I love a good racing game, and Forza Horizon 5 has been quite enjoyable. I like that I can drive around freely on the map and jump into events anytime I want to. Or just dick around and get combo points for doing cool stunts in the wild.
This Porsche has been my "daily driver" in this game. So far, it's been my favorite car to get around in. Just because the handling is really nice in the game; I don't really care for Porsche's in real life.
I also really enjoyed their collaboration with Hot Wheels. I daresay their Hot Wheels events are far more fun than anything else going on in the game. It's fun to be playing in real cars on an oversized track, which make you feel like you're driving a tiny toy car. But I also really like the Hot Wheels Unleashed games, so maybe I'm a bit biased. Also, I collected Hot Wheels when I was a kid back in the '80s, so the idea of driving in a life-sized Hot Wheels car is amazing to me. #LifeGoals.
Hot Wheels. I've said it too much and it sounds weird to me now. I believe the term is "semantic satiation."
Plus, the visuals are gorgeous! I suppose I should mention that I built a gaming computer earlier this year just so I can max out graphics on my games. Most of my screenshots are in 4K resolution ([dons my IT technician hat] Officially 2K, but marketing departments call it 4K) and I'm playing on a giant 48" OLED monitor. It's important to have the best visuals in my games to get that immersive feeling. Especially in a racing game.
What I don't like is all the micro-transactions to buy individual cars. I enjoy unlocking more cars to play in my racing games, but I'm not about to spend real money to unlock a single car that might be interesting to drive around for 15-20 minutes.
I will play 100+ hours of challenges to eventually unlock a single car before I spend the $3 to immediately unlock one. First off, that's the whole point of games - to play them! Unlocking content should be part of the gameplay, not something you can skip if you have the money to throw at it.
Secondly, I'm very anti-corporate greed, and unfortunately, games are run by businesses who care more about making money than actually making good content. So the enshittification is spreading.
There was a time when gamers balked at DLC - if you didn't have all content in a base game upon release, then what was the point? But every company jumped on the DLC train, and we've gotten so used to it in the past decade or two that it's almost expected that a game will release extra content after the fact now. If it weren't for Steam, I'd probably never play games. They're not the perfect company, but they've done more to support the gaming community, providing reasonable deals and permanent access to your games, even if publishers pull them from the store. But that's a rant for another day. I digress.
Also, I hate that this game is super expensive! It sat in my Steam wishlist for ages until I got a pretty decent deal on it. No way I'm paying $60 on the low end for a base racing game. Interestingly, there was a time a year or two ago, when I noticed Forza Horizon 4 was even more expensive than Forza Horizon 5! I dunno what the deal was, but I guess it must've had a larger player base at the time, so they jacked up the price.
Anyway, the TL;DR is that Forza Horizon 5 is a fun game with beautiful graphics, but gaming companies are evil, including whomever makes/distributes this game and all its overpriced and useless DLC.
I feel like DLC is just a re-branding of ‘expansion packs’ that we used to have in the 90s.
Even then, expansion packs were far and few between, and they expanded the story! They didn't just add a custom skin of horse armor to your game. You got actual real content to enjoy with your money.
Incidentally, I just jumped back on the horse this morning by adding the latest World of Warcraft expansion to my account. I was almost done with Activision Blizzard and their awful content updates, but I decided to give it one more shot. So I might have some WoW screenshots incoming in the near future.
I had been an active player since 2005 and have bought every collector's edition since The Burning Crusade. Only because Blizzard used to be an amazing company. But they've been garbage since they sold to Activision, and I've been spending more and more time away from it in the past decade. My wife actually gave up on it when Mists of Pandaria came out.
I barely played the last expansion; it just wasn't fun trying to level up a dragon so I could glide just a little bit further across the map, when I have dozens of actual flying mounts in my inventory. Too much work for something that should've been given to us after meeting quest and/or level requirements. As far as I understand, their latest expansion is supposed to be the first in a massive 3-part story to reinvigorate the franchise, so I'm hoping they actually hired someone who knows what they're doing this time.
I agree completely, I was just trying to say I think that was the beginning of it. I never touch cosmetic DLC but I at least consider DLC that adds story or more content. I play Paradox games after all. :-)