UI becomes a little bit too much.

Justin Sutton:

Yep. And I really do hope that they do a big overhaul for, Forza Horizon 5. In terms of that, because I really do think there is a lot of easy wins in terms of just, keeping it user-friendly and making things easy. And especially because they now have 24 million people that have played this game, you know what I mean? So the next one, they need to really nail it because they’ve got literally tens of millions of people that are gonna be interested in seeing how that game comes out anyway. So, okay. Let’s move on from customization. We spent, we could have done a whole episode apparently just on customizations and custom tracks and all that kind of stuff. What I wanted to move on to now was actually what John touched on earlier, which was controller versus wheel.

Justin Sutton:

Now we’ve all got different experiences. I have done a lot of wheel with some controllers. So I would say the vast majority of my hours in Forza Horizon games, that’s Horizon 3 and 4. Horizon 2 and 1 weren’t available on PC. I’m a PC gamer. So I haven’t played Horizon 1 and 2. I just jumped in at 3, but, I jumped in at 3 with a Thrustmaster TMX racing wheel, which was like brand new right around the time actually that Horizon 3 was coming out. So those, actually kind of coincided really, really well. But recently, I just can’t be bothered to hook up my wheel for Forza. If I’m honest, if I want to play some Forza, I just grab my controller. It’s right there. It’s so much easier. I don’t have to go in the closet and tighten things up and hook things up.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

You mean you don’t have a SIM rig just for Forza Horizon.

Justin Sutton:

I’m hoping to get a SIM rig just for Forza Horizon, because I’m that kind of loser. But at the moment I just can’t be bothered. So yeah, these days I’ve been playing it a lot on controller. John you’ve only played it on wheel. Is that right?

John Munro:

That is correct. Yeah.

Justin Sutton:

And Tom you’ve only played it on controller, is that right?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I’ve just recently tried it with a wheel just in preparation for this podcast but 90% on a controller.

Justin Sutton:

Okay. Yeah. So we’re all at different levels when it comes to, I’ll go ahead and ask you guys your thoughts first, and then I’ll jump in at the end, just to give my experiences with both of them. Let’s start with Tom on the controller, since that’s how most people are going to be playing it. If we’re honest, 99%, even people with wheels will often not play Horizon, with their wheel, which I think is a mistake. And we’ll get into that. But, Tom, what you make of it on a controller?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I love it on the controller. It’s nice and easy to drift. It’s very, very straightforward and easy to play, and it’s very satisfying, and straightforward to control all the cars. It’s very rare that you’ll actually like sort of spin out.

Justin Sutton:

Would you say predictable?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. Predictable is a good word for it. Yeah. You know okay, this is a hypercar, I’ve gotta be a bit easier on the throttle, but you can still control it on a controller. Obviously a more, dare I say it, simulation focus game. You’d have to be much more gentle with the controls. Therefore Forza is, Horizon is much suited for the controller in my opinion. And that’s why I prefer to play with, but the fact that it does work with a wheel shows up the Motorsport series in the last three versions of those, which aren’t very good in my opinion, but I have upset a lot of people with that opinion. So yeah, it was great with the controller and that’s my preferred method, but I have tried it with a wheel and it was okay too. I have one small question about that, but we’ll come to that in a bit.

Justin Sutton:

Well, just before we switched to John to get his thoughts, what wheel did you try it on?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Logitech G29.

Justin Sutton:

Okay, because that does matter when it comes to. God. Okay. Yeah. And that does matter.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

My question might be related to that in particular. Yes.

Justin Sutton:

But John, how did you feel? And obviously you are like a hardcore SIM guy. You mentioned that, you’ve been really into hardcore SIM’s recently, and maybe that’s why Horizon didn’t get much of a look from you when it was, coming to PC in 2016 and 2018 with Horizon 3 and 4. But you said you were enjoying it on a wheel. So what did you think of it?

John Munro:

So I went into it with the expectation that it was going to be pretty rubbish on a wheel, but it was still, I wanted to have fun with it and try it and then maybe jumping a controller. Because I’m totally for games that work better on a controller, if it’s that kind of game, I have no problem with that. I agree. Controllers are so much more accessible. And I’m more than happy to sacrifice wheel support if a game feels good on a controller and it’s not meant to be a hardcore SIM. So I jumped on it and I tried the wheel and my very first impressions in the first few minutes were a little bit iffy. But what it turned out to be was the degree of rotation setting was a bit of an issue for me. And what I found right.

John Munro:

Yeah. So, what I found at first, when I was playing it, as I was using, trying it on the cockpit camera with the steering wheel. Okay. That’s the key part here. So there’s two cockpit cameras. There’s one with the wheel and one without the wheel. Now the one with the wheel in game, the driver only turns this wheel 90 degrees. Okay.

Justin Sutton:

That’s it.

John Munro:

So I’m thinking, okay, I need to change my wheel rotation to match him. So I tried changing my profiler to match it didn’t work. So I thought, right, I’ll go 900 because that’s what should be right. And I found that, okay, it matches what he’s doing, but it stops halfway. That’s fine. And then I was driving some rally stuff, in the first bit you do one race from each season and it was the bit in the Fiesta against the motorbikes.

John Munro:

And I couldn’t keep the thing on the road because every time I was trying to slide, it was getting 90 degrees. And I assumed you couldn’t steer anymore. Right. And I was going okay, I can’t really control the slides properly. This is really tricky. Now everything changed for me when I discovered that when you steer more than 90 degrees, the game registers it. And it does steer more than 90 degrees, even though the visual issue is there. Right. So I started using the cockpit camera without the steering wheel. And honestly, I cannot emphasize to you guys enough, how much this transformed the experience of the game. And I have nothing but good words for it. I was doing at first, when I got into the rallying side of things, there was actually, one of the events was, as I mentioned earlier, a run in a rally car, down the mountain, near the Glenfiddich viaduct.

John Munro:

And it was kind of looping road, a winding roads, lots of hairpins. And I was doing it in the Escort 92. I didn’t want to modify it. I wanted to keep it standard. Cause it was a really nice rally spec. And there was a brief moment where I felt like I was playing DiRT Rally 2.0, it honestly felt incredible. I could slight the thing. It was natural. I could treat it like a racing drive. I know I should upset a lot of people by saying that, but hopefully I’ll get some Forza fans onsite. And that is not my intention.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

You did say a brief moment though.

John Munro:

Honestly it was, it was so, so good and now I’m not. The thing is right. When you drive a lot of these hyper cars and stuff, there’s no way they stick to the road like they do in the game.

John Munro:

That’s no one’s debating that. Okay. You can drive at 150 miles an hour in and out of traffic, round sharp corners and it’s fine. That is not realistic, but it feels manageable, which is the important thing when it comes to the rally stuff and the cars that are actually meant to be fast, they handle really, really nice. And honestly, as soon as you get rid of that stupid 90 degree wheel visual issue, and actually, get out of your head and start driving it with the, using the wheel, you’re actually using, it handles really, really nicely. And for me, I was like, I was just in shock. I was like, I almost felt like turning round to all my SIM racing mates and be like, guys, like, go and try Forza Horizon 4. Honestly,

Justin Sutton:

I’ve done that.

John Munro:

It’s really good fun. Yeah. And I’m, as I say, I came at this expecting to not really find the driving very good from a neutral point of view, but with those expectations and I am honestly saying it’s really, really good fun.

Justin Sutton:

So that was what you were going to bring up Tom ? was the 90 degrees thing?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, The game plays well with the wheel provided you don’t use the view with the wheel because the actual animation doesn’t animate the wheel correctly. So you’re. It throws you off a bit.

Justin Sutton:

Exactly. And that’s actually a relatively new thing. And that’s one of the few examples of them actually listening to the community. I think, a really good example of that, in fact, because, I think for the entirety of Forza Horizon 3, that was the only view. And, then it was like a year into Forza Horizon 4 or something. I’m probably getting this completely wrong, but I remember it was a patch. It’s not like it came out like that.

John Munro:

Game changer.

Justin Sutton:

It really is. It really is. It changed everything. And I do think in particular, all wheel drive rally stuff is really where Forza Horizon shines. And, and you’re right. I have had that exact feeling. There are times where you actually feel one with the car in Forza Horizon, and that’s not something that I’ve felt very often in SIM racing.

Justin Sutton:

It’s something I’ve experienced in actual driving where, the wheel, the front wheels almost become like your front feet. Like, you know, where they are relative to you. And you can just position that car exactly where you need to be and this could be just while you’re driving around, at speed limit speeds and stuff like that, you can just feel that connection with a car. And I feel like Forza Horizon is one of, Forza Horizon 4 in particular with the rally cars is one of those few times where I have really felt connected with a virtual car. It’s really strange, really hard to explain, but I will say there are a growing number of people. And especially in 2020, you might remember a lot of racing drivers, driving an iRacing and going, this is way harder than real life. So, which is it, you know what I mean? Everybody’s saying that Forza Horizon has way too much grip that it’s not realistic. People are saying iRacing has not nearly enough grip. It’s not nearly realistic enough in that regard.

John Munro:

What I would say it Is iRacing and these kinds of SIMs are realistic. They maybe just, don’t always feel realistic because the same inputs would do the same things, but you have less feeling, therefore you don’t have the same experience of fear, of distance perception. You’re looking at tiny screen instead of a whole wind screen. And you don’t have the feeling through the seat of your pants it’s a totally separate topic that we’ve talked about before, but it says, I think that it’s made harder than real life because of those aspects. Not because the individual inputs are things that are unrealistic as Forza Horizon 4 is unrealistic. I mean, it makes it as clear as it possibly can from the start with, even, even the style of the game leads into that. We’re at a festival, there’s no way in a million years this would ever happen.

John Munro:

That’s why it’s so cool. Let’s just pretend it could. Right. And the driving totally matches that. And it doesn’t matter because it’s easier than something like iRacing, okay. It’s not realistic in the way it drives and stuff like that. But I think it maybe is easier for a racing driver who struggles with something like iRacing would maybe find Forza Horizon 4 easier. One thing I would say though, as well, like, I use the H pattern shifter for the rally cars, when they matched like, so if the car in game was meant to use an H pattern shifter, I would use my H pattern shifter. The only big complaint I do have is the clutch. I felt the clutch was awful. So what I ended up doing was it just felt really unnatural and difficult and it kind of just ruined the experience for me. So what I did was just turn on to an automatic clutch and still use the shifter, but without the clutch and that transformed it for me, that was a big issue. But that’s another side thing

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I don’t think many people will be playing in this game for the clutch though right?

Justin Sutton:

I must confess, I’ve never used manual clutch. In fact, I’ve never used a H pattern shifter either as well for it. The only thing I’ve ever done is just paddle shifters. And I think that maybe goes back to the TMX that I started on because of course, you only get throttle and brake, with the Thrustmaster TMX, you don’t even get a clutch pedal. I have the T300 RS GT, whatever one now that does have a clutch pedal, but even when I was using that, I still never used the clutch because again, no H pattern, it’s weird to do the clutch with the paddle shifters. I’ve never done that before. So I’ve always just done manual transmission without, with the auto clutch, like you described, but without, yeah, just the paddle shifters on it as well.

Justin Sutton:

And yeah, and I’ve always, but I will say, as Tom said, it’s predictable, so it’s unrealistic, but it still feels predictable and right. Somehow, so it’s, it’s like they’ve somehow balanced the cars so that every car is 10% grippier than it should be, but it’s always 10%. It’s not like some cars are 50% and some cars are negative 20%. You know what I mean? And they’re all over the place. Somehow, everything just feels like it should. And, you’re right. Things have more grip than they should. And it’s not realistic in that regard, but it’s somehow balanced as well too. And I think they’ve done a great job. There are some imbalances. I feel like that’s going to come when you have that many cars and people have free reign over customization and gearing and aerodynamics and all that kind of stuff.

Justin Sutton:

People are going to find a car that is broken. You know what I mean? That’s inevitably going to happen. There’s just a handful of cars that can do faster than 270 miles an hour. Or maybe there’s only one still. I can’t remember. So there’s weird kind of, things that you encounter in the game like that. But I think, again, that’s a result of the game, just having so many cars to choose from, which was another thing that we were going to get onto. Let’s get onto it now. It’s a good segue. Is it too many cars? What do you guys think? Are you happy to have that many? Personally I’ll jump in with my opinion first on this one, actually. I think it’s, I think it’s fantastic. I love the number of cars. I love that there are cars I don’t own yet in the game after playing for 300 hours. Is it too much though for you guys? Is it daunting? Overwhelming?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

No, it’s not too much. It’s a little confusing how they don’t explain the auction, but John’s already covered that at the start, not every cars in the dealership, but it’s still really cool and it’s a good car collecting element of it. I think one challenge they’ve got going into the next generation and the new game is if they start from scratch, the game might not have as many cars as the 4th version of the game, and it’s going to be a tricky thing for them to balance. So they’re probably just gonna have to build upon what they’ve got. I really liked the number of cars. I really like the collection thing. The auction system, where you actually bid in real time against other people is really neat. I just don’t see it described as well. But, the only thing I would say is, and apologies if this is the wrong part of this podcast Justin, but I ended up with weirdly the same car as John, the Escort to start with the Cossie. And then basically, I haven’t really, I mean, I have got other cars and I have used them, but I don’t feel like there’s a enough of a need or a pull to switch up some of the cars sometimes. So I ended up doing loads and loads of events in this one car without fully realizing, ah okay, If I change the car, the AI rivals each event changed with me. That’s a whole interesting thing, but that’s more a game mechanic than the cars. The car choice is amazing.

John Munro:

Yeah. So I, funnily enough, I have an opinion on this and it’s quite strong one. I think that the car choice and the amount of range is phenomenal. And I think that’s one of the best parts about it. I was looking through the dealership the first time and I could not believe how many different cars there were. I was like, is this a, is this, are these all drivable? And then I discovered after that, the auction and stuff, there’s other cars in there that you can’t even buy in the dealership, but there is a slightly annoying thing for me. And this might just be, because I don’t know the game well enough and you guys might totally correct me on this, but when you’re looking at an auction and there’s usually like only a minute to go when you can see these featured options coming up.

John Munro:

My problem is I never really know if that car, I don’t have the time to learn all the cars in the dealership. So I’m never really sure if like, if I, is this car even available in the dealership? Whether I’m, I want to buy it. If I know it’s not available and it’s at a good price, but there’s no, I don’t know if there’s any quick way of checking. If that car is also available. I want to know if a car is rare because I want to know that I’m not missing out on it, or I’m going to give it a go. The issue for me with the cars, isn’t definitely not the amount there are. It’s the amount you’re given and It’s the lack of importance when it comes to what races you’re doing.

John Munro:

Right. So, I had a really big problem with this because I was loving the game at first, when I felt like I only had a few cars, as Tom was saying, I had the Escort, I had a Focus. And then I bought myself my first car. Right. And it was like, I’ve saved up my money. I’ve bought this car. I’m so excited to drive it. This is cool. It’s faster. It’s an Alfa Quadrifoglioit looks amazing. I can’t wait to do some races in it. And then I realized I had some messages and it was like, welcome to Forza Horizon. Here’s some gift cards.

Justin Sutton:

Oh God.

John Munro:

All right. Okay. This is fine. So then, so then I was like, this is really annoying, but fair enough. So I went through and I thought, right, I’ll try all these cars. At least once I don’t want to have any cars, I’ve not tried. But then suddenly I was like, I’ve got nine super wheel spins. Don’t know where that came from. And then I’m getting super wheel spins and I’m winning two cars at a time and some horrible hat. And I’m like, okay. The problem for me then instantly became all of that special feeling of like building up an earning enough money to buy a nice car that used to get with Gran Turismo, is totally gone. Because for me, there was, I kind of had the opposite problem from Tom. I wanted to try all of my cars that I owned and therefore it took away any special feeling.

John Munro:

It was like, right. I’ve got a one kilometer drive to my next checkpoint. Let’s try this one. Okay. I’ve got a race now let’s try another one I’ve not tried before. And when you actually do the racing, it really doesn’t matter what car you pick because the AI are always the same speed as you. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent, a few races building up your Escort and putting more power in it to make your chances of winning higher, because it doesn’t make a difference. It just means your rivals will be faster. So you can race in any car in the game. And that, that for me is the one biggest negative I have with that. I felt completely overwhelmed. I don’t want 35 cars in my garage that can use any time. I want to feel like I’ve earned it and bought it. Fair enough. The odd gift is…

Justin Sutton:

Certainly not that quick.

John Munro:

Exactly. Yeah.

Justin Sutton:

It’s too fast.

John Munro:

Yeah and then suddenly I’ve got like, where can I go from a McLaren Senna? I drive that and it’s like, right now, I want to go buy an old Ferrari thats fast, but I’ve reached the peak. I can’t go faster than that. So yeah, that, that takes away from it a little bit for me. And suddenly the old slower cars become really annoying to drive.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yup. But there’s a joy isn’t there Justin in rare cars that you can only get certain events. Could you explain that? Like Justin was telling me like, Oh, there’s Nissan. And I was like, really?

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. Yes. So I can touch on both of these actually. So, yeah my favorite example of that is the Nissan Pulsar. And it’s because I love that car. I love the Nissan Pulsar I think it’s so cool. It’s a two door shooting break hatchback, or I guess three door, you would say you call it a three door, all wheel drive, turbocharge, I think it was the SR20 DET engine, the same one that you would find in the 200 SX.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Very specific Nissan engine knowledge there Justin.

Justin Sutton:

That’s all right. And I love, I love the Nissan Pulsar. It’s not a car and you will ever see in America ever, it’s like very Japanese, very Australian. I don’t even think it sold very well in the UK, in Europe. I think it was very, very Australian and Japanese, so they introduced it to the game.

Justin Sutton:

But you had to win it and you could only win one. So, they, they had some seasonal event and you go and you win it. And so everybody gets one, but only if you went and did that seasonal event. So if you want a second Nissan Pulsar, cause by the way, you can’t have multiple tunes for the same car. That’s something, in my head, I have like a wishlist that’s hundreds of pages long for Forza Horizon 5. And I would love the ability to own one car, but pay for multiple setups. So I have like an S1 rally set up. I have an A Class rally set up, I have an A Class road set up, you know what I mean? And I’ll happily pay for the parts for each of those. And just, and then just let me choose when I’m picking the car, let me choose which variants of that car I want to run.

Justin Sutton:

I don’t want to actually have to buy two Nissan Pulsar’s in order to have one that’s good for the road and one that’s good for rally. But what you end up with is this crazy economy, where a McLaren Senna on the auction house might be worth a 100,000 credits because everybody got one for free in the mail. And there was a seasonal event where you get one for free for winning. And it was super duper easy. So there’s just, everybody’s got three McLaren Senna’s and it just drives the value of it way, way down. So you can start the game and buy a McLaren Senna on the auction house and this, it’s not a real life example. I’m just making this up, but you could buy a super car for extremely cheap, or you might end up going on the auction house and seeing a C class bone stock Nissan Pulsar for 10 million credits.

Justin Sutton:

And you’re going, why in your head, I’m brand new to this game. Why is a C class Nissan Pulsar 10 million credits? And the McLaren Senna’s a hundred thousand. We’re talking 1% the value and one, but it’s way, way faster. And it still has the same kind of range. It could be customized and everything like that. So it gets really, really weird, but, I’m with you on this, John. So, I’m with you on that, Tom. I liked the auction house. I like that you can earn a car and then sell it to people and, it’s live and everything like that. I think it’s great. It’s amazing to see how active the auction house still is. But at the same time, I yearn for the old days of progression. And this is a 36 year old man speaking.

Justin Sutton:

Now, I just, I just wish it was like when I was a kid, you know what I mean? When you, get into Gran Turismo or, Tokyo Extreme Racer: Zero another great example from a previous podcast episode, for those that are listening in every episode. You get in, you start at the bare bottom and you have to work to get, to get higher up. I think, Gran Turismo 1 was a great example of this. They had the career mode where you start at the bottom and work your way up, and then they had an arcade mode where you could just pick any car. You can pick any car you want, you could drive at any at any track. And that’s great, for people that want to just jump into a Viper on day one, that’s great.

Justin Sutton:

I applaud you for that, but I want slow, methodical stuff. I want to start, you know, in a Mini, a bone stock Mini, and I want to win 500 credits for doing a 10 minute race. And then I want to buy a 500 credit muffler for it or exhaust system that gives it five more horsepower and just makes it a little bit easier to win the next set. You know what I mean? I yearn for that kind of stuff, but I wonder if this generation likes that because obviously 24 million people, have played Forza Horizon 4, it’s clearly some kind of, if they’ve got a winning formula on their hands, I mean, it seems that people like, doing these super wheel spins and getting a Senna on day one, I mean, John, you’ve already told us essentially how you feel about this. I do want to hear Tom, your thoughts on it, but John, you were going to go.

John Munro:

No, just real quick, like I’m with you on that one. I think though that with this game, there are so many good things and obviously I’ve only played it for a few days and I’ve got a list like you, Justin of things, that’s frustrated me about it. Yet I’m still loving playing. And I feel like that arcade, yeah. That two modes would maybe make sense, you know, having the mode where you really have to build for it, or if you really want, you can just go and drive the other cars for fun, but you maybe don’t win any credits for winning races or you can pick any car, but it doesn’t progress you in the same way. Something like that.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. Tom, how did you feel about the progression?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, I think, I feel like I already said it and I agree with everyone else, you get a little bit too much too soon, but then also there’s not much incentive to switch out the cars too much. However, the choice of cars is, is so, eclectic. That’s really good. So then you sort of over time learn, ah okay, the mechanic and the joy is maybe to try and get all the cars kind of like a Pokemon or something. So, that’s really the appeal of it.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

After a while you get, you sort of put aside your previous feelings of progression a little bit, even though it’s still like it that way. And you get used to the sort of the new way and the super wheel spins, which I’m not hugely a fan of, but I guess, they do get a nice feeling when you get something that’s special from them.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. And honestly, I could do and maybe I’ll end up doing this at some point, but I could do a huge wishlist, but again, it’s my game of the decade. Probably it’s the most fun that I’ve ever had with a racing wheel as well, too. As John said, it’s just, there’s just times where it’s absolutely incredible. I have been that guy as well, telling all of my SIM racing friends, you’ve got to try it on a wheel, I think, especially on Thrustmaster wheels though. Microsoft had a bit of a relation. I don’t know if this is still going on, but Microsoft had a bit of a relationship with Thrustmaster going on around the time that Horizon 3 was coming out on PC and stuff. So it seems just very Thrustmaster friendly, which has worked out great for me since I have a TMX and a T300, it’s all been very easy, kind of like plug and play. I don’t have to worry about it too much. Whereas my friends with Fanatec wheels and hydraulic handbrakes and all, age pattern shifters and clutches and stuff like that, they end up having more problems, getting the game to work and getting it to a state where it can be as fun as it is for me.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I suppose, using one of those setups to play Forza Horizon 4 is a bit like using a Samurai sword to chop up your lunch. It’s a bit overkill.

Justin Sutton:

But it’s what I want to do. It’s like literally my life goal is to get a racing rig, just so I could play Forza Horizon games, because it really is the most fun that I’ve ever had on my wheel. I mean, I’ve played maybe 20 different racing games, over the last nine years or eight years, on my racing wheel. And honestly Forza Horizon 4 is the most fun I’ve had. It’s not the most realistic. It’s not the best, the best looking. It’s not the, it doesn’t have the best frame rate. It’s not the best in a lot of, metrics that racing fans might use to determine what is a good racing game. But it’s got so much going for it, there’s, and as we’ve pointed out in this one, we actually talked about more problems than I expected.

Justin Sutton:

It does have problems and all three of us agree that that’s the case. And yet all three of us agree that it is an absolutely incredible game. And it is for that reason, that ending the week of March 14th, Forza Horizon 4 took second and fifth place for purchases on Steam. The standard edition was second and the deluxe edition was fifth. It wasn’t just top 10. It was two of the top 10. And I think the ultimate edition was just outside the top 10 as well, too. So, I think it was only behind Valheim and Valheim is, just like absolutely blowing up. Nothing can touch Valheim. So if you ignore Valheim, it was first and 4th for Steam sales ending the week of March 14th. And I think that’s a good place where we can end this podcast episode.

Justin Sutton:

I did actually have more bullet points, but we’ll go ahead and stop it there. Maybe we’ll save it for another Forza.

John Munro:

Just like that game. That’s too big. It’s too much.

Justin Sutton:

Exactly. Just like the Horizon franchise itself. So, maybe we’ll go in and we’ll talk, we’ll talk more about Forza Horizon 5 in a future episode. So, thanks everybody for tuning in though to the Traxion podcast as always, we want to hear from you. So send us a message at Traxion, GG on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, let us know your thoughts on Forza Horizon 4. Also feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you can see the video version of this podcast and you subscribe. You can subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple, and Google. As always keep it pinned, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye