My grumble thread for FH4

[Silver Arrows]

The problem is that she's an actor playing a badly written caricature of a Youtuber. She has none of the passion or relatability that a normal streamer would have. She has none of the quirkiness or semi-amateur presentation that makes streamers so interesting. They'd have done better getting any of the number of competent and passionate racing streamers to write and voice it.

I really love the idea, particularly the references to other games, but the presentation of it was mildly atrocious in my opinion. The cliched stunt driver stuff somehow managed to be less goppingly awful.

You know, I never thought of that. Why they didn't get Alex from Failrace, or Jimmy Broadbent to do the voice acting, I don't know. Certainly would have been better.

 

[ShakesMcQueen]

The problem is that she's an actor playing a badly written caricature of a Youtuber. She has none of the passion or relatability that a normal streamer would have. She has none of the quirkiness or semi-amateur presentation that makes streamers so interesting. They'd have done better getting any of the number of competent and passionate racing streamers to write and voice it.

I really love the idea, particularly the references to other games, but the presentation of it was mildly atrocious in my opinion. The cliched stunt driver stuff somehow managed to be less goppingly awful.

Oh, I've seen some streamers that aren't too far off Laracer, believe me, haha.

Stunt driver guy I liked because a) he sounds like Sean Bean, and b) I liked his increasingly ridiculous justifications for why they needed to do the stunts, and his increasing, begrudging affection for the player character.

Also, his flash of anger when he says "Yeah the bad guy has a jet plane, SO WHAT" gave me a laugh.

 

[Imari]

You know, I never thought of that. Why they didn't get Alex from Failrace, or Jimmy Broadbent to do the voice acting, I don't know. Certainly would have been better.

Those were my first two thoughts as well. Characterful, genuinely energetic, engaging, mostly funny but always entertaining, and have actual passion for racing games.

If you're gonna ham it up with some random voice actor, you might as well ham it up with an actual streamer and make their day.

Oh, I've seen some streamers that aren't too far off Laracer, believe me, haha.

Oh, I know they're out there and I know there are lots of them. But if you're making a game for people to enjoy, would you make LARacer an example of a terrible cringey streamer that everyone hates, or an example of an entertaining and engaging streamer that most people will enjoy watching/listening to?

Any competent designer will attempt to make a character like LARacer at least compelling. They definitely wouldn't intentionally make them irritating, because that's intentionally making your game worse for no payoff. This isn't a character drama where LARacer being irritating leads to some further character development later in the story. She's just irritating because the writer didn't understand what makes streamers interesting, didn't bother to find out and didn't bother to pass the work to someone who actually had an appreciation.

The stunt guy was I think a good example of it being done adequately. He still leaned pretty hard into movie guy stereotyping, but I agree that the little touches where he felt like he was looking after you and gaining respect were great. Also, he seemed pretty believeable as an overworked and underappreciated director whose job it is to actually get everything done after the big knobs have finished patting each other on the back. He was good, although by no means perfect.

P.S. While we're at it, did they miss a trick not putting some of those cars into game relevant liveries or what? I mean, the Daytona and Sega Rally ones really stuck out to me that they could have easily done a lookalike livery even if straight up copying the original game ones was out for legal reasons.

 

[ShakesMcQueen]

I'd put $10 on it being a legal thing. I was REALLY wishing they would have licensed "All I Want" by Offspring for the Crazy Taxi chapter, though. Can't be that expensive, they could re-use it on the XS radio playlist, and I doubt Sega could claim it as some sort of copyright infringement. Plus, that song is like the single most identifiable thing about that game.

It would have been such a cool moment.

I'm still hoping that one of the expansions ends up being some sort of cross-license deal with one of the games in LaRacer's list.

 

[UKMikey]

You know, I never thought of that. Why they didn't get Alex from Failrace, or Jimmy Broadbent to do the voice acting, I don't know. Certainly would have been better.

Only if Alex can open each chapter with "Hel-LO, and WELcome to the show", end it with "and until next time, then, a-goodbye" and get him to laugh uproariously when you crash or wipe out. The man would become a deserved megastar overnight.

 

[grandtourismo]

I have a couple more grumbles since playing - I don't like being stuck in winter all week and I feel like the game is biased towards making your card AWD otherwise you don't stand a chance online or against other AI especially on the dirt courses.

 

[ImaRobot]

I have a couple more grumbles since playing - I don't like being stuck in winter all week and I feel like the game is biased towards making your card AWD otherwise you don't stand a chance online or against other AI especially on the dirt courses.

I haven't made any of my cars AWD, other than for dirt courses like you mentioned, but that's a bit of a given no? I notice that high HP FWD builds are a no go with many of the vehicles in game, although a few seem to handle it better than others. However, I have a few lower class FWD vehicles that drive just as good as the AWD ones in it's class.

As for Tarmac racing, every single one of mine so far have been RWD.

 

[Imari]

Only if Alex can open each chapter with "Hel-LO, and WELcome to the show", end it with "and until next time, then, a-goodbye" and get him to laugh uproariously when you crash or wipe out. The man would become a deserved megastar overnight.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the shop! Today, a treat especiale...

...but just the tip, and only for a minute...

...thanks for watching, keep your stick on the ice.

I have a couple more grumbles since playing - I don't like being stuck in winter all week and I feel like the game is biased towards making your card AWD otherwise you don't stand a chance online or against other AI especially on the dirt courses.

Yeah, winter wasn't that fun a season to play for a whole week. Spring seems fine so far.

The AWD thing is just Horizon. Anything that involves going even moderately offroad is going to favour AWD. Yeah it's biased, but I'm not sure that there's anything you could do about it within the confines of what the game allows you to do. There's a reason all modern rally cars are AWD.

I just started rolling with it and making ridiculous AWD swaps. Feel the power of my mighty AWD rally Alfa P3, with GOLDEN WHEELS FOR BLINDING. Of course, with a roll bar on it because safety first. I think I'm going to make myself a whole set of stupid historic rally cars. V8 swapped rally 8 litre Bentley here I come.

 

[raven214]

The problem is that she's an actor playing a badly written caricature of a Youtuber. She has none of the passion or relatability that a normal streamer would have. She has none of the quirkiness or semi-amateur presentation that makes streamers so interesting. They'd have done better getting any of the number of competent and passionate racing streamers to write and voice it.

I really love the idea, particularly the references to other games, but the presentation of it was mildly atrocious in my opinion. The cliched stunt driver stuff somehow managed to be less goppingly awful.

I haven't started the Laracer one yet - I completed Drift Club to get it out of the way and then finished off Stunt Driver. I agree with the general consensus on Stunt Driver, the dialogue was decent enough and the driving was fun. Drift Club was interesting as I don't drift much, but the dialogue got pretty annoying when he started apologizing after over-explaining himself several times - just shut it and let me drive! I'm looking forward to Laracer and fastest rental which I think I just unlocked.

 

[grandtourismo]

I haven't made any of my cars AWD, other than for dirt courses like you mentioned, but that's a bit of a given no? I notice that high HP FWD builds are a no go with many of the vehicles in game, although a few seem to handle it better than others. However, I have a few lower class FWD vehicles that drive just as good as the AWD ones in it's class.

As for Tarmac racing, every single one of mine so far have been RWD.

I agree but then we should have the option for an all RWD lobby or race or all AWD et cetera

 

[ImaRobot]

I agree but then we should have the option for an all RWD lobby or race or all AWD et cetera

That's one thing I have a problem with, especially with Team Adventures.

 

[Techlet]

The AWD thing is just Horizon. Anything that involves going even moderately offroad is going to favour AWD. Yeah it's biased, but I'm not sure that there's anything you could do about it within the confines of what the game allows you to do. There's a reason all modern rally cars are AWD.

It makes staying authentic to classic rally cars next to impossible because, while you're rightly struggling with grip or just going up hill, the AI will just blast past you with perfect grip through the corners in "stock" cars.

It also makes some cars, like the Opel Manta, completely uncompetitive in their division unless you AWD swap them, which kills the uniqueness of those cars.

 

[Imari]

It makes staying authentic to classic rally cars next to impossible because, while you're rightly struggling with grip or just going up hill, the AI will just blast past you with perfect grip through the corners in "stock" cars.

It also makes some cars, like the Opel Manta, completely uncompetitive in their division unless you AWD swap them, which kills the uniqueness of those cars.

Yep.

You can create Blueprint races that take care of that by choosing only the car models you want to compete (or you can just drop the AI to the point that it's "competitive"), but outside of that I feel this is kind of the price paid for the kind of game that Horizon is. It's not exactly a simulation even though it's based on Forza Motorsport. It's very militant about leaving people free to do what they like, and in that freedom it means that stuff that's strongly sub-optimal is...well, sub-optimal.

The base game is for better or worse very much anything goes. You can turn up to most races with completely ridiculous cars, and that's a lot of the charm. The game does allow you to have more restricted and realistic racing if you wish, but it expects you to set that up yourself. You can debate whether that's a good or bad design decision, and it's probably frustrating for you personally, but if you want to have a race with only Opel Mantas, Escorts, Fulvias, Stratoseses, and maybe an 037B then you can totally do that.

I agree with @ImaRobot that RWD or non-AWD options in Adventure would be good, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

 

[grandtourismo]

Who else is pissed at the car packs? The Vauxhalls are from the old games and should have been in it from the start or as free forzathon cars and the Mustang and Lambo are just variants of cars already in the game and the Hoonigan crap just plain sucks

 

[raven214]

Who else is pissed at the car packs? The Vauxhalls are from the old games and should have been in it from the start or as free forzathon cars and the Mustang and Lambo are just variants of cars already in the game and the Hoonigan crap just plain sucks

The only ones I'm looking forward to are the Lambo and the buggy. Normally, an open top version of what we already have doesn't do it for me, but in the Horizon world I think it will fit quite nicely, and the buggy is self explanatory.

 

[L8 Apex]

Maybe it's been brought up before, but anyone else notice the Ferrari 355 is listed as a 1994, but the model (both interior and exterior) and shifting animation is clearly for a 355 F1, which didn't debut until 1997?

 

[-Fred-]

Maybe it's been brought up before, but anyone else notice the Ferrari 355 is listed as a 1994, but the model (both interior and exterior) and shifting animation is clearly for a 355 F1, which didn't debut until 1997?

That car is overly due for a makeover, I'm fairly certain the model has been the same since the first game.

 

[LongbowX]

I was going to make another push to try to get to Team Adventure Rank 10, but it's just not worth it. It encourages bad behaviour in other players too much. Pushing people into obstacles and to miss checkpoints ruins my enjoyment of that mode. But unfortunately there isn't much else in terms of multiplayer - especially for someone who doesn't have any Xbox friends like me. I'm beginning to regret buying an Xbox.

Also, did they change something about the checkpoints? When I miss a checkpoint, the game refuses to reset me now. I have to go back and get the checkpoint itself. It does the 3..2..1 countdown, but then resets itself back to 3 again.

EDIT: Apparently this is a new bug for Team Adventures. Along with the inability to right your car. If you are upside down or on your side - you are stuck like that for the rest of game/race. You can't manually refresh it either. And rewind doesn't work (though it never worked well anyway...).