I get the TDU love, I still love the hell out of tdu1, 2 on the other hand, I absolutely despised. The additions were cool(loved weather), but it was super cheesy (I'm fearing the same thing with Horizon, btw), some minigames were more developed than the game as a whole. For example, I'm no grafxho, but the models looked worse than tdu. The physics were near atrocious, even compared to 1, which was nothing near perfect, but it felt more like a joy to drive. Then there was that shutting the servers fiasco, leaving the online faulty AT LAUNCH... even worse on the ps3 side, which had the hack completely not let u get online.
I guess my quarrel with the game is the " You travel to a place for a race " vibe. I remember TDU's premise was, moved to Hawaii, buy a house, buy a car, check out the scene, race IF YOU WANT TO, WHEN YOU WANT TO.. not as a requirement. There were challenges that leveled you up. The more liberty Horizon gives me to progress however I want to, the more I'll like it or the more I will not