Forza Horizon 2 is a stunning, fun racing game for the Xbox that’s addictive for both kids and adults. We play it on an Xbox One and the graphics are impressive. It’s set in the south of France and the north of Italy, making the lavender fields and Poplars look very familiar since we’ve been in that regions dozens of times. It’s an ‘open world’ racing game, meaning you can drive around the region yourself and explore as much as you want to.
Forza Horizon 2
At first, the control of the cars is tricky. Make sure to start with the setting on ‘easy’ so you have a chance of winning something. But it took us (including my seven year old son) only a short while to get the hang of it, and we’ve all leveled up to ‘difficult’ now.
There are several types of cars and you can enter into types of races compatible with the cars you have—or buy new ones. You can race with hypercars for instance, or classic racers, American muscle, or old 90’s cars. I love the off-road races, since you can literally wreck lavender fields and vineyards—and get extra credits for doing so!
You get credits and XP points for races. The first allow you to buy new cars or upgrade ones you have. The second give you prizes each time you’ve reached a new XP level. Your skills during races, but especially when free roaming get you lots of XP points. It’s fun to seek out areas where you can practice drifting for instance, or jumping over small hills or obstacles.
Besides racing, there’s a lot more to do, which makes the game so much fun to play:
- You can race against other drivers you meet on the road. Some of these are ‘high credits’ drivers and winning from them will earn you tons of credits to buy new cars from
- You can participate in the ‘Bucket List’ challenges, 45 in all. This is where you need to set a certain speed record, drive a difficult route, show off your drifting skills, or whatever. I love these!
- You can ‘freeroam’ and just have fun driving and practicing skills
- There are special races every now and then, like racing against a plane, or a train, or something else
- You can also go for ‘barn finds’: old abandoned cars you need to find in certain areas, which are added to your garage if you manage to find them.
If you’ve won enough races, you can enter the Horizon finale, which is one long race where you have to place in the top 3. Funny enough it’s not the most entertaining of races, since it’s a lot of highway to cover that much ground.
And the cars, oh my, they’re just to drool over…I now ‘own’ an Aston Martin Vanquish for instance, plus a Hennesey Venom, multiple Ferraris and Lamborghinis and more classic racers than I’ve ever seen on my life.
Officially, the game is deemed age appropriate for kids 10 and over because of the crashes and apparently some mild language in the accompanying music. We’re usually quite strict, but we have no problem with our son (7) playing this game. There’s no real violence, no blood or gore so to speak, and I haven’t heard anything offensive in the music yet—which you can also turn off by the way.
If you couldn’t tell yet from what I’ve written above: I love this game. It’s well worth the money, since it doesn’t get boring quickly.
Have you played Forza Horizon 2?
[You’ve just read ChurchMag’s Saturday Morning Review. Ready to read more?]
Eric Dye says
#WANT
Rachel Blom says
#BUY 🙂