Forza Horizon 2 Review: Beautiful, open, inviting and exciting

Prior to 2012, my then all-time favorite open world racing game was still Need For Speed Underground 2. That gem of 2004 had pretty much everything I ever wanted in an open world racing game; an interesting location, lots of cars and tons of upgrade options. While there were many to follow, none lived up to my enjoyment of Underground 2. A large part of that was the location itself. The first Forza Horizon changed all that. Cruising through Colorado was exciting, there were always a ton of things to do and plenty of cars to collect, customize and tune. Forza Horizon 2 managed to surpass my expectations, and expanded upon a winning formula to make it even more beautiful, open, and inviting.

Shifting from the mountainous regions of Colorado to the European coast of Tuscany, you'll be driving through the city streets of Nice one minute, and then dodging opponents through a vineyard the next. Forza Horizon 2 expands upon the driving formula by incorporating a ton of off-road racing, expanding the race-able area exponentially.

Horizon 2 runs with this, as a lot of the races now focus on taking you off the road to drive through saffron fields, weaving through trees and executing jumps off rolling hills. I'd say these races tend to be far more exciting than the ones that stick to the streets, but the game does great job at balancing these events, to make sure you're never stuck doing the same similar events over and over.

The game once again revolves around the Horizon Music festival, though the central theme to this year's game is a road trip. You'll partake in various championships as you move from location to location. Once you're finished with a championship in one area, you and your opponents take part in an impromptu race to the next location, where position is irrelevant, and instead it's all about the rush of weaving through traffic and taking in the gorgeous sights.

Events is something Horizon 2 has no shortage of. Though championships are preset to a certain car class, you can manually go into each one and change it to whatever you want, giving you the ultimate freedom to truly race in any car you currently own or are planning to buy. After all, if I just spent 500,000 credits on a new Lamborghini, I damn well want to be able to put it through its paces immediately, rather than wait for a race to open that allows it to enter.

Speaking of credits, Turn10 and Playground made a genius decision not to include any sort of micro-transactions in this year's Horizon 2. Despite loving the original Horizon, seeing that you could use real currency not only to buy cars but to unlock the ability to see every smash-able sign on the map, was pretty ludicrous. None of that is found in Horizon 2 and the game is all the better for it.

Horizon had the popularity meter, which would rise as you completed various driving feats and accrue a ton of points. None of it really mattered in the end, especially once I figured out an exploit in an area that let me max my popularity within an hour. Horizon 2 has a slightly better system that ties directly to leveling up your profile. Each time you level, you either get rewarded with a random spin for a reward, which could either be a lump sum of Credits or a new car, or you'll get a skill point which can be spent on various in-game perks. These perks will then directly affect your game by offering higher rewards for various driving techniques, winning better prizes in the random spin, or make more money whenever your Drivatar races in other people's games. The progression this time around is much more meaningful.

The aforementioned Drivatar system makes a return from Forza Motorsport 5, which once again populates your offline world with racers based on real people and the way they drive. If your friend is an aggressive overtaker that prefers to trade paint in favor of a clean pass, that Drivatar will behave similarly when he's uploaded into your game. It makes the offline world of Horizon 2 feel that much more alive.

The Bucket List Challenges are easily one of the best new additions to Forza Horizon 2. Each of them revolves around driving an exotic or classic car through various challenges, be it to get to a location as fast as possible, or to get 20 near misses. The very first Bucket List Challenge you find, 'Drive a Koenigsegg Agera like you stole it,' serves as an amazing appetizer for the rest to follow.

Accessing the online portion of Horizon 2 is as easy as pressing a button. Within seconds, you'll be prompted to join a game where Drivatars are now replaced by real players, and the stakes are much higher. Players can start an online road trip together, essentially tying the single player progression together with other players, or simply free roam the countryside.

I've always appreciated how Turn10 and by that extension, Playground Games, have made the Forza games extremely accessible to nearly every type of gamer, ever since the last generation. Through various settings, you can make the game as easy as you want, or turn all the assists off and go Pro. Horizon 2 can just as easily be called a racing simulator, given the staggering amount of tuning options you can do to each car. However, if you're as oblivious to tuning as I am, you can simply have the game do it for you, or download other player's set ups. Racing enthusiast or not, Forza Horizon 2 has the customization to fit any sort of playstyle.

I reviewed the game on the Xbox One, so granted the visual quality was absolutely stunning. The game actually looks most bland when the weather is nice. When raindrops splash across your car, and puddles reflect the environment, that's when you can truly appreciate the amount of detail that went into the visuals. Same goes for night time in the game. The illuminations from street lights, buildings and the festival itself, shooting off constant fireworks in the sky, is a sight to behold.

The soundtrack is greatly expanded from three radio stations in Horizon, to seven in Horizon 2. Never would I think that listening to classical music while speeding through Italian highways at 150mph would be satisfying, but somehow, it works. The DJs will constantly keep you in the loop as far as Horizon events, and remind you that 29 degrees Celsius is very hot to us American folks. We get it, we don't use the metric system, we're dumb, no need to constantly berate us for it.

Forza Horizon 2 is just the first of many racing games to release this Holiday season, and it sure started it off with a huge bang. It's gorgeous, it's huge, it's exciting and most of all, it's just downright fun. It certainly deserves a standing ovation.