Forza Horizon 4 Streamers Who Cant Drive Are Painful To Watch
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Aug 19, 2017 This worked for me, and I was actually able to stream Windows app games. Hope this helps someone out there. This was the only fix I was able to end up with for my self. Forza Horizon 3 is a open world racing game developed by Playground Games, and published by Microsoft Studios.
'...You and I are being squeezed out, pushed aside, and hunted down at every hairpin turn. And yet, there is hope. There is a safe haven. A place where we are free to challenge conventions, push the laws of physics, and drive our powerful, our beautiful machines hard... And it's right there in your living room.'Advertisement:
Forza is a simulation Racing Game franchise for the Xbox brand of consoles by Xbox Game Studios and their internal Turn 10 Studios division, aimed at competing with Sony's Gran Turismo franchise, and is noted for an extensive car painting system, performance customization and a massive car list. It is divided between two series, the original Forza Motorsport series by Turn 10, and the open world-focusedForza Horizon series primarily developed by Playground Gamesnote with Turn 10's assistance.
Motorsport mainly revolves around closed-circuit race tracks in a wide variety of gorgeous environments for players to race at. Motorsport games have a career mode which has players going to various real and fictional tracks around the world to compete in race events. Horizon revolves around a fictitious annual music and racing festival, taking place in open world environments. Horizon games' career mode have players competing in various events around the festival to become the Horizon Festival Champion. Horizon is slightly more casual than Motorsport, but it maintains the realistic physics and incredible customization aspects of the latter nonetheless.
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Forza Horizon 4 Streamers Who Cant Drive Are Painful To Watch Live
- The first game was released in Spring 2005 for the original Xbox, and Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3 followed in 2007 and 2009, respectively, for the Xbox 360. Each successive game added little things on top: Forza Motorsport 2 added a storefront and auction site where people can buy and sell tuning setups, cars, and car designs, while Forza Motorsport 3 added an in-car camera, rollover damage, and a Time Rewind Mechanic to give players the option of redoing corners without starting from scratch. Forza Motorsport 4 added Kinect functionality, additional game modes (autocross, track days, et cetera), 16-player multiplayer, Top Gear branding and features, and an 'Autovista' feature where you can look at high-res models of featured cars while Jeremy Clarkson talks about it.
- Forza Motorsport 5 is a launch title for the Xbox One, and is widely regarded as the console's very first Killer App with Dead Rising 3. Improvements over Motorsport 4 include the ultra-high detail Autovista mode on every single car in the game, cloud-based racing profiles - the game logs how you drive, and create an AI profile on the Xbox Cloud which emulates exactly how you drive, on any track, dramatically improved graphics (especially in texture resolution and car/world lighting), and more realistic tire physics. The game can also simulate the advanced assists available on high-performance cars, such as the Nissan GT-R's high-tech launch control. Also, open wheel cars make their debut, including vintage Formula One cars and Dallara DW-12s.
- Forza Motorsport 6 features the new second-generation Ford GT that was revealed at the 2015 North American International Auto Show. The third Forza game on Xbox One (after Motorsport 5 and Horizon 2), it has been released on September 15, 2015, which is during Forza's tenth anniversary year. Rain, night driving, and 24-player multiplayer are the new features included in the game, together with 5's technical advancements. Almost all of Motorsport 5's car park (DLC cars included) is available from the get-go, with an outstanding total of over 460 cars - the largest roster since Motorsport 4. The game also supports all shared liveries and vehicle setups made in Motorsport 5 and Horizon 2.
- In a series first, Windows received a Forza game for the first time with Forza Motorsport 6: Apex in 2016, currently out now as a beta. It is a free-to-play game on the Windows Store for Windows 10 which features support for 4K resolutions at 60 frames per second.
- Forza Motorsport 7 will be the first Forza Motorsport title to be on Xbox and Windows simultaneously (Horizon 3 was the first Forza title overall to do so). Featuring the 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS (part of Microsoft's new six-year deal with Porsche), it will be a showcase title for the new Xbox One X (previously known as Project Scorpio) featuring 4K graphics at 60 frames per second on a console. It was released October 3, 2017 and new features include dynamic time of day and weather on selected tracks - a feature that first appeared in the Horizon games, and customizable driver suits. The game also marks the return of two fan-favorite tracks from Motorsport 4 - the fictional Maple Valley and the real life Mugello and Suzuka circuits.
Forza Horizon 4 Streamers Who Cant Drive Are Painful To Watch Youtube
- A more 'relaxed' game, the first Forza Horizon was released in October 2012, taking place in a fictionalized version of Colorado. The game followed a mixture of several free roam and street racing titles from over the years, taking influences from games such as Need for Speed: ProStreet (the track day/car show elements), Test Drive Unlimited (free roam with other players in real time) and the majority of Forza games themselves (the physics engine has been carried across from 4, whilst the customization system and most of the high-end road cars have also been retained). Horizon also introduced off-road racing for the first time in the Forza series, which was expanded in the Rally expansion pack. The first Horizon was provided for free as part of Xbox Live's 'Games with Gold' program from September 1 to 15, 2016. This was partly to promote the then-upcoming Horizon 3, and partly because the game and its DLC was delisted from the Xbox Games Store in October 2016. As with other Xbox 360 games in the program, it was made backwards-compatible for the Xbox One.
- Forza Horizon 2, which was released on September 30, 2014, takes place in a semi-fictionalized version of southern Europe (more specifically Southern France and Northern Italy) and introduces a weather system for the first time in the Forza series. It is also the first multiplatform release in the series, releasing on the Xbox 360 as well as the Xbox One. Playground Games made the leading Xbox One version, while Sumo Digitalnote developed the 360 version using the first Horizon's engine as a baseline. Both versions run at 30 frames per second (like the first Horizon), with the main Xbox One version running at a native 1080p resolution, and it is the only version has the new weather system, downloadable content, and support for both the Drivatar system and the Forza Rewards program. The open world of this game was much less restricted than the first Horizon; whereas Horizon's Colorado mostly restricted players to the roads, Horizon 2note allowed players to traverse much more of the environment. The Xbox One version of the game also received an expansion pack in the form of Storm Island, which emphasizes extreme off-road racing and severe weather conditions, and adds a new, separated open-world to explore. The standard Xbox One versionnote was provided for free during the month of August 2018 as part of 'Games with Gold'. Like with the first Horizon when it was on 'Games with Gold', this wa also to promote the then-upcoming Forza Horizon 4. 2 reached its end-of-life stage on October 1, 2018, with the game and its DLC delisted like the first one was.
- A standalone expansion of Horizon 2 based on the Fast & Furious franchise called Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious was released on March 27, 2015 for both Xbox One and Xbox 360. The expansion takes place in a restricted version of the French side of the game's world before the events of Furious 7, in which F&F regular Tej Parker (voiced by Christopher 'Ludacris' Bridges himself) has the player go on the hunt for ten cars by doing events to earn them. While it does take away several features,note it does add nitrous to the series (but only for certain events) and it has its own set of easy-to-earn achievements that goes up to one thousand (!) Gamerscore. The expansion was free for a limited time until April 10, 2015, after which the expansion cost US$10 for those who missed out on the free deal. Eight of the expansion pack's vehicles are also available in a separate DLC for the main game which costs US$5. Both versions of the standalone expansion were delisted from the Xbox Games Store in January 2018.
- Forza Horizon 3, released in September 2016, takes place in Australia, around its Gold Coast. The map is the largest in the series to date, and features four player co-op and cross-play between Xbox One and Windows 10. Players now take on the role of the festival boss, and are able to plan it out at their leisure through the Horizon Blueprint, a Level Editor that gives players the ability to create events from pre-made ones and share them with their friends. Drivatars also make a return, and the player can hire their friends' Drivatars to earn them money and fans or fire them if they don't meet up their expectations. Widebody kits also make their first appearance in the Forza series as a whole - with licensed kits from brands like Rocket Bunny and Liberty Walk, and a custom soundtrack feature is also available through the Microsoft Groove platform. There's also a new drone mode that allows players to explore the entirety of the map with an in-game quadcopter, mainly used to help find reward boards and barn finds to mark on the map. As with the first two games, there will be expansions. The first expansion, Blizzard Mountain, was released December 13, 2016. True to its name, it introduced snow-covered environments and high elevations to the series. Similar to Horizon 2's Storm Island, the expansion is set in a new open world separated from the main game that features extreme weather conditions. The second expansion, Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels, as released on May 9, 2017. It introduces full-blown Hot Wheels stunt tracks in the open world, with corkscrews, loops, jumps, and crash junctions, which are also customizable through Stunt Swap mode. The expansion also brings ten new cars, four of which are Hot Wheels originals (Twin Mill, Bone Shaker, Rip Rod, and a custom Ford Mustang). Horizon 3 received a 4K patch upon the release of the Xbox One X.
- Forza Horizon 4, released for Xbox One and Windows 10 on October 2, 2018, takes place in Britain, with Edinburgh as a main city. It introduced dynamic seasons to the series, an online-connected open world (instead of just a separate mode) with 72-player servers,note customizable avatars like in Motorsport 7 and even (after an update) a proper route editor. Microsoft also announced at E3 2018 that Playground Games is now officially part of Microsoft Studios (now Xbox Game Studios). As with previous entries, it will receive two expansions. The first expansion, Fortune Island, was released on December 13, 2018. A spiritual successor to Horizon 2's Storm Island, it takes place on an island filled with large thunderstorms, aurora borealis, a hunt for 'hidden treasure', and the 'longest set of mountain switchback terrain' in what is the largest expansion in Horizon series history. The second expansion, LEGO Speed Champions, was announced at E3 2019 and released on June 13, 2019. Itself a spiritual successor to Forza Horizon 3: Hot Wheels, this expansion features Legofied versions of real cars, a world built with Lego bricks and pieces, an open-ended campaign, and a radio station called Radio Awesome, which features only one song... 'Everything Is Awesome!!'
The games feature (usually) monthly new car DLC - one free car (usually a new-model-year of an in-game car) available for everyone, and a mix of other cars which require purchase. Forza Motorsport 4 had monthly $7 packs of ten cars (most of which could be purchased on their own). Horizon 1 had $5 packs of six cars. Starting with Motorsport 5, all DLC cars have been available to buy for free in-game upon buying their respective DLC. Horizon 4 will shake things up by releasing two DLC cars every week instead.
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The Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games feature examples of these tropes:
- Absurdly High Level Cap:
- All of the Forza games go rather nuts with Driver Levels; the more dedicated players are very likely to hit at least Level 1000 in the Motorsport series, while Horizon 2's Driver Level caps out at 999. Horizon 3 also caps out at 999, at which point players get a platinum wristband with a star symbol on it.
- Horizon 4 goes even further; there's now a Prestige-like level system called 'Superstar' that goes up to ten, with the first one starting at what would be Driver Level 201. Although the requirement to get to the next Superstar Level goes up by 100 Driver Levels each time a player's Superstar level goes up,note this means that the maximum Driver Level overall now goes up to an equivalent of9999.note
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: If any car being sold at the auction house is not found at the auto show, expect it to have a starting bid/buyout price (or both) in the millions.
- Adventure-Friendly World: The Horizon games all take place in one of these, with the Horizon Festival enabling sanctioned road racing and spectacle.
- A.I. Breaker: In Horizon 4, Drivatars will try to take a certain predefined path. On player-created routes, that means the same route taken by the player, instead of the ideal route to the following checkpoint. That means players can set deliberately horrible pathing between easy checkpoints, and the Drivatars will never notice the existence of better options. Thus, the Route Creator allows players to reduce Unbeatable difficulty to a trivial level.
- The Alleged Car:
- Motorsport 4 features famous Alleged Cars like the Ford Pinto, AMC Gremlin, Chevrolet Corvair, Mustang King Cobra, and of course the DMC DeLorean. However, despite being painfully slow when stock, they all work just as well as any other car, and several of them become Lethal Joke Characters when upgraded and tuned.
- Horizon 3 ups the ante by including the Reliant Regal Supervan.
- Anachronism Stew: Invoked with the AMG Transport Dynamics M12S Warthog CST in Horizon 3 and 4, which the games state was made in 2554. Clearly, someone used time travel to bring it to the Horizon Festival.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes:
- Community Bounty Hunter events in Motorsport 4. They require you to beat a certain player's laptime, which vary between very easy to Nintendo Hard. If you beat the time by the event closure date, you get a car with a unique paint job. Never fear if you miss the event - because someone will make a clone of the paintjob and sell it on the Marketplace.
- Player badges and titles in Motorsport 4 (avatars and little lines of text under your name in the game lobby) are rewarded for doing certain tasks. Some are easy, like getting a perfect Turn score, or owning ten cars. Some require huge amounts of effort and determination, such as owning three hundred cars, or driving one thousand miles in a Prius.
- Horizon 4 adds clothing items you can customize your character with that you can win as rewards.
- An Entrepreneur Is You:
- You can earn plenty of credits solely by selling liveries (Motorsport 2 onwards) and car setups (Motorsport 3 onwards) you have created. There's also the Auction House.
- Horizon 3 puts you in the role of the festival organizer, allowing you to customize events and expand the festival to your will. Your ultimate aim is to grow the festival to be the best in the world.
- Horizon 4 takes this idea further; you can buy houses to serve as your home base, ranging from cottages to Edinburgh Castle. You can also buy businesses such as a taxi firm that provide missions for you to complete.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The rewind feature from Motorsport 3 and beyond. It can be turned off for bonus credits.
- In Horizon 4, players will ghost through traffic and other racers (including their friends and those in their convoy) when they enter speed zones and drift zones.
- Anti-Grinding:
- In Horizon 3, you can only gain three skill points at most from a single skill chain, and it takes 100,000 skill score to earn one skill point.
- In Horizon 4, the limit is thankfully raised to ten skill points from a single skill chain, and it only takes 50,000 skill score to earn a skill point.
- Appropriated Title: Originally called the Forza Motorsport series, it was officially renamed Forza to accompany the Horizon sister series, thus making each game a legitimate title and not a Spin-Off. However, despite the increasing popularity and establishment of the Horizon series (especially after the critically-lauded Forza Horizon 3 and 4), the Forza Motorsport games are still often referred to as 'Forza [number of Motorsport title]' while the Forza Horizon games are shortened to 'Horizon [number of such title]' and still get treated like a spin-off by several game journalists.
- Artificial Brilliance: The AI in Motorsport 4 will adjust their behavior based on how you drive. What this means is that if you drive like it's a demolition derby, they will smash into you just as often as you try to smash into them. Motorsport 3 and Motorsport 4 have the 'Pressure' system - if you ride on the ass of an AI player, the AI will be pressured into braking later and later in order to try to pull ahead of you. Keep on them long enough, and they will usually eventually miss the braking point entirely and go flying off the track.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- In Motorsport 3, AI drivers will occasionally spontaneously swerve all over the road and mash into each other, and it's easy for them to get stuck on each other. They also did not have upgraded cars, turning single player 'races' into glorified hotlapping.
- In Motorsport 4, Track Day (hotlapping while AI cars simulate slower traffic) events in Rivals. Tha AI are painfully slow, reaching single digits in some corners, and they will regularly pull out into your path, sometimes for no reason at all.
- Occasionally if you hit the rewind feature and then resume the race immediately, the AI drivers either won't realize the rewind has occurred and continue driving from where they left off (often crashing into a barrier, or one another, or even you), or will wildly over-compensate (again plunging head-long into the closest barrier).
- The newest games introduced Drivatars, which replaced the old AI drivers with drivers that supposedly mimic real Forza players' driving habits and skills. The system is far from perfect, with the Drivatars still being prone to many of the old AI's mistakes, and unless set to the highest difficulty, often many seconds slower than the player per lap.
- Artistic License – Film Production: One of the stories in Horizon 4 has you filling in as a stunt driver. You're basically plucked off the street because you were available and looked like the actor more than any other reason, the stunts are all done in one take, and you don't even know what stunt you're doing until you start the relevant chapter.
- Artistic License – Geography:
- The Horizon games. The first game takes place in a completely fictionalized version of Colorado. Horizon 2 added real towns and cities, with everything in its correct place accounting for Space Compression, but Nice, Sisteron, and Castelletto (Genoa) represented only around half of the land. The Storm Island expansion takes place on a fictional Mediterranean island. Horizon 3 is the least fictionalized map yet, but it still takes some liberties with the locations of Australian landmarks. Gold Coast and Byron Bay are fine, but the Twelve Apostles are located between the two, and the Yarra Valley is just to the west of them. Both Horizon 3 expansions take place in fictional areas; Blizzard Mountain on a fictional snow-covered Australian mountain, and Hot Wheels' Thrill City is just blatantly unrealistic. Horizon 4 follows the design philosophy of 3, presenting a Britain that includes Edinburgh, the Lake District and the Cotswolds all within a short driving distance from each other, although it does include a couple fictional places.
- The three urban tracks, Prague (Motorsport 5), Rio de Janeiro (Motorsport 6) and especially Dubai (Motorsport 7). The Jebel Hafeet (and its road and the Mercure hotel) is located in al-Ain, within the emirate of Abu Dhabi, not Dubai. The hotel is not the end of the mountain road - in real life it extends up to the summit. The mountain is nowhere near the city nor an airport.
- Ascended Meme: In Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious there is an achievement called 'How Long Was That Runway?', a nod to the incredibly long runway in Fast & Furious 6.
- A Taste of Power: Played straight since the third game, usually with the car featured on the respective game's cover art.
- Motorsport 3 begins with a practice race in an Audi R8... and then makes you pick from a selection of sub-compacts.
- Motorsport 4 starts with a practice race ('A celebration of speed') in a Ferrari 458 Italia, and makes you pick from a selection of city cars.
- Horizon starts you off in a Viper, engaged in an impromptu street race with Darius Flynt in his Ferrari 599XX. However, the game switches over to your actual character and car once you reach a certain point. That said, the car in question (a VW Corrado VR6) is actually fairly decent, and modified to the top of its class right from the start.
- Motorsport 5 starts off with a race through the streets of Prague in a McLaren P1, and then has you pick from a selection of modern sport-compacts (which includes the BMW 1M Coupe and the Hyundai Genesis 3.8).
- Horizon 2 starts you off in the Lamborghini Huracan, in a short drive from the ferry dock to the Horizon festival's main venue, alongside similar exotics. You then get to choose between 3 mid-level sports cars. The Fast & Furious standalone expansion starts out similarly, using the same car to get to Tej's garage in Nice.
- Motorsport 6 begins with a race in the streets of Rio de Janeiro in the 2017 Ford GT and then has you choose from a selection of lower-tier Japanese tuner cars to begin your career.
- Horizon 3 takes this Up to Eleven. You start off in a Lamborghini Centenario, before switching to a Baldwin Trophy Truck, before doing a showcase event in a Penhall Cholla, before going back to the Centenario again, before finally giving you a choice between starter cars.
- Motorsport 7, at the start of the 'Forza Drivers' Cup'note , you're thrown into 3 consecutive races; the first is with the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, the second in a Mercedes-Benz race truck, while the third is in the rain with a Nissan GT-R GT500. Afterwards, you are given a choice of several championships, with your first car being a freebie.
- Horizon 4 starts you off in a series of events as it introduces you to its new seasons aspect. The game begins in autumn with you driving to a waterfall in a McLaren Senna. It then transitions to winter, putting you in an RJ Pro 2 Truck as you race across a frozen lake. Next, the game transitions to spring with you competing against dirt bikes in a GRC Ford Fiesta. Finally, the game transitions to summer as you are put back into the Senna, racing through villages on your way to the Horizon Festival. The driver is then revealed to be Keira Harrison from Horizon 3, who then asks for the player character, after which you can pick your avatar. After all this, you are given a choice of three slower cars to pick as your starter.
- FH4 also does this with DLC. The LEGO Speed Champions expansion starts you off with a LEGO version of the aforementioned Senna, then transitions you to a LEGO Mini Cooper that you will use as your starter car.
- Auction: The Auction House. Players put their cars up for sale on the auction house, and players bid on the cars.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- SUVs and pickup trucks. They can toss other cars around like toys, but they're so heavy and top heavy that they tend to plow through corners. Pickups are basically death traps online in Motorsport 3, as they're very light in the back, rear wheel driven, and it's very easy for other players to accidentally or purposely hit it, and cause it to spin out, though the problem is less noticeable in Motorsport 4 because of the better collision system.
- Small light cars such as hatchbacks are this in the Horizon games. They can squeeze through tight spaces and grip through corners with ease. However, they tend to have a poor top speed, and the courses in Horizon games are more straight and less technical than in Motorsport games. In addition, their light weight means that they get bumped around by rammers in multiplayer.
- The SSC Ultimate Aero is the second fastest car in the world, with 1200 horsepower and torque. The top speed is higher than the Veyron - but it's rear wheel drive, not all wheel drive. What this essentially means is that you get wheelspin well into fourth gear, making the car nearly undrivable without traction control enabled.
- The downloadable Hennessey Venom GT manages to trump the SSC by having around the same horsepower figures with slightly less torque, but having a much lighter body, meaning even traction control doesn't help.
- Cowl hood scoops and air scoops in Motorsport 4. They look badass, and reduce weight (being made from lighter materials than steel), but they severely restrict interior vision - the king of these being the cowl available on the 2002 Trans-Am, which blocks all of your vision in the cockpit view, as the cowl is pretty much right at eye level◊. The most notable example of this is the Hot Wheels Twin Mill in Horizon 3, which has two air scoops, one of which is directly in front of the driver's seat. In other words, it is a perfect demonstration of why it was designed as a toy first and a functional vehicle second.
- The Lotus Esprit V8 has a similar issue; adding a roll cage blocks half the windscreen so you can only see the bottom half of the road.
- The AMG Transport Dynamics M12S CST Warthog, available in Forza Horizon 3 for those who played Halo: The Master Chief Collection or Halo 5: Guardians. Essentially a civilian Warthog (which means it lacks the military version's 4-wheel steering), it is fast and relatively nimble for its size (it weights 5070 lbs), but unfortunately cannot be upgraded to boost its performance or shed weight (it can accept different sized rims and can fit snow tires though). The 7-speed transmission suffers from strangely short gearing; it will accelerate and a gear change is almost immediately necessary at around 5500 RPM, and the redline is lower than most off-road trucks at 8000 RPM. The M12 CST tops out at around 119 mph, meaning it is ill-suited for races with higher speed vehicles, and is also wider and heavier than most vehicles (though this also means it pushes most vehicles out of its way). However, it excels at off-road racing in Blizzard Mountain; its high ground clearance, relatively nimble handling and massive tires coupled with a healthy amount of torque means it has no trouble bounding up slopes and across snow-covered plains.
- 'Awesome McCool' Name: Darius Flynt in Horizon. The Bass Arena DJ even lampshades that it sounds too cool to be real and suspects that it must be a name change.
- Bilingual Bonus: The DJ of classical station Levante FM in Horizon 2 speaks exclusively in fluent Italian. He complains about the Horizon Festival, as well as the drivers being allowed to tear up the countryside.
- Boring, but Practical: Weight removal and tire compound/grip upgrades, which are likely going to be the most commonly used upgrades.
- Bowdlerise: An update to Forza Horizon 4released on March 26, 2019 censored numerous words and phrases, including some rather innoculous ones like 'high' in the phrase 'I'm flying high' (not 'getting high') in Dreamers' 'Fake It Til You Make It' and a mention of God in Chvrches' (ironically-named) 'Never Say Die'. This is due to Microsoft having to meet ESRB restrictions in order for the game maintain an Everyone Rating.note
- Brand X: Performance parts in Motorsport 4 are a generic brand, unlike Motorsport 3, where most of the parts were 'made' by a certain manufacturer, such as K&N making air filters for certain car brands.
- Generally justified, as Motorsport 4 features a lot more niche and unique cars where no real company would design aftermarket parts for them. However, said niche cars often use engines or are actually built from other cars (for example, the Bertone Mantide is just a Corvette ZR1 with a lighter, radically designed body), so the reason why aftermarket companies were removed besides advertising billboards remains unclear.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory:
- In-game example, the Hired Driver in Motorsport 3 and Motorsport 4. For a mere 50% of your winnings (easily negated by disabling driver aids and increasing the AI's difficulty), he'll almost guarantee a win in any race on any difficultly. The Hired Driver basically drives like The Stig.
- Motorsport 3 had the Porsche 550, which thoroughly dominated almost every leaderboard. It was part of one of the $5 DLC packages.
- Car Tokens allow players to pay real money for a car they can't afford in-game. Available from Motorsport 4 onwards.
- The treasure map for the Horizon series; for a bit of money, all billboards and barns will be marked on your map.
- Although Horizon 1's 1000 Club expansion pack was free, players had to get paid DLC to unlock most of the achievements, especially the relatively quicker-to-get one involving Shelby cars.
- Bumper Sticker: Can be easily created with the game's vinyl editor.
- The Bus Came Back: After being absent from Horizon 3, Horizon XS, the Horizon-branded rock station from Horizon 2 that replaced Horizon Rocks, returns in Horizon 4.note
- Call-Back:
- Each one of the Forza games (barring Horizon 1) includes each of the previous game's logos in the manufacturer decal section of the vinyl editor.
- M. Rossi, from Motorsport 2, 3, and 4, returns as one of the random racers you can find cruising in Horizon 1 driving a red Ferrari F40. They and other AI racers also return for the showcase events in Motorsport 6, in lieu of the usual Drivatars. You can even choose their name as your nickname in Horizon 3. Their racing suit is available as a gear option in Motorsport 7, along with a revelation about her identity.
- Car Fu:
- There are game types where you get points for mashing the other cars. The Cat and Mouse game type requires you to defend your team's Mouse (a slow car) and take out the enemy Mouse and their Cats (high performance cars), which usually means mashing into the enemy Mouse as fast as possible and trying to flip them over. There's also a more standard demolition derby game type, where you get points for ramming players at high speed.
- Online play can frequently turn into Car Fu, unfortunately. Motorsport 3's netcode means that a slight bump can cause a car to act like you did a full blown PIT maneuver, and can result in a pileup with every player mashing into each other; the first corner of a track is notorious for causing these pileups. The problem of slight taps sending cars spinning has been fixed in Motorsport 4, but there are usually pileups at the first corner because people drive like idiots. Also taken to the extreme in Motorsport 6, where the first corner involves 24 cars going through a corner at once. Maybe it's smart to hang back from the pack for a little while.
- Street races in particular have all the other racers act like you're an undercover cop or something, as they will team up and block you from getting ahead, shunt you off the the road and into other vehicles and obstacles, and go out of their way to ruin your day.
- Car Porn: The series is hardcore car porn. Explicit. Barely legal. Under the counter. Cars so lovingly detailed and portrayed to quote Jeremy Clarkson you'll want to marry the game disk.
- Celebrity Cameo:
- The DJs of the music label-themed radio stations in the Horizon series are all subscribed to said label.
- Tony 'London Elektricity' Colman and Chris Goss are the DJs for Hospital Records Radio in all the sequels so far.
- In Horizon 2, Thomas Mackenzie Bell, a.k.a. Toddla T, is the DJ for Ninja Tune Radio, and Hanni El Khatib is the DJ for Innovative Leisure Radio.
- In Horizon 3, Van Pierszalowski of WATERS fame is the DJ for Vagrant Records, Keith Buckley of Everytime I Die is the DJ for Epitaph Records, and Michael Di Francesco a.k.a. Touch Sensitive is the DJ for Future Classic Radio.
- Peter Dalton, a.k.a. MistaJam, takes over DJ duties for Horizon Block Party in Horizon 4.
- Celebrity Paradox: Because you have the same names, characters, driving style and many of the same cars in Horizon 3 it comes across as strange where you go from Keira's boss running the festival in Australia to an unknown trying to get on the roster in Horizon 4.
- Character Customization:
- In the form of car mods and tuning, and with the vinyl editor anything you can think of, from Giles' Oldesmobile to any number of Transformers to the real world equivalent of a Age or Assuloto, can be made up.
- Actual character customization for the driver is introduced in Motorsport 7. Horizon 4 also allows all the different avatars to have the clothes customized, and even be given different emote animations.
- Character Tiers: A game mechanic, each car is given a numerical value called their Performance Index (PI) note , which is then matched to a letter grade; higher letters mean faster classes. Cars can be upgraded to higher classes, and a few can be creatively downgraded to lower classes too, with engine or aspiration swaps or by installing heavy rims. In general the classes can be thought of as: -
- F class - City cars, old economy cars, hybrids
- E class - Hot hatchbacks, '60-'70s sports cars
- D class - American muscle cars, '90-'00s sports cars
- C class - European and Japanese sports sedans, high performance hot hatches
- B class - Late '00s/high performance sports cars and sport sedans
- A class - 90s/early '00s super cars
- S class - Modern supercars, 'track day' cars
- R3 class - Hypercars and road-car-based racing cars.
- R2 class - Purpose built racing cars which still resemble road cars.
- R1 class - Le Mans Prototype cars.
- X class - Modified Le Mans Prototypes.
- From Motorsport 5 onwards, this class has also included all open wheel cars from the 1980s until current times.
- Literal example in Horizon, in the form of wristbands.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
- After being part of the roster throughout the entire series, Volkswagen mysteriously disappeared from Horizon 3.
- Volkswagen returned in Motorsport 7, but gone instead are Toyota production cars.
- Mitsubishi gets the axe in Horizon 4 as the license could not be renewed. Averted now, as the Series 5 update for Horizon 4 adds back Mitsubishi for free.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Most obvious in Motorsport 4, where the cars each AI driver drives are the same colour, when a car's colour can be chosen. For instance, M. Rossi's cars are [almost] always red, as close to Rossa Corsa as possible.
- Continuity Nod: For as little continuity as the series has, in Horizon 4, while giving you access to the Blueprints feature, Keira mentions that her boss played around with it in Australia.
- Cool Bike: While they're not actually playable, you get to race against four motocross bikes during the spring segment of Horizon 4's intro. This same segment can be replayed as the Spring Showcase event later on in the game.
- Cool Car: Hundreds of them! And that's before you start loading them with performance upgrades and light body kits.
- Crossover: Forza Motorsport 4 features the Top Gear (UK) test track, and Jeremy Clarkson provides commentary on dozens of cars in the Autovista mode. Most of the Reasonably Priced Cars from the various Top Gear shows are playable. The Suzuki Liana and the Kia Cee'd from Top Gear UK are there, but the Chevrolet Lacetti is surprisingly absent. The Top Gear US car, a Suzuki SX 4, shows up as well. The two cars from the now-canceled Top Gear Australia (a Proton Satria Neo and a Ford XG Falcon Ute) are nowhere to be found, however. Motorsport 5 featured very high support from Top Gear: all of the three hosts (Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May) appear in the game.
- The Warthog from Halo appears as an Easter Egg in the Autovista mode with Cortana (Jen Taylor) providing the commentary for it in the place of Clarkson. A civilian variant of the Warthog reappears in Horizon 3, where it becomes drivable, alongside 'The Trials' being one of the songs that plays on the in-game radio.
- Forza Horizon 2 received a standalone expansion to promote Furious 7. It involves various challenges using cars from the latest film. All the new cars from this standalone barring Brian's GT-R are available through Furious 7 Car Pack for the base game. Motorsport 6 also got its own Fast & Furious car pack, this time featuring ten cars from different films of the franchise. Motorsport 7 also got a car pack based on The Fate of the Furious and includes ten cars from the film.
- The TV advert for Motorsport 6 showcases the 2017 Ford GT driving through Gran Trak 10, R.C. Pro-Am, Pole Position, Chase HQ, and Ridge Racer.
- The Chrysulus Rocket 69 from Fallout 4 made its guest appearance in Motorsport 6, and you can add it to your car collection too!
- The second expansion for Forza Horizon 3 is a crossover/cross-promotion with Hot Wheels and takes players to a set of islands that are connected by life-sized Hot Wheels stunt tracks. You can also drive a couple of Hot Wheels cars.
- The Regalia from Final Fantasy XV appears in Forza Horizon 3 and is available to players who own either of the games.
- Forza Horizon 4 gets a Best of Bond Car Pack that features ten cars from the James Bond films. Players can even view the gadgets used in the films while in Forzavista mode.
- Creator Provincialism:
- Not to the same extent as Gran Turismo, but there are a lot of classic and modern muscle cars, as the company is American. DLC had greatly expanded the classic European car selection, adding in companies like Austin-Healey, and adding in cars like the Peugot 205 and BMW 507.
- Someone at Turn 10 obviously favors Ferrari; they generally have one of the biggest car selections in each game. With the lower car count in Horizon, this is especially noticeable. Justified, though, as Turn 10 has exclusive rights to the manufacturer.
- With the release of the free 1000 Club expansion pack to Horizon, one of the new achievements that Playground Games added requires that the player earns at least one challenge medal in twenty different British-made cars each. Also, in continuity with the above, there's an achievement for earning one medal each for fourteen different Ferraris.
- Horizon 4 takes place in Great Britain, Playground Games' homeland.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- To be expected with Jeremy Clarkson involved.
- Dak in the first Horizon very subtly disses the condition of your starter car's engine. All the other celebrity racers you face count as one as well, although they act more and more like dicks about it the further you go, especially Hailey Harper and Darius Flynt, which both reach unbearable levels of condescendence. All three of the radio DJ's count too, though to a much smaller degree. Then as the series carries on they get far more vocal and hilarious, with half their air time being devoted to their quips and Beavis and Buttheading your actions during the festival.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Played straight by Ramona Cravache, Marko Baran, Duke Maguire, and Zaki Malak in Horizon. Averted with Hailey Harper and Darius Flynt (Hailey collapses into a black hole of denial after you knock her out of the running while Flynt just tries to remind everyone that he's still here after you take home the Horizon crown.)
- Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Players can customize both the paint/apply decals, and customize the mechanics of a car. You might get a Dodge Neon with a V10 from the Viper and the AWD system from the Dodge Stealth/Mitsubishi 3000GT, with a customized body kit, and a replica British Petroleum livery painted on top.
- Developers' Foresight: In Horizon 2, your car radio will cut out and be replaced with the same music coming from the festival grounds when you drive near one. Except for Levante FM, which is not being broadcast from the festival.
- Horizon 3 does the same, and again the classical music station is an exception. It also does this if you're playing music from Groove's OneDrive integration feature, implying that as the festival boss, you're in charge of the musical acts at the festival.
- Diegetic Interface: Starting with Motorsport 2, the game has fully-modeled interiors◊ for all its cars, with appropriate gauges depending on what the car is equipped with - tachometers, speedometers, boost gauges, fuel gauges, accelerometers, clocks, et cetera. In the high end purpose-built cars, you can actually disable the entire HUD and still remain fairly aware of your status - the car's electronic dashboard or wheel-mounted display will list lap times, your position, remaining fuel, RPMs, gear, speed, and so on. In cars like the Lamborghini Reventon, with its fully digital fighter-jet esque dashboard, it goes all the way to Technology Porn.
- Discount Card:
- The Horizon games have boards that you can smash to reduce certain costs.
- In the first game, they reduce the cost of car parts, each board taking away 1% of the cost; find all one hundred of them, and all upgrades are free.
- From the second game onward, fifty of the bonus boards reduce the cost of fast travel, each board taking off 2% of the cost with free fast travel to those who find all fifty.
- The second game's first expansion (Storm Island) also has boards that reduce the cost of car parts, albeit not as much as the first game's boards (they only go up to 50% off).
- The third game has reloadable perks (earned with skill points) that allows players to get free upgrades upon checkout and a 5% discount on new cars (which can be combined with #Forzathon sale discounts).
- The Horizon games have boards that you can smash to reduce certain costs.
- Downloadable Content:
- Mostly just car packs, especially prevalent in Motorsport 4 with its monthly themed car packages.
- Horizon had a monstrous fifty US dollars season pass.
- Horizon 1 and Motorsport 5's DLC have been particularly controversial due to the vast majority of the DLC vehicles being cars that were in previous games which were removed in the sequel.
- Drives Like Crazy: M. Rossi, the fastest AI driver in single-player. They will occasionally mash you off the starting line, and use the PIT maneuver on you if you get in their way on corners.
- Forza Horizon gives you incentive to drive like a maniac. Crazy stunts like overtaking cars at high speed, drifting, jumping, breaking environment objects or all of these at once and repeatedly will increase your popularity ratings, which include perks such as more races, some money, lottery to win prizes such as cars etc. The game even gives some titles to some of these actions (Daredevil for overtaking or zipping past cars repeatedly, Kangaroo for bouncing multiple times quickly, Landscaping for destroying specific types of obstacles etc).
- Driving Stick: Motorsport 3 and 4 allow the player to set the shifting behavior to 'Manual + Clutch'. On the Xbox controller, you'll have to hold down the LB button while shifting up or down. On expensive racing wheels (like the Fanatec CSR), this mode will make you use the clutch pedal and the 6 speed H-pattern shifter. Poor shifting will result in near-stalls, engine damage (shifting into first gear at 200mph, for example), or engine lugging. If you don't use the clutch when starting from a standstill (such as at the start or after a wreck), the engine will repeatedly stall, resulting in a painfully slow start, especially in cars with huge turbochargers or tall gearing.
- Dolled-Up Installment: The series gained such an entry on April 15, 2019, with the rebranding of Miami Street to Forza Street.
- Down to the Last Play: While the game is generally balanced for close racing if you pick the appropriate difficulty level the Showcase Events in the Horizon series are very obviously designed so that the player can't take the lead until the final corner either because what they're up against is faster or had a straighter route.
- Dummied Out: Jeremy Clarkson was originally going to narrate the Halo Warthog Autovista experience, but it was cut from the game in favor of having Cortana, from the Halo series, narrate it. However, the Jeremy Clarkson Warthog narration can be viewed online.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Shows up in Motorsport 4's World Tour. The AI starts ridiculous easy, but the more events you win, the harder they become. In races, the AI will try to drive more aggressively (braking later and turning harder) if you're catching up to them to make up a better lead, but their plan can backfire and send them careening through a corner because they braked too late.
- Early-Bird Cameo: In Motorsport 6, one of the bridges over Le Mans has a Porsche advertisement on it, before the manufacturer would appear in a 2016 expansion.
- Early Installment Weirdness: The first Horizon game is somewhat different from the games that followed:
- The biggest difference is that car performance indexes are mandatory in Horizon and not so in the other two games (the sequels let you bring a car of any PI to a race and the opponent cars will match your PI). Horizon 3: Hot Wheels did bring back the mandatory performance indexes, however, although it will still scale the PI of other racers to match. Same goes for the Seasonal Championships in Horizon 4, which also restricts players to certain cars or car types.
- The second-biggest difference is the prevalence of sponsors for the game's events. All the sequels drop event sponsors.
- There is no Skill Shop, with the stunt points earned instead contributing to a 'popularity rating' that starts at 150 as you try to reach number 1.
- There are no 'Bucket List' challenges, instead having 'PR Stunts' which are similar in purpose (giving you a chance to drive a preset car in order to accomplish a specific goal) but more formulaic and tied to outposts rather than scattered around the map. Also, the 1000 Club expansion gave each and every single car in the game optional tasks to accomplish, giving players a motivation to try driving every car the game has to offer, something that the sequels don't do enough of, really.
- There are no Wheelspins, street races are more organized than they are in the sequels, and the festival itself has a more cohesive and structured feel compared to the following games (which go for a looser and more ad-hoc feel to racing).
- The map itself has significantly less off-roading areas compared to future games (although the 360 versions of Horizon 2 and its Fast & Furious standalone expansions also have few off-roading areas, but this is more due to the technical limitations of the 360).
- Horizon Bass Arena is represented with a blue logo, while Horizon Pulse is green. Future games invert that trend. There are also no record label stations (especially Hospital Records Radio, which has been in every sequel so far) or classical stations. Amy Simpson (voiced by actress Susannah Fielding) is also not the DJ of Horizon Pulse; the DJ for that station was initially Holly Cruz (voiced by Alix Wilton Regan) instead.
- The first game explicitly takes place in a specific year (2012, the year of the game's release). Also, it had the fake stars players had to beat in events to try to establish its fictional world. Later games would not mention any specific year and the 'beat the stars' thing was dropped in favor of using Drivatars, which were first introduced in Motorsport 5, leaving only the DJs of the Horizon branded stations, the festival managers, and the festival's main mechanics as the only completely fictional characters to appear, which (with the exception of Horizon Bass Arena's DJ Scott Tyler [voiced by Ronan Summers] from the first Horizon and the aforementioned Amy Simpson from Horizon 2 onwards) have been different in every game so far. However, Horizon 4 has a multitude of characters again, but they're either working for the Horizon Festival or doing their own thing.
- Fast Travel Anywhere was a paid feature, costing tokens. The sequels made it available to everyone when they earn enough skill points.
- There were no map expansions for the first Horizon. Instead, there were a pay-for Rally expansion (which features its own events separate from the main Horizon Festival) and the free side-activity-loaded 1000 Club. Horizon 2 had one map expansion in Storm Island (the other expansion was essentially a glorified Porsche car pack), while Horizon 3 and 4 each feature two map expansions in a special expansion pass.
- Upgrades could be discounted or even made completely free if one dedicated themselves to smashing all 100 discount boards across the map. The sequels had the bonus boards give out XP ('Influence' in Horizon 4) rewards and fast travel cost discounts (the latter also allowing for free fast travel if all such boards on the map were found), but only Horizon 2: Storm Island maintained the bonus boards for upgrade discounts (and even then they only went up to 50% off). Horizon 3 made free upgrades a renewable skill perk, but otherwise does not ever allow for permanent upgrade discounts. Horizon 4 completely dropped the concept of free or discounted upgrades altogether.note
- The first Horizon had only one main Horizon Festival and several small festival outposts. Horizon 2 had a main festival and six smaller festival sites, but the smaller sites were made to be mini-festivals instead of the first game's single-tent outposts (and even then, players hardly spent their time at the main festival). Horizon 3 had four festival sites happening at once, and all of them were treated as main festivals. However,Horizon 4 reverses this trend and has a back-to-basics approach to festivals, with only one main festival again and the new houses feature serving the same functions as the outposts and mini-festivals of the first two games.
- Several Showcase Events in the first game pit the player against other standard vehicles in basic 1-on-1 races. Starting with 2, the Showcase Events are always races against not-playable vehicles like planes, motorbikes, or hot air balloons.
- Easier Than Easy:
- All the games (but Motorsport 3 in particular) have plenty of ways to make things easier on yourself. You're encouraged to crank up the difficulty and turn off the driver aids, though: the harder the difficulty is, the more money you earn. Many driver aids also slow you down, compared to driving without them.
- In Motorsport 4, once the player reaches affinity level 4 for a manufacturer, they get all upgrades, bar rims and bodykits, for free. Couple this with getting a new free car - which is already upgraded to the top of its car class - every time you level up your driver, means you can save ridiculous amounts of money fairly early into the game.
- Easter Egg: In Horizon 3, knocking over a specific sign in Yarra Valley featuring an oversized banana is the only way to earn the 'Fruit Salad' skill, worth 1,000 points. This is most likely a reference to the big things of Australia.
- Expansion Pack:
- The Porsche expansion pack in Motorsport 4 re-introduced twenty-three of Motorsport 3's Porsches, added seven new ones that weren't in previous games, added achievements, and added more single-player events. Another two Porsche expansion packs were released for Horizon 2 and Motorsport 6.
- A Rally expansion pack was revealed for the first Horizon about a week before the game was even out.
- A free expansion pack for the first Horizon called the 1000 Club added medals for players to win and two cars.
- Horizon 2's Storm Island expansion pack adds a new open-world which emphasizes extreme rally racing, abrupt and violent weather conditions, and six new vehicles. It can be easily summed up as the Rally expansion pack for the first Horizon turned Up to Eleven.
- Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious is a standalone example that is essentially a limited version of the full game (or, looking at it another way, a glorified demo with its own achievements that happens to be an advergame for a film as well) with Ludacris guiding the player though various events to find cars found in the film series. It's also the only expansion of the game for the Xbox 360 version of Horizon 2, but Horizon 2 Presents F&F on 360 is entirely self-contained, as none of the twelve cars can be transferred to the main game, whereas on the Xbox One version you have to buy the separateFurious 7 car pack to get those cars (although finding and smashing all twenty reward boards does unlock a car in the main game's garage).
- Motorsport 6 received the NASCAR expansion two months after the release of its Porsche expansion, featuring 24 cars from 5 teams of 2016 season and Homestead-Miami Speedway.
- Horizon 3 gets two: the first is a snow-covered mountain in the vein of 2's Storm Island called Blizzard Mountain, with blizzards replacing rainstorms. The second is a unique twist: Hot Wheels stunt tracks that involve loops, crossovers, and other crazy driving conditions. In addition, while it is not an expansion, the Hoonigan Car Pack also comes with its own set of achievements, making that one feel similar to Horizon 2's Porsche expansion.
- Horizon 4 will get two map expansions just like Horizon 3. The first one will be Fortune Island which, like Horizon 2's Storm Island expansion, features extreme weather conditions and lots of off-roading, and also features a large map (the largest expansion map in the series yet) and tons of mountainous switchback roads.
- Expy: The Horizon Festival from the two Horizon games seems to draw heavy inspiration from both the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and Hot Import Nights.
- Duke Maguire is Horizon's version of Johnny Knoxville, who makes it quite clear he's only there to smash up expensive cars for his new show. He was even threatened to be kicked out from the Festival due to his behavior towards his cars.
- Open for interpretation, but both reviewers and players have likened the main character to that of Paul Walker.
- The Vinyl Editor/Decal Editor is also an in-house expy to MS Paint, which was also developed by Microsoft.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Averted, despite having an actual Ford Pinto in the game.
- Exposition Fairy:
- Alice Hart in Horizon. Every couple of minutes, she'll tell you about the hidden discount signs (even if you've already found all of them) or advising you to blow some cash on a car at the Autoshow.
- The free 1000 Club expansion pack contains a patch which resolves this issue, with Alice only advising you to buy a car once you've been playing over a set time and are sitting idle. This patch also tracks whether or not you have all the discount signs, and will disable her comments for good if you have.
- The lady narrator in Motorsport 5, whenever you buy a new car. She's back in Motorsport 6.
- Both Ben Greene and Ashley in Horizon 2, although Ben is the one provoked most of the ire from the fans.
- Tej is this in Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious. Either he keeps telling you to switch to an appropriate car or remind you to use nitrous boost in the beginning of a race almost every time.
- Keira Harrison in Horizon 3 and 4, though thankfully she's less talkative than Horizon 2's Ben and has a more pleasant southern Irish voice to boot.
- Fake Longevity: The 360 version of Horizon 2 is a notorious example. To dominate a certain event, you need to finish in the top 3 in each of ten racing divisions. In other words, going to the same race ten times to dominate it.
- First Person Snapshooter: The games let you take pictures (adjusting focus, aperture, all that jazz) in-game and upload them to the Forza website to download. Motorsport 4 introduced the Big Shot, which lets you take massive 3840x2160 pixel shots, then upload them directly to your Forza website profile in all their 30+ megabyte BMP glory. The Big Shot was also used in the first Horizon.
- Fragile Speedster: Small cars like the Lotus Elan and Mazda Miata offer extremely good handling, but they're tiny and slight nudges can cause them to spin out. On the other end of the size (but not weight) scale would be the Le Mans Prototypes.
- Friendly Rivalry: Unlike the other rivals in Horizon, Ali Howard likes you even before you defeat him (though in the spirit of competition, he won't hold back.) He even invites you to join his street racing league afterward.
- Gaiden Game: Forza Horizon, to some extent.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: In Horizon, Alice Hart and the radio D Js sometimes reference how the racing at the Festival is heavily regulated and speaks of instances where Festival participants getting pulled over for illegal modifications, speeding, etc. Yet the player can do things like go over 200 mph on a public highway, crash into traffic, destroy property (fences, tables, signs) without facing any consequences apart from losing their skill chain combo, and the only regulation seen in the Horizon races are what cars are allowed to enter.
- Game-Breaking Bug:
- Motorsport 4 had a bug in online player where players may hang up in loading screen - sometimes up to five minutes, until the game boots them out to the lobby or pukes up a 'disc is dirty' error. When this happens, the entire lobby gets stuck in the loading screen until the person causing the delay get booted out by the game. This was patched in the March 23rd update, which then introduced...
- If your car's decals are not visible in a race, your Xbox will crash when you return to the lobby. How often it happens varies by player, from every other race (rendering the game effectively unplayable) to every dozen or so races. However, the bug only seems to occur in the public matchmaking lobbies - private or user-created lobbies don't seem to cause the bug.
- Green Aesop: Motorsport 4 has hybrids like the dreaded Toyota Prius, and electric cars like the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Roadster. There's a player title reward for driving 1,000 miles in hybrid or electric cars.
- Guest Fighter: Horizon 3 and 4 lets you drive a Warthog (appropriately given a manufacture year of '2554'). Horizon 3 also received a Quartz Regalia was given as a downloadable gift for players later on.
- Guide Dang It!: Did you know that you can photograph and be rewarded for taking pictures of traffic cars and not just other racers in Horizon 2? Even after obtaining the perk that highlights cars you haven't taken pictures of, traffic is still not highlighted, and the traffic cars are unique and cannot be driven. You will likely not know this unless you noticed the lower resolution images of cars with license plates in the Horizon Promo list hidden in the menu.
- Hand Wave: Blueprints, which let you customize an event's settings, makes sense in Horizon 3 because you're the boss of the festival. While you're a rookie driver in Horizon 4, you still eventually gain access to the Blueprint feature, and it's waved away by Keira saying she's scouting out new event coordinator talent.
- Hard Mode Perks:
- Disabling driver assists (such as anti-lock brakes, traction control, racing/braking line) and increasing the AI difficulty nets you more cash - disabling every assist and enabling the hardest AI will give you an extra 165% cash on top of the regular winnings in Motorsport 4.
- Motorsport 7 features racing mods that range from flat credits and experience boosts or bonus objectives to straight examples of this trope. Mods that disable racing aids, force rainy or night conditions or full damage, fuel or tire damage simulation tend to give the biggest boosts.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Horizon 3 and 4 allow you to select from a large list of both real names and nicknames, to which characters and the GPS will refer to you as, Fallout 4 style. If you entered your real name to your Xbox Live profile, or tied in your Facebook account to it, then the game will automatically select your real given name for you.
- Hero Insurance: You never need to pay for damage to either your car or the surrounding environment. Lampshaded in Horizon 3 after you complete your first stunt jump: Keira mentions that she will have to hold a lively phone conversation with your insurance provider.
- Homage: The trailer for Forza 6 pays tribute to each generation of racers from Gran Trak 10 to R.C. Pro-Am to Pole Position to Chase H.Q. to Ridge Racer.
- The LaRacer@Horizon missions in Horizon 4 have the player help a streamer pay homage to several classic racing games: OutRun, Smugglers Run, Test Drive, Project Gotham Racing, Daytona USA, Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally, Super Off Road and Ridge Racer, reminiscent of both the above linked trailer, and of a Youtuber's similarhomages for the previous Horizon entry.
- One of the stunt driver missions has you as the driver in a tribute to the short film C'était un rendez-vous — both in-universe and out, as the director cites that film as his inspiration.
- Hood Ornament Hottie: The intro to the first game had one of these. Ramona Cravache and Hailey Harper in Horizon count.
- Lampshaded by Hailey herself: she mentions she already gets thousands of dollars just for unzipping her race suit on photoshoots.
- Hummer Dinger: The Autovista mode for the Hummer H1 Alpha in Motorsport 4 describes its extreme off-road prowess... and then notes that 20-inch deep flooded roads are not something generally encountered on the way to the gym.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Ferrari 250 LM in Motorsport 3, Motorsport 4, and Horizon 1. It is by far the best car in its class (B class)... but, with a ten million credits price tag (twenty million in Motorsport 3!), cue much Level Grinding.
- Justified slightly by the fact that the real world car is the most expensive car... in the world. If one goes up for auction, it can cost around ten million pounds sterling. That is a lotta dosh.
- Informed Attribute: The mechanic in Horizon implies that your VW Corrado has seen better days and is running rough; none of which shows in-game with the just-out-of-the-showroom paint and perfectly maintained mechanical bits (semi-justified, as Horizon doesn't have Subsystem Damage like previous games)
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence A few, but the most egregious being the low tire walls, which stop you as if they were made of cast iron.
- Itasha: Can be done from Motorsport 2 onwards. A nice part of the Forza fanbase even makes Itasha liveries and put them on sale online, although a few times with a very high price tag for a car livery, ranking up to 25-30k credits, but it is very often Worth It!
- Can actually be used to a player's advantage online; risque paintings or vinyl groups have actually distracted other playersogling them as they drive along, often causing them to crash.
- It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: Completing the final showcase is Horizon 3 gets you the Best. Horizon. Ever. achievement.
- Jack-of-All-Stats: Sporty hot-hatchbacks like the Ford Focus ST offer a good blend of speed, acceleration, handling, and braking.
- Jerkass: M. Rossi, big time.
- Practically everyone in Horizon besides Dak, the radio DJs and Alice treats the player like crap. Until you beat them, at least.
- Joke Character: Hybrids, which for the most part, are outran by everything else in the game when stock. You can of course, turn them into insane drag racers because of Forza's huge customization, though.
- Most DLC packs usually include one or two.
- The May DLC for Motorsport 4 has a Smart ForTwo, a Ford Transit vannote , and the AMC Pacer X.
- The June DLC featured the Aston Martin Cygnet. For those unaware, it's a 1.0 litre, front wheel drive Toyota iQ with Aston Martin's signature features on both the outside and interior.
- The September DLC had the GMC Vandura.
- The Fast & Furious car pack in Motorsport 6 featured the humongous Terradyne Gurkha LAPV, which is Agent Luke Hobbs's car in Fast Five. It's the heaviest car in the entire franchise, with a listed curb weight of 16,499 pounds, or more than twice that of the former heaviest, the Hummer.
- Motorsport 6's October DLC featured the Cadillac XTS Limo, none of the cars featured in this franchise have ever been this long. It is even lampshaded in it's official description:
'Simply put, this is one hulking and fancy piece of machinery that has no business on the track. All the more reason to have it in Forza Motorsport 6 we say.'- Motorsport 6's January DLC has the Pontiac Aztek. The trailer Lampshades this by gives it an epic introduction, before showing it driving off at a snails pace.
- The Porsche Expansion for Motorsport 6 adds the 356A Speedster. While it's one of the iconic stars of Porsche's early years, it qualifies as a Joke Character because it's slow (only 60 HP stock) and it has more body roll than a Jeep Wrangler.
- Horizon 3 adds the Reliant Regal Supervan, the first three-wheeler in the series.
- Motorsport 7's April DLC included the Honda Odyssey. Yes, that's right, a freaking minivan in a Forza game.
- Horizon 4 has the Peel P50, the smallest production car ever made.
- Land Down Under: Like France in the second game, Horizon 3 is a mish mash of Australia from tracks in Bondi, Surfers Paradise and the Yarra Valley to a celebration of it's cars and culture.
- Last Lousy Point:
- The Horizon games all have achievements for fully driving on every road in the game, and it gets worse with each later, bigger installment. Good luck finding all 531 roads in Britain!
- Also in the Horizon games, there's finding all the bonus boards. This wasn't too bad in the first two games, but 3 ramps up the number of boards in obscure or tricky to reach locations, and 4 will push hard-to-reach boards even further out-of-reach.
- Lethal Joke Character: The city cars are ridiculously fast when upgraded, and handle very well.
- The car dominating the lower-class leaderboards in Forza Motorsport 4? The Chevrolet Spark.
- In the right hands, the Hummer H1 Alpha. It may be slower than the other cars, but being twice as wide makes it impossible to pass.
- The Chryslus Rocket 69 for Forza Motorsport 6. Abysmal braking, acceleration, and handling, but on a straightaway it can reach speeds of 260 miles per hour.
- 6's July DLC has a Mercedes-Benz racing truck. Despite appearances, it handles well and can be pretty fast in its class, and its large size can be an advantage when going up against smaller vehicles.
- Level Editor:
- Horizon 3's 'Blueprint', while not being a fully straight example, is the game's meat and potatoes, as it lets people create their own races, championships and Bucket List events to play and share to their Xbox Live friends.
- The Hot Wheels expansion features a Stunt Swap option where players can modify certain pieces of the track from a set selection of stunt options (ranging from loops, crossovers, jumps, and ditches, among others).
- Horizon 4, which also has the Blueprint feature, introduces a proper route editor: players are able to create their own circuit and point-to-point races up driving around the map, placing checkpoints and (for point-to-point sprints) a finish line along the way. They can choose the season they're set in and share the finished product with other players. The only limitations are that the starting position must be those of Road Racing Series, Dirt Racing Series, or Cross Country Series events, tracks cannot be any longer than forty miles, and all user-created tracks must be test-driven from start to finish first before they can be published.
- Horizon 3's 'Blueprint', while not being a fully straight example, is the game's meat and potatoes, as it lets people create their own races, championships and Bucket List events to play and share to their Xbox Live friends.
- Level Grinding: Getting money in Forza Motorsport 3 was a relatively slow affair, upgrades were expensive, and the player had no choice in what the level-up cars were, forcing them to spend credits to buy them. However, Motorsport 4 inverts it, by dumping tons of free cars onto the player (already upgraded, too!) up to level 50, and after that, dumping six figure credit rewards on the player every time they level up, up to level 150. Additionally, many cars in Motorsport 4 are cheaper than Motorsport 3, such as the Ferrari 250 GTO being a mere ten million credits, rather than twenty million.
- Furthermore, in Motorsport 4 you don't earn levels for individual cars anymore by racing with/in them, but for whole manufacturers. These 'Affinity Levels' grant you massive discounts to upgrades, starting with 25% on the first level and going to 100% at the fourth Affinity Level. This means that except for third-party items like aerodynamic parts, rims, and tires, as well as new engines from other cars of that manufacturer, all upgrades are free. And on top of that you earn additional cash for increasing a manufacturer's Affinity Level, which doesn't seem to be capped.
- Level Scaling: Horizon 2 and 3 lets you choose any car (that fits the class of the event you're playing) with any Performance Index and all the competing racers will drive vehicles that are roughly matched to your own in that same class. This leads to a little Fridge Logic during 3's Midnight Battle races as you can show up to a race driving an S2 car and your opponent's car will scale to yours but when you actually win the car from the race and turns up in your garage, you'll see it was actually a B-spec vehicle.
- Loads and Loads of Cars: Forza Motorsport 4 has almost 500 cars on its own. The monthly DLC packs and the Porsche Expansion Pack increases the car count to over 600.
- Long Name: The standalone expansion to Horizon 2 is officially titled Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious.
- Loophole Abuse: Players were particularly fond of this in Motorsport 3's single-player events. The vast majority of events had no maximum cap on a car's performance index, allowing one to show up to a race featuring French makes such as Peugeot and Renault, in a 1000-horsepower Bugatti Veyron.
- Luck-Based Mission: Track Day events, if you're trying to get a 'clean' laps (no contact with other cars, stay on the track at all times, no rewind). The AI cars that drive around the track will brake and swerve with no warning.
- Magikarp Power: The Datsun 510 and VW Rabbit in the third game absolutely dominate with enough modification, although any heavily modified car applies.
- Marathon Level: Endurance races in Motorsport 3 lasted around an hour to two hours. The events were removed from the career in Motorsport 4, though it's possible to create a custom online race lobby for an endurance race, up to fifty laps (be it on the one-mile long Ladera test track or on the ten-mile long Nürburgring). A special event to win a Unicorn car in Motorsport 4 had players join a multiplayer lobby on the Le Mans track in Le Mans Prototype cars, and then required them to do 360 laps. In an online race.note
- The final race in the Xbox One version of Horizon 2 takes place in a circuit which circumnavigates the entire map, with the Festival's main hub as start/finish location. It takes around 20 minutes to finish. The 'Goliath Circuit' (which opens up when you max out the Byron Bay festival) serves a similar purpose for 3 (though, thanks to the blueprinting function, if you're nuts enough you can add laps to it) and bag several hundred thousand dollars, enough skill points for a free tune on your next ride, and a wheelspin or six for further riches and cars for the auction house.
- Horizon 4 has four mini-Goliath style point-to-point races for each of the four primary racing disciplines; the Colossus for the Road Racing Series, the Titan for the Cross Country Series, the Gauntlet for the Dirt Racing Series and the Marathon for the Street Scene. Once again, the true 'Goliath Circuit' makes a return and is unlocked at Round 20 of the Road Racing Series. Fortune Island adds two other Goliath-esque circuit races in form of the Kraken for the Road Racing Series and the Leviathan for the Dirt Racing Series.
- The December update for Motorsport 7 takes this to ridiculous levels with the ability for players to lengthen any race up to 1000 laps or a full 24 hours!
- Mickey Mousing: The title screen of Horizon 4 syncs its seasonal change to the music.
- Moral Dissonance: All three DJs in Horizon rail against the evils of street racing, yet the game allows to you participate in ad hoc street races against rivals out on the hub map, and the actual street race events hosted by Ali Howard have some of the highest payouts in the game, so you'd be a fool to ignore them.
- Multi-Track Drifting: There is nothing (besides common sense) stopping you from tuning the four-ton Hummer H1 Alpha to be used as a drift car.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: In Horizon various CPU characters use cars which are only available in the Limited Collector's Edition, which can't be available for the player if he/she doesn't have it: the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento, the Pagani Huayra, the Koenigsegg Agera, the RUF RT 12 R and the Audi R8 GT Spyder are these cars. Thus, if you have the Limited Collector's Edition and have redeemed the codes, this trope will be then subverted.
- Nerf: Skills received a nerf in Horizon 4. In Horizon 2 and 3, they were on big grids and were applicable to every car. In 4, they were scaled back into car-specific Car Masteries, which only apply to that car, and are on a smaller grid. That means that not every car will have, for instance, an upgrade to higher multipliers.
- New Game+: Although not technically one, once you reach Driver Level 200 in Horizon 4 you enter a special Superstar mode which works similarly to Call of Duty's Prestige mode. You go back to Driver Level 1 but your wheelspins will slowly become of better quality as you go through the Superstar ranks.
- Nintendo Hard: Any event with a field of R1 Le Mans Prototype cars and no assists. These cars have 6-700 horsepower but only weigh 900kg at most, so the slightest twitch on the throttle is almost guaranteed to cause you to spin out and mash into a wall.
- Forza Motorsport 4 can become just as hard as F-Zero GX or Midnight Club: Los Angeles, if you win loads and loads of races.
- Forza Horizon games: Insane difficulty.
- The '90s: One of the Rivals mode events bears the same name as this trope. It's description talks about pivitol moments such as the arrival of the internet and the Y2K scare. The event itself is a drag race with any 90's car of your choice.
- Nitro Boost: Debuted in Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, but only used in certain events.
- No Communities Were Harmed: Though played straight in the first Horizon, the second game is a bit more indecisive. Some places such as Nice, Sisteron and Castelletto (Genoa) are based on real places, but Montellino, Saint-Martin and San Giovanni are fictional. The third game averts this, including real-life locations such as Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and Coober Pedy. All the Horizon games' map-adding expansions play this completely straight.
- No Name Given: Your silent protagonist in Horizon. Lampshaded by the other competitors, invoked by the radio stations; they point out your character doesn't even register his name into the events he's entering.
- Non-Idle Rich: Zaki Malak in Horizon is an Arab prince with a serious love of cars and motorsports.Zaki Malak: I might have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I also had grease under my nails.
- Non-Indicative Name: Acknowledged in Horizon 3 with the Twelve Apostles, which there are only eight of them (formerly nine).
- Oddball in the Series:
- Horizon 2 is the only Horizon game to feature road trips between festival sites. They are replaced by convoys in Horizon 3, which players can start and stop at any time. It's also the only Horizon where street races are actually Horizon Festival-sanctioned events, the only one with a male Horizon Festival director (Ben Greene), the only one so far that is held in two countries (France and Italy, both of which are primarily non-English-speaking countries), the only Forza title to be released for two home consoles (Xbox One and Xbox 360), and the only Horizon entry to have not received Xbox One X enhancements.
- Horizon 3 is the only Horizon game not to have only one central Horizon Festival site, with festival sites in Byron Bay, the Outback (near Coober Pedy), Yarra Valley, and Surfers Paradise. As a result, it's also the only Horizon game not to feature any Horizon Festival going on in the 'satellite photo' of its map screen, since all four festivals are constructed as you progress through the game.
- Old Save Bonus: The Forza Rewards system. From Forza Motorsport 3 onwards each game rewards you with cars and weekly bonus credits depending on what previous games you've playednote and how much you've completed them. Players can claim their Forza Rewards weekly on ForzaMotorsport.net or the Forza Hub app.note
- Only One Name: Horizon 3's mechanic Warren apparently has this trope applied to him according to his Forzavista commentary on Aston Martin.Warren: The name's Warren. Um... it's just Warren.
- Open Secret: The Street Scene in Horizon 4. Jaimin insists that none of it is sanctioned by Horizon and that Keira must not know about it yet it's openly discussed by the Radio D Js (usually before a Verbal Backspace). Naturally, once you win the Marathon, Keira calls you to 'not' congratulate you.
- Over Drive: Any player looking to get the achievements for completion of every event in the game will experience this, especially in Motorsport 3 and Motorsport 4. The endurance races in Motorsport 3 and the two-stage championships in Motorsport 4 are enough to drive you insane.
- Palette Swap: Not as many as Gran Turismo, but still a fair few. Several examples:
- Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and the Peugeot 107. All the same apart from the front bumpers (although the Aygo does have a different rear end as well).
- Alternate market versions of the same car (e.g. Infiniti G35 and the Nissan Skyline 350GT). Besides badging and steering wheel position, nothing else is different.
- A common complaint about the car list is how often several manufacturers will have the same race car with the same stats, but be classed as separate models because of the livery. Holden is the worst offender, with only two road cars - one if you don't have the DLC pack - and five race cars with identical performance factors and price, but different paint jobs.
- The player's character in Horizon 1 has the exact same animations as the driver in Motorsport 4, albeit while dressed in a neutral fashion rather than full racing attire.
- Forza Horizon featured the Ford SVT Raptor Halo edition in one of its DLC packages. It's a bog standard Ford SVT Raptor with Halo decals (The UNSC eagle logo) and a camouflage pattern - something which anyone can design on their own and apply to the standard car. It wasn't even the free DLC car, either.
- The NASCAR Expansion Pack for Motorsport 6 features precisely 3 cars - which are almost completely identical anyways outside of superficial bodywork - painted in a variety of colors.
- Pass Through the Rings: Autocross events in Motorsport 4. Cones are set up to form gates along the track, and you pass between them as you go along the track. Hitting the cones results in a +5 second time penalty to your lap. The cones are set up to form slaloms and create extremely tight corners, making them excellent ways to test a car's handling and stability.
- Patchwork Map:
- The first Horizon's Colorado has hills and mountains next to fields and farmland next to deserts and mesas.
- Horizon 3 features a rainforest next to the fertile Yarra Valley, which in turn is next to the outback. If you look off into the distance, you can also spot snow capped mountains. Truth in Television for once, although the Space Compression exaggerates it to an extent.
- Averted with Horizon 2 and 4, which take place in entirely in Mediterranean and Oceanic climates, respectively.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: In Horizon 4, players can earn influence (the game's equivalent of XP points) by streaming or watching the game on Mixer. It didn't take long for players to abuse this system by hosting 24/7 streams of the game on Mixer to easily farm influence without playing the game.
- Perfect-Play A.I.: Because of the way the Drivitar system works (that is it inherits cars driven by other players and assigns an AI to them), be prepared to encounter opponents in Horizon 3 that have flawless grip and insane acceleration off the line. They still match your PI but they can be ridiculously hard to beat (and nigh-on impossible depending on the event).
- Play Every Day:
- Or rather every weekend. The Forzathon events in Horizon 3 are week-specific challenges that are held over the weekend where you can win things like extra XP, credits, Wheelspins, or even bonus cars for completing certain tasks (such as three-starring a specific Danger Sign jump). The cars particularly encourage you to participate in these events as much as possible as once the event ends you either have to get it through the Auction House or hope it turns up again during another Forzathon. Occasionally these are also held in smaller timeframes during the week as well so you're encouraged to sign on regularly.
- Horizon 4 expands on the Forzathon concept, introducing daily and hourly tasks along with bringing the weeklies back.
- Primal Fear: Better get over that fear of falling hundreds of feet, sealed inside a car, into the open ocean because it's a constant presence in the Hot Wheels expansion of Forza Horizon 3.
- Production Throwback: The goal of earning fans by winning races and completing stunts in Horizon 3 is an idea straight from Blur, a game with which Playground Games inherited many of its developers from.
- Product Placement:
- Obviously parts, fuel and tire companies are advertised, however Forza has been supported by several manufacturers over the years and have had numerous free car packs. Motorsport 2 was supported by Nissan. Motorsport 3 and Motorsport 4 were backed by Hyundai, with the free pack in each game normally having an upcoming model and a racing variant along with it. Motorsport 4 was closely linked with BMW, and the new Viper. Horizon 2 had a free car pack to promote the 2016 Mazda MX-5.
- Also, every second expansion of the Horizon sequels are this as a cross-promotion, with Horizon 2 having a Porsche expansion and a Fast & Furious standalone expansion, Horizon 3 having a Hot Wheels expansion, and Horizon 4 getting a LEGO expansion.
- Pun: There's a challenge in Horizon 2 called 'Train in Vain' where you race against a train. Guess what song plays during that challenge.
- Ramp Jump: Horizon 3 adds these as PR Stunts. Lampshaded in that the ramps are marked with bright conspicuous flags as a safety measure.
- Rare Vehicles: The Forza series has two types of rare car:
- There are numerous examples of actual rare cars. For instance, you could be in a race with sixteen Ferrari F50 GTs - Ferrari only made three!
- Forza Motorsport 2 through 4 also had 'unicorn cars'. These cars were only available from official competitions, by being a VIP, or via auctions set up by Turn 10.
- What gets really weird is that some actual rare cars (eg. the aforementioned Ferrari F50 GT) aren't considered unicorns, while at least one of the unicorns aren't actually rare (the 1969 Chevy Camaro SS in Motorsport 3 and 4).
- In Motorsport 4, the auction house used to be a good place to get them, although gamers charging 999,999,999 credits for them made Turn 10 realize that the only good that would come out of selling them online would be discovering hackers. An update now prevents players from gifting or selling unicorn cars on the auction house. Hackers are also allegedly the reason why unicorn status has been abolished in Motorsport 5 and Horizon 2.
- Horizon 3 introduces Horizon Edition cars, specially tuned cars which are only obtainable through wheelspins. These cars are all upgraded to the top of a certain class and also have bonuses like XP or credit multipliers. If you can't manage to win them through wheelspins, expect to shell out lots of money for one of them in the Auction House: their starting price is no less than 200k and their buyout price is around 5 and a half million credits. These cars also return in Motorsport 7, now dubbed as Forza Edition cars.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- During Autovista, Clarkson will every now and then address his own opinions on the car - for better or worse. A good example would be his take on the Ferrari F50.
- Horizon may let you find one of only six Shelby Daytona Coupes rusting away in a barn, but don't think for a second you can actually buy a concept car. Instead, they're now unicorn cars.
- Reality Is Unrealistic:
- One of the complaints a few reviewers had about early titles in the series was that some of the cars did not sound like they would in real-life. However, those cars sound exactly like they do in real-life. The audio engineers even went and sampled the individual components of those cars' engines on electric motors so they could fine tune individual engine noises as players modified their vehicles. However, this is not necessarily how those vehicles sound in Hollywood films.
- Every game allows racing front splitters and wings to installed, regardless of how rare and/or unlikely the car would be.
- Recycled In Space: The basic game engine, modification system and car models from 4 are re-used in Horizon, only in an Coloradan open-world setting.
- Recycled Soundtrack: 'We've Had Enough' by the Alkaline Trio appears in both Motorsport 3 and Horizon 3.
- Rice Burner:
- Some people do up their cars like this.
- Painting and selling cars was such a major part of the Motorsport 2 community that it got turned into an entire section of the game in Motorsport 3, complete with leaderboards.
- RPG Elements:
- Each race in career mode gives you experience as well as money. At certain levels you are gifted what should be an appropriate car...
- The third and fourth Motorsport games also have manufacturer levels, which give cash and increasing discounts on aftermarket parts. In the fourth Motorsport game, you can (eventually) get all manufacturer upgrades for free!
- Rule of Cool: Horizon in general is this, letting people tool around in several-million dollar hypercars like they're falling off the trees, taking them down back roads and off-roading through the jungle for kicks. However the Hot Wheels expansion from 3 hits entirely new levels with crisscrossing orange and blue track pieces soaring hundreds of feet in the air along with loops, flaming rings to jump through, life-sized animatronic Tyrannosaurs rexes, and massive half-pipes. Leaving the impossibility of creating something of this scale asidenote , such an arrangement would be the biggest liability nightmare you could ever conceive but dang if it isn't fun.
- Samus Is a Girl: Motorsport 7 reveals that M. Rossi's first name is 'Maria'. Although she had a generic male model in Horizon, her gender had otherwise never been mentioned.
- Scenery Porn: The Fujimi-Kaido track in Motorsport 3; cliff faces, rivers, waterfalls, and none of this is in the skybox. You can actually look alongside the track and see some rapids with water flowing over them. They even put in a small scenic overlook so you could stop and gawk at it all.
- Forza Motorsport 4. Bernese Alps. Whoa.
- Forza Horizon 1's rendition of Colorado. Beautiful mountain vistas, desert roads, and all the fireworks above the Horizon Festival at the center of the map lead to a whole lot of Scenery Porn.
- Motorsport 5 has pretty much this trope all over the freaking place. Prague? Bernese Alps? Yas Marina? Le Mans? Oh yes.
- Horizon 2's Xbox One version is shaping up to have the best graphics seen so far in the series, with its amazing rendition of the French Riviera and Tuscany. Just look at the E3 trailer!
- While there's no denying that Horizon 3's rendition of Australia is outright majestic, with the coastline, Surfers Paradise, the Outback and the forests, special mention goes to the sky, continuously recorded in location with a 12K camera.
- Scunthorpe Problem: Rigidly enforced by the Xbox Live language filter.
- The storefront will block out any searches for obscenities, as well as come down hard on anybody who dares post pornographic designs and vinyl groups as well as ones bearing a Nazi swastika resemblance. However, the system refuses to acknowledge the word 'Honda' as anything but a nasty curse word.
- The games can be spotty at best when trying to download or upload content with it sometimes triggering a problem and sometimes the same, Internet safe wording getting through. It gets worse if you try and upload something, if the game catches something amiss It will call you out on it.
- Seasonal Baggage: The four seasons become a major part of Horizon 4, in which they cycle every real-life week. In addition to the visual differences, the four seasons also have some subtle and not-so-subtle effects on gameplay. For example, Rivers will be frozen in Winter, fast-flowing in Spring and shallow in Summer.
- Sequel Escalation: The Horizon series ups the ante with each installment. In the first Horizon, you're just a driver, the Horizon festival has just one site. In Horizon 2, you're a distinguished individual, the festival takes place in southern Europe, and there are multiple sites. In Horizon 3 you are in charge of the Horizon festival, rather than being a participant like in the last two games, and the expansions take you to a snow-covered region and a set of islands with Hot Wheels tracks built all over them. Horizon 4 makes you a rookie once more, but now the game is all about the Horizon Life, introducing seasons, character customization, and purchasable properties.
- Shout-Out:
- The 'Out of Time' achievement in Motorsport 4 is to reach 88 miles per hour in a DeLorean.
- The loading screen for Drift events has a white-and-black Toyota AE86 drifting through a corner.
- Buying a Ford Falcon XB will give you the 'Last of the V8s' title
- Finding it in Horizon 3 has the game's mechanic gush over it, all but calling it the car from Mad Max. Once it's been restored, the body kit option immediately turns it into Max's Pursuit Special.
- Where else have we seen a quiet, nameless guy, good with cars and owns a cool jacket and driving gloves other than Horizon?
- Yet in Horizon, you can challenge the CPU drivers driving around Colorado by tailing them. Tokyo Xtreme Racer and Wangan Midnight, anyone?
- One of the special edition Aston Martin cars is a Le Mans prototype, bearing the number of 007. As well as this, when you first find the Aston Martin DB5 in Horizon, in addition to damage from years of neglect, the car has bullet holes in it's door, and the comments made about it go exactly as far as they can without actually saying the name of it's most famous owner...
- One of the achievements in Horizon 2 is called 'The Train's in Vain'. It references one of the songs in the soundtrack.
- When listening to Bass Arena in both Horizon games, after being reminded about what station you are tuned into, you can sometimes hear someone say 'All your bass are belong to us!'.
- Motorsport 5 has a rivals event and achievement for doing a 10 minute lap of the Nürburgring named 'I could do that in a van!' after Sabine Schmitz's Badass Boast on Top Gear.
- Horizon 3 has an achievement called This. Is. FORZA!
- Another Horizon 3 achievement is titled 'Tonight We Ride', which is the tagline of the 2015 Need for Speed reboot.
- Horizon 3 has special events called Forzathon that give prizes for competing in certain kinds of events, one which was based around Halo had car horns offered with the task having a title based on something from the games. However the final task which gave the player their own Warthog is called 'Looks more like a Puma'.
- The nickname feature in Horizon 3 is full of these. You have Bort, Big Boss, El Pollo Diablo, Dom and Maverick and Goose for examples.
- In Horizon 3 the second showcase is called Freight Expectations.
- The barn found Mini Cooper in Horizon 4 is name dropped as a stunt car that bungled the sewer chase scene in The Italian Job (1969). Similarly, another barn find is a red 1983 Audi Sport Quattro that's been shot-up - implied to be the one from BBC series Ashes to Ashes (2008).
- One set of story missions has you helping a Gamer Chick vlogger reenact her favorite racing games, reminiscent of one specific trailer for Motorsport 6 that depicted the new Ford GT driving through various racing games in each generation of gaming.
- Occasionally when in the lead and second place manages to overtake you they will suddenly go up to plaid speed and be completely impossible to catch, ala the cheating AI in R.C. Pro-Am. Expect to be pipped by this right at the end of a race where even if you can react rewinds will suddenly be switched off.
- One of the horns added to Horizon 4 with the Fortune Island expansion is the infamous 'Wololo' cry of the Priest from Age of Empires.
- Show Within a Show: Duke Maguire hosts a series called Krash Max, which is referenced often in Horizon.
- Silliness Switch: The second expansions of Horizon 3 and Horizon 4.
- The Hot Wheels expansion for Horizon 3. The main draw of the DLC is a Joke Level which brings on an Unexpected Gameplay Change - driving on Hot Wheels tracks is more akin to Trackmania or the Grand Theft Auto Online stunt races. Vehicle customization to min max top speed and horsepower because of the long straights and lack of traffic is heavily encouraged, and the Hot Wheels vehicles serve as Joke Characters that can be brought back into the main game. Where it really gets silly is how the presence of Thrilltopia changes the behavior of your team and radio announcers, who have always been fond of lampshades, snark and quirky behavior, but the fantastical premise of the DLC takes all of these traits into seventh gear and turns the Horizon Festival into an affectionateWorld of Snark.
- The LEGO Speed Champions expansion in Horizon 4 continues this trend, taking place in a valley filled with Lego bricks, pieces, minifigures, animals, and structures, features Lego versions of three real life cars, and adds new radio station dedicated solely to playing one infamously catchy song.
- Skill Gate Cars: SUVs end up as this in Horizon, since their poor handling makes little difference when most cars are piling into the walls oin every corner whilst their large size and high weight work great for ramming, commonly used at low level as well as being the best vehicles off road. However, at higher or average levels, most people in smaller cars than an SUV can duck through their inside around a corner whilst the SUV driver is incapable of doing anything about it.
- Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: The Motorsport series is a 3, while the Horizon games are a 6.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Blizzard Mountain expansion in Horizon 3 and the entirety of the Horizon 4 map in winter.
- Spiteful A.I.: Getting ahead in a race. Here come the drivers ahead and behind to box you in so you cannot take the lead. Getting a good drift or skill score? Here comes some traffic to make you lose it all. Just want to get to the next event? Here come some troll drivatars to grief you all over the road. It's so bad that you can pull over to collect a high skill points score and AI cars will go out of their way to make you lose it all, or you can have a smash in free roam (thus this is only done for giggles), rewind to avoid it and the cars will move to try and make you crash.
- Subsystem Damage: Forza splits your cars into sections; bodywork, engine, gearbox, brakes, steering and suspension. Damage to each section reduces your car's performance accordingly.
- For instance, a shunt in the rear will damage the rear bumper and can usually be shrugged off. However, changing down a gear at too high a speed will over-rev and ruin the engine of the car, severely limiting top speed and acceleration.
- Somewhat flawed, as many cars can be rammed by the wheel well or front quarter panels, but will be registered as direct hits to the front bumper, despite there being no damage done to it.
- Some DLC cars, presumably due to rushed programming to get the car pack ready in time, take this even further; the driver's door may be hit, but the game counts this as a ruined rear bumper.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: RUF to Porsche in Forza Motorsport 4. Whilst initially seen as a Replacement Scrappy, RUF is one of few manufacturers to be fully sponsored through the game, as shown by the various billboards with the RUF logo. Even with the arrival of the Porsche expansion pack, the developers still add to RUF's car selection with their more famous cars such as the CTR 'Yellowbird' as downloadable content.
- The inclusion of both Porsche and RUF makes it only the second game in history - the first being Test Drive II: The Duel - to feature both manufacturers. The reintroduction of Porsche in Horizon 2 makes it the third game to do so.
- The first game had the Blue Mountains course. It was an exact replica of Australia's Bathurst circuit, albeit with more lush scenery.
- Technology Porn: The Autovista mode in Motorsport 4 and Forzavista mode in Motorsport 5 is this.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: According to Jeremy Clarkson's Autovista for the Mercedes McLaren SLR the designers couldn't even agree what the car sounded like. (The Germans say it's like a Messerschmitt, the Brits said it is like Spitfire.)
- This is pretty much taken exactly from the review he did of the car on Top Gear, but without the additional [paraphrased] line of: 'Personally, I think it sounds like the God of Thunder... Gargling with nails!'
- Teleport Spam: A non-intentional, hilarious side effect of players joining with terrible connections. Cars with poor connections will start phase-shifting across the track wildly, suddenly appearing in the sky, partially submerged in the ground, or inside someone's car.
- Theme Music Power-Up: Horizon 3 adds the 'Skill Song' mechanic, in which random radio tracks will provide double skill points while they play.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: There's an option during the races when you make a bad maneuver that the game allows you rewind your move until a point you can make the move again. Of course, you can disable this option for more game points.
- The Rival: Gran Turismo.
- In-game, M. Rossi will eventually become the rival of any decent Forza player. Horizon 1 meanwhile is packed to the gills with ready-made rivals from Ramona Cravache all the way up to Darius Flynt.
- Those Wacky Nazis: The Auto Union Type D, a downloadable car in Forza Motorsport 5. It also appears in Motorsport 6 alongside Mercedes-Benz W154, another DLC Nazi race car.
- No Swastikas: The Nazi references were not used, at all. Also, despite having an extensive paintjob system, the storefront will block any designs bearing Nazi-related imageries.
- V8 Engine Noises: Apparent in both Horizon 3 and Motorsport 7, due to sound recycling between similar engines as individual engines no longer have individual recordings.
- One particular trailer for Motorsport 6, specifically the one showing the 2017 Ford GT driving through various classic racing games, has the car emit a V8 engine note, even though it's powered by a twin-turbo V6.
- Vanity License Plate: Similar to the Bumper Sticker, it's very easy to create one. Horizon 3 adds actual license plates that can be customised. (On a side note, some cars in Horizon 3 have a New South Wales license plate that looks a lot like California's. The mentions of New South Wales are stripped from those plates in Horizon 4, however.)
- Variable Mix:
- Forza Motorsport 5's in-game soundtrack is an orchestral soundtrack that varies to fit with different situations, that is, it becomes louder and more pompous as the player performs better during races or is in a close combat with other racers.
- Forza Horizon 4's intro theme, 'Sunrise' by Fred V & Grafix, is split up into four parts, which play one-by-one depending on which season is currently being previewed to the player.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Not a 'villain' per se (it's a racing game, after all), but Darius Flynt in Horizon is the most self-centered and vapid of all the serious competitors you face. He is, however, an amazing driver, something the fans keep supporting.
- Virtual Paper Doll: Later Forza games give you some control over your driver's appearance. Sometimes, it's as simple as selecting their racing suit; other times it lets you pick different tops, bottoms, accessories, and more.
- The Voiceless: Like almost any other open-world racing game series, Horizon's character keeps his/her mouth shut through the entire game.
- Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Some liveries are based entirely around nation flags - for example, a racing livery for a Lotus based on the flag of the United Kingdom.
- Weird Crossover: The Horizon series, while not as grimly realistic as the Motorsport superseries, is still fairly grounded in reality. So for Horizon 3's first expansion, Blizzard Mountain, it's a trip up to a snowy peak to do some racing in cold-weather conditions like blizzards and icy lakes. Seems pretty normal, yeah? The second expansion, you ask? How about life-sized Hot Wheels plastic tracks?
- Not to be outdone, Horizon 4 tries its hand at twisting up player expectations with a LEGO-themed expansion.
- What the Hell, Player?: In Horizon 3's Blizzard Mountain expansion, running into snowmen will have Warren rip into you for doing that, and to let it sink in, the smiley face on the snowman's 'head' instantly turns into a frown when struck.
- Wide Open Sandbox: The Forza Horizon series.
- Wronski Feint: If an AI car is riding on your ass and they only start to overtake you right before a turn, they'll go flying through the turn from breaking too late, often slamming into a wall. Happens frequently in multiplayer when dealing with rammers - if you see someone aiming to smash into you, just go wide at a turn and smash on the brakes, and the rammer will go flying through the turn and smash into the walls of the track.
- You All Look Familiar: Parodied in the first chapter of Stunt Driver in Horizon 4. The stunt coordinator is less than impressed with the player, claiming that they're not that similar looking to the actor they're standing in for. The group then looks over at said actor, who has the exact samecharacter model.
- Zip Mode: The Horizon games have a fast travel system. In the first game, you can travel to certain points, with the option to travel anywhere only unlockable with a real-money purchase (which is no longer available after the first game and its DLC's delisting in 2016). Horizon 2 and 3 let you travel anywhere by paying in-game credits, and the cost can be reduced by smashing billboards around the map. 4 further restricts this by binding fast travel to player bought houses and the festival site unless the player purchases one specific house that allows them to fast travel anywhere.
Alternative Title(s):Forza Horizon, Forza Motorsport
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I love this game so far, they made some smart changes and the driving feels better than ever. Plenty of content and cars, and its BEAUTIFUL. I could drive around for hours. But every single time I do just about anything I feel like im subjected to some groan-inducing monologue by one of these cardboard cutouts dipped in sugar. Its as if the entire game takes place in one of those pre-ride videos they play at Disney World. Anyone else loving the game but slowly losing their sanity? Also the game called me Gregory which I havent been called since grade school and my pride is hurt haha.