Well, I’ve sat on this longer than I wanted to because I’m still not sure how to feel about this most recent release from Playground Games and Microsoft. While the idea is perfect and brings some of the silliest moments in Forza history, I find the execution lacking. Moments of fun are peppered by long periods of frustration. The entire thing feels expensive, but without much real substance. It’s a befuddling thing.
When they first announced the Hot Wheels expansion, I thought it was an odd, but sort of comforting fit. Like celery and peanut butter. The cool crisp of adulthood fun, but with the comforting smoothness of childhood. Bringing some real and fake new cars into the Forza toy box is always welcome, especially when one of the new toys on offer is the Zonda R, a sorely needed addition to the sandbox. The Hot Wheels cars are fun, but feel so out of place in normal Horizon that I found myself selling or ignoring them once I was done playing around in the new area.
https://youtu.be/6-K_M4i2Bbs
It’s this new area, unfortunately, which causes most of my frustration. At first I was blown away by the lengths they went to in creating new jumps, spirals, and all sorts of shapes that should be no stranger to those that grew up having Hot Wheels in our lives. The problem is that after the initial spectacle of seeing the map, I found the entire thing hard to get around, and frustrating to actually drive. I have never found myself slamming the rewind button more than during the campaign of this expansion. I found myself almost losing races to shitty AI that I would have never struggled with in the main game.
The experience wasn’t as positive as I was hoping. I just can’t get my head around it. At the price which the expansion is being offered, I would be cautious buying right now. Unless you are 100% sure you are going to love your time with the orange roads, maybe wait for a sale.
Fun and Frustration with Forza Horizon 3's Hot Wheels Expansion
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5 responses to “Fun and Frustration with Forza Horizon 3's Hot Wheels Expansion”
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Hot Wheels would do well to study how successfully Forza brings reality to the modelling process.
Perhaps Hot Wheels can make their model cars of real cars more scale accurate?
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HotWheels has always been the over the top, even with the real cars.
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I found a similar experience with this expansion, it should be breezy fun but it’s actually incredibly difficult and if you mess up, your race is pretty much over. I just bought Assetto Corsa and I’ve been playing that and Dirt Rally mostly instead, it’s kinda ironic that these supposedly “punishing” full on sim racers actually feel friendlier. I’m not winning races, but I’m not falling off a zero grip track either. Assetto Corsa and Dirt both have such a “natural” sense of feedback at the wheel that both Horizon an Forza 6 feel numb by comparison, there isn’t a steady flow of information in either Forza game, it’s more inconsistent, so I find them harder than Dirt or Assetto Corsa, with all assists turned off anyway.
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I have that problem with Horizon 3 even without any of the expansions. I regularly find myself spinning out and not having felt or even heard it coming. There’s also this really weird bug where if you have the latest Windows 10 update but you’re still running a Logitech G25, Forza remaps the shifter as having a dogleg 1st gear??
Haven’t picked up Assetto Corsa yet, but I’ve only played Forza Apex once since getting Project Cars and the force feedback is laughable by comparison (that tire chatter rumble!)
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It should have been a standalone app the way that the Fast and Furious game based in Forza was. This just added a bunch of junk to the game. Is there any way to not have random hotwheels driving around australia?
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