16 Features I Need in Forza Horizon 4 (WARNING: ME ME BIIIIIG POST)

PREVIOUSLY ON FORZA NEWS… I made a wishlist for the map of FH4. In the blog I covered many aspects of the map I would like to see. If you have not yet read it, you can read it here - https://www.carthrottle.com/post/3l59erl/ - as it will partly link into this post. So before E3 2018 brings Forza along to reveal stuff about the game, here is my wishlist.

Anyways, dear Santa…

1. Traffic Level/Density Settings

If you’re like me, then you’ll enjoy immersing yourself in the map of Forza Horizon, living out fantasies, and getting the wheel to go for a nice drive. But sometimes these drives are ruined by an unrealistic level of traffic. For me, realism is my favourite aspect of video games, so when I drive through a city centre with only 1 car at a junction, it doesn’t feel much like a city, and ruins the immersion experience. Since traffic AI uses CPU power which could affect low-mid PC and console players, there should be a LOW-MID-HIGH slider, and maybe even a NONE for top speed runs on the motorway. I don’t want to be on the M23 with only two cars a few hundred metres ahead of me. I WANT TRAFFIC. Who would’ve thought that.

2. Larger, Denser City Area

In Forza Horizon 3, one of my biggest complaints was about the density of the city area. It felt so unrealistic. You could enter the city and within road legal speeds, reach the centre in less than a minute. Yet around the city area there was tons of empty space that could’ve been filled for a more realistic look and feel. I get that this is a racing game, not an open-world driving simulator. And yes, I also understand that the city area is CPU and RAM-heavy no matter what machine you play the game on, but for my London prediction, I want to feel like I’m in London, not St Davids.

3. People Acting Like Normal Human Beings

In Forza Horizon, there are people behind bollards and barriers at the side of the road. But I have a severe problem with these people. They don’t act like people. Instead, they just continuously jump and punch their hands into the air, or just stare into space and occasionally wave strangely. So please, make people who do these things.
A - Stand texting or talking on their phone.
B - Walk about.
C - Take photos of the cars and buildings with their phone or camera.
Please.

4. Improved Car Sound

Let’s face it, a lot of Forza’s car sound is pants. Some is good, but much is pants. It sounds too electronic and smooth, not gurgly and mechanical. Since they can’t go through the several hundred cars in the game and fix them one by one, I’d recommend they apply a filter to the sound at least to include pops and bangs at least, like the SLS AMG has in the game. And make it sound deeper with different levels instead of one simple sound. Says me, I know nothing about sound development.

5. Fixed Vibrant, Over-Saturated Colour

See this? This is what playing Forza Horizon feels like. Despite all the colour adjustment features on my monitor, I can’t get the pop art world to disappear. However, Forza Motorsport 7 has the opposite problem. A sunny day at Monza looks like a cloudy day in Scotland. Maybe that’s for the UK map? Here’s hoping.

6. Customisable Interior

I love car configurators, so being able to drive my configured car would be great. I understand the limitations of this, but changing interior colours and trims isn’t rocket science. There are many app games which can do it now. I don’t want every car to have a black interior. Also, for the modders out there, and me for when I want to turn normal cars into track day cars, being able to strip out the interior would be nice. Just setting it to remove rear seats, remove the dashboard, carpet and replace the seats with racing bucket seats and the wheel with a racing wheel shouldn’t be too difficult. It would need some time, but I’m sure Forza has plenty of budget and time to do so. Two years, in fact between Horizon games.

7. Wider, Realistic City Roads

This is a city road. Main roads through modern Australian cities are not one lane roads. With London, a wider one lane is fine, because it’s old and tight. But main roads leading inwards need to feel substantial. Australia had a rural motorway so two lanes was ok, but I hope if it’s UK (which it most likely will be) then I hope we get 3 and 4 lane motorways. I hope there are city buses with bus stops and road-side parking. Which brings me onto my next point.

8. Multi-Storey Car Parks

Every open-world driving game needs a car park. Burnout Paradise had it and it was sublime. But again, they felt empty. If they actually had car props in them that would be nice. And maybe one AI car on a fixed route driving round for a bit of realism. Yes, I want car parks. Also, revving inside would be nice with the tunnel sound effects, which are good in Forza. They are also good for something else…

9. Online/Offline Car Meets

I never go online in Forza because going online in Forza involves a lot of screaming and 12 year olds. So I would love to have AI car meets in car parks like the one in Surfers’ Paradise in Forza Horizon 3, and car parks like what I said above. And at the airport for offline drag races. This feature is in Forza Motorsport so would be nice to have in Horizon. I have decided that my Gatwick airport idea may not work because it’s a massive airport with planes flying in and out all the time. So maybe an old abandoned RAF base would work. Or the Top Gear Test Track?

10. Convoys with Brains

In Horizon 3, convoys would fly past you at 200mph when you are sticking to the road limits at 70mph. This felt very unrealistic, as a minute later, the same car would pass you again at 200 mph, as they discover Back to the Future style teleportation. Can’t convoys just stick to the road rules or go at your speed until a race is initiated. I want to have supercar road trips without being hit at top speed by one of my “buddies.”

11. More Driving Actions

TDU 2 was able to do this. The cars even have the animations in the game. It’s possible as the Fiat 124 Spider can do it. Why can’t we drive with the roof down? I’d love it if in every car, you could control the windows up and down and the audio would get louder when you put them down. And you’d get more wind/tyre noise? Also I’d like if the animations for the roof going down could run while you’re driving like TDU 2 so you can switch between them as you go. Since quite a few animations are already there, this wouldn’t be tough to implement. I’d also like to be able to control the indicators/wipers/lights/etc. with keyboard keys at least. I get that the controller has few buttons so is limited, but at least give my keyboard a use.

12. Custom Camera Postions and Movements

I wish that Photo Mode’s features could be used in the replay cameras. I want to have a low shot of my car in video but I can’t because the game doesn’t allow it. Yet Photo Mode can do it fine. I would also like to control the movements so I can move straight down the side of the car for a nice shot. I get that the custom movements are complicated and difficult to implement, but positioning a replay camera isn’t.

13. Louder Idle Sound

In Forza Horizon 3, when your car is idle, the sound is far too quiet. These are supercars and I can’t hear the constant RRRRRRR that it would make. Amplifying a sound is not difficult. Please do it. I would like to have better revving too because too many cars don’t pop and sound unnatural.

14. Better Weather Effects

The rain effects in Forza Horizon 3 were practically non-existent. Forza Motorsport 7 has improved upon this which is promising. Hopefully we will get puddle splashes as pictured above, and tougher, more slidey control. Same with the snow on Blizzard Mountain. I drove a RWD Mazda RX-8 with no snow tyres in a blizzard and it made it up a steep mountain with no troubles. What. Is. That.

15. Car Spotting Mode (I Got Inspiration for this from CarguyKen 918, check out his FH4 post!)

I’ll admit it, I’m one of the sad souls that watches car spotting videos. I would love to have a mode in FH4 similar to Drone and Photo Mode, where you can “walk” along the pavement and through car parks!! And take pictures of cars you see driving or parked. They should stick to road rules, but accelerate round corners and rev occasionally. In FH3, you got credits for taking pictures of cars but it lacked substance, you could just get in a car, take a photo, get in another car, take a photo, and so on. I think this almost video game Pokemon GO style Car Spotting Mode would be interesting!

16. MORE WHEEL SUPPORT

Above, you can see my racing wheel. It’s a Logitech G25. In FH3, there was an unfixable issue that G25 users would have. The gears, instead of this…

It went like this…

After about an hour or two of trying to fix it, I gave up, like many others. Thankfully, in FM7 this has been fixed. I hope they will just carry over the same setting and not ruin it again.

HOORAY!! You’ve reached the end of my post! Congratulations! Please tell me what you think as I would love feedback on what others feel about the game and my preferences, feel free to tell me what you want too! And on that bombshell it is now time to end. Thank you so much for watching, good night! DOO DOO DOO…