FH4, The End is Nigh

I knew Horizon 4 wouldn’t last forever, although it seems to have lasted a good long time. There have been reports of content already disappearing from the game and not being available for download. That looks to affect players who bought the Ultimate version in the first place, whereas I bought the base game and then got the Ultimate bundle on special, which may be why I can still drive all the various DLC cars.

(Aside: I’ve been a bit slow in writing this while the posts on the forum about the problems with DLC cars continue to have the stylings of a peevish sense of adolescent entitlement which, frankly, annoys me. I assume that the matter will be resolved. Stop banging on about it.)

And now back to our main feature.

I may make a more concerted effort to get to prestige 8, but of late, I’ve been neglecting the game somewhat, with my attention focused on FH5.

I think because FH4 was my first Horizon game, I have a preference for it just as if I’d started with FH3, I would’ve preferred that (probably). I also prefer the map, which remains far more attractive, varied and interesting than the map of Mexico, with its flattish centre and marginal biomes filled with brutally muscular trees.

I have mixed feelings about the seasons in FH4. Winter should’ve been confined to the northern part of the map, with the rest being frosty. Blanket snow across Britain is not a thing. The other seasons make the time of year identifiable, but with the Mexico map, none of the seasons correspond to my conceptions of spring, summer, autumn and winter. There’s at least one week in FH5 where the sprint races can be annoyingly wet, but I have no idea what the season is. The dust storms blow up in, er… In FH6 they might choose a location where there’s winter. recognisable, but not because of snowdrifts.

I’m surprised that I’ve continued to play FH4 for nearly five years (having bought it about a year after launch), but FH5 never did entirely knock the game out, and even the recycled playlist never managed to entirely deter me, although recently the winter PR stunts have been vexatious. I rarely ever do the seasonal championships since I have all the cars in the game apart from the PO DB11, which was in the Forzathon shop once, but as I wasn’t rolling in FPs (as I currently am), I didn’t bother purchasing it. I suspect that although the rest of the exclusives are being added to the Backstage Pass, none of the PO cars will be.

There’s a good lineup of cars, but even by the time the game came out, it felt like an ageing lineup. Cars that had been new or newish in FH1 were looking dated, a trend which has continued into FH5. On the other hand, there wasn’t the drip feed of cars from older games as there has been in Horizon 5 and there was one (? HW car pack) of pay-per-view DLC.

I only got the expansions because I bought the Ultimate upgrade bundle (on sale). I’d watched a couple of reviews of them on YouTube which failed to convince me that I actually wanted the expansions, but now I had them. Lego Valley isn’t terrible. At least it’s all joined-up writing unlike the HW expansion in FH5. The accolades were a grindy nuisance and another aspect of Horizon games that have little to offer apart from the worthless prestige from completing them. Fortune Island was a drift zone with an island attached, infected by some terrible weather. However, as I’ve said before, I’d rank this above the spaghetti-fest that is Sierra Nueva.

I didn’t care for the Eliminator. I didn’t care about Super Seven. I could’ve done both again after the Great Reset, but had no interest in doing so. I’d unlocked all the levels once and that was enough. Forzathon Live was all right so long as there were enough people, but the scaling of Horizon Arcade is a much better idea. The voting for the Backstage Pass was a bit silly, but it did help me obtain several cars that I’d missed. It seems that the PO cars are also going to be added to the Backstage Pass, which means I can finally get the PO DB11. Too many cars also seemed to get constantly locked behind the 80% paywall before they were finally accessible through other events in the Festival playlist. There were also a few cars such as the 2017 Alpine A110 which had appeared once and for much of the life of the game were never seen again. Same in Horizon 5. I think I’m missing a few remaining Extreme E vehicles which PGG have yet to re-release (I used to have all of them, but the game’s unreliable save system put an end to that).

Overall, I think FH4 was not a bad introduction to the Horizon series. There are a few things from FH5 that I wish the game had such as a greater variety of gearboxes and slick tyres alongside semi-slicks; less painful drifting on the main map; a larger garage and more slots for paints and tunes. On the other hand, the level of difficulty of the drivatars and their behaviour is generally better than Horizon 5 (with the exception of Fortune Island where, I think, we got a taste of Horizon 5) where I refuse to up the level of difficulty because they’re already frustratingly contrary. But FH5 is mostly just FH4 all over again with extras, hence if you missed FH4, you still have some sense of it in the current game. and if you miss FH5, I have no doubt that FH6 will probably be more of the same. Go on, PGG. Surprise me with something different.