were I vaguely hip
to the Fast and Furious
I'd pen better words
Additional Comments:
Ah, a breather. After an incredibly long winded post, I expect I'll cull something up on the shorter side of the spectrum, and with good reason.
One, I'm fairly unfamiliar - no, outright ignorant of the Fast & Furious franchise. I've only ever seen bits and pieces of Tokyo Drift, and am well aware of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez being the primary acting mainstays across all the films (along with a few others that I couldn't name without looking the information up). Funny enough, those three, well Walker and Rodriguez (of what I've seen of Tokyo Drift, Vin Diesel had yet to make an appearance - I think) aren't even in the one movie I've seen bits and pieces of. Apart from all of that: fast, expensive cars, stupidly unrealistic stunts, and general bullshit that I can frankly care less about when it comes to movies. In a nutshell, that's my all-encompassing knowledge of the entire Fast & Furious line. Hate me all you want.
Two, being that this is some weird anomaly of a game - a standalone expansion pack - the content is...well, it feels incredibly limited compared to what could potentially exist given the full scope of Forza Horizon 2. Wait a minute. A standalone expansion pack. What we have here is an oxymoron. Let's make one thing clear. It's not an expansion pack. Gifting a single car into your Horizon garage by smashing all 20 bonus boards is the only "expansion" to Horizon 2 present. Technically, you can get the Fast & Furious cars used here in Horizon 2 as well, but only by purchasing a separate DLC. Wait, what!?
What is the point of this game? Admittedly, for those that don't have Horizon 2, like me, it's a fun little introduction to the game and a nice, exciting way to kill a few quick hours for free. Well, actually it isn't free anymore which only further fails to justify the thing, especially if you already own Horizon 2. Being bossed about by Ludacris and taking advantage of nitrous in a few particular events is all the new glossy coating you get to take advantage of. Otherwise, you're really just playing a highly censored variant of a game you already own. And while I may not own the full title, I'm well aware of its content to understand this strange constricted demo that is Horizon's attempt to make a few new friends off the back of the Fast & Furious franchise. Honestly, I'm sure it worked. After all, when the game plasters a nice advertisement for the full game all over the place, it's hard to escape the obvious commercial interests being shoved down our throats. Congratulations! You delivered all of the cars to the airfield. Time to shell out some real dough and download an overstuffed monster of digital media to your hard drive and play the real Forza Horizon 2 instead of this gimmicky introduction.
That being said, as a free...er, fairly cheap advertisement, it works. I enjoyed the original Forza Horizon, though not enough to warrant a definite purchase of the second. Thing is, I love the Forza Motorsport series, however the Forza Horizon series, while good, feels like it discredits the Forza name. It's far too arcadey of a game to properly carry the Forza moniker. If the series simply carried the name Horizon; thus dropping the name Forza, I'd probably take no issue with the game as I wouldn't hold the series against the upper echelon of console driving sims only to feel like I'm playing ripe competition for Need for Speed et. al.. Need for Speed and Forza Motorsports don't even remotely belong in the same category of racing games and as such, neither does Forza Horizon. Therefore, while fun, Horizon 2 failed to make my shopping list. Maybe in a year or two when I can get it for a discounted price - maybe, but even then I can't guarantee a purchase.
Which brings us to our demo, or expansion, or however this game should be labeled. To me, demo is a perfect term since it holds more than enough content to experience most of the major selling points of Horizon 2 while being stripped down enough so to not overload us with extra drivel. Unfortunately, for someone who's familiar with the series, it's disheartening not being able to paint, tune, or upgrade the cars, but given the context of the game, it's not exactly necessary. In a way, Fast & Furious can be viewed as a more arcadey version of a game that's already an arcadey version of another game - a constant devolution of fast action racing if you will.
With most of the Forza-esque toolkit missing, what's worth writing home about? Well, there is nitrous...when the game allows it, which unfortunately is seldom. While nitrous is a really cool new feature used to help tie in the Fast & Furious franchise (ah, something else I'm vaguely aware of in the series), the feature is utilized in probably only 2% of the game considering most of your time will be spent traversing the countryside, unless you're just looking to bang out the various events as quickly as possible. Eh, even then the mileage spent cruising from event to event weighs heavily in favor of little to no nitrous usage in the grand scheme of things. Why? Why add a feature that can genuinely set this little standalone glimpse into the world of Horizon apart from the actual game and then place heavy restrictions on its usage. I find it only furthers the question of why this is even a standalone product to begin with.
It seems that's a common theme - a multitude of back ass decisions that renders the whole thing as useless. Sure, I got my few short hours of fun out of it for free, and most would argue that I have no place to criticize. Defending those of us who downloaded it within the first week of release, I totally agree since it was initially free, but it's no longer free and I have to question anyone who would spend money on this. From a monetary perspective, it feels like a scam. Spend money on what's essentially a demo, then buy the full game, and while you're at it, spend some extra dough on the Fast & Furious booster pack so you can get seven of the cars that appeared in the Fast & Furious standalone expansion that you already paid money for. What the fuck!? Seriously! Maybe it's just me, but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around this other than it being a product of today's nickle and dime mentality that most gaming manufacturers appear to be trending towards. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have a free pass at Horizon 2 style play; even if it's tied into a movie franchise I can care less about, but once the exchange of money enters the picture I see no reason for this to exist. If anything, I see this title as nothing more than a poor decision made by dollar-goggled executives hoping to make a quick buck off of two highly favored franchises just in time for the latest tied-in movie release. This reminds me of another video game blunder: E.T. for the 2600. Exactly the same story all over again; rush some half-assed product out in time for some momentous occasion, be it Christmas for E.T. or the release of Furious 7 for this bullshit.
And finally, I want to touch on multiplayer. Since I haven't played the full blown game, I don't know if this is a spot on representation of Horizon 2's multiplayer or if some minor changes managed to creep in. I suspect it parallels the main game's fairly exact. I found the multiplayer in the original Horizon fairly straightforward, but here, I find it confusing. The seamlessness of it is well done, but I felt totally lost when it came to event set ups, racing to various meetups, or if that was even necessary since it appeared you could just drop in and out from anywhere on the map, as well as co-op bucket lists. I spent more time scratching my head trying to comprehend the multiplayer aspect of multiplayer. I can't help but feel something got lost in translation. Other than taking part in several drag races where everyone had the same Bugatti Veyron and it seemed the only difference between victory and loss was whether or not you drove a manual transmission, I imagined I was no more than a few steps away from just roaming the countryside with a bunch of mindless drivatars. Ok, I got to do a couple races, otherwise it was see who can upshift a Veyron quicker or...whelp, back to solo play I guess. Fortunately, I was completely done with all of the solo stuff by the time I hit up multiplayer, so in reality, there was nothing left for me to do.
But the real question is whether or not the game succeeded in its clever marketing ploy by exciting me enough with this short teaser to go on and buy the full game. No. No, it didn't. However, I'll applaud it for at least offering me a mild distraction for a couple days.
Rating: 2 iron bound saplings out of 5*
*Yea, that's something that annoyed me to no end in the first game as well. How can some frail little sapling take a car from 200 mph down to 0 mph in a matter of millimeters yet I can tear a small airplane in twain?
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