Forza Horizon is the inverse of Horizon 4 for me. Where everything I liked and disliked about that game has been flipped with this. There's a sparse linearity to the progression here. It's just race and unlock wristbands. Likewise a sparseness to the map itself. There's virtually no off road racing in this game, no destructible environments to the point of making a checkpoint or way marker useless by way of rumbling across the terrain. I think it's pretty telling that the last three games in the series feature an SUV on the cover alongside some sort of supercar. In contrast, Horizon 1 is pretty much all highways, all coated in a warm, autumn Colorado sunset. It reminds me a lot of NFS Hot Pursuit 2010, just minus the police and a lot more infectious and fun to play. There's an actual story and characters in this game and a genuine reason to race in events. I enjoyed beating the shallow arrogant villain racers, especially Darius Flynt (what a name). It's something the Horizon 3 and 4 really lacked. I thought the festival atmosphere made the most sense too, felt like the most realistic actual festival setting - basically Coachella with race events for some reason (the concept itself is still fairly unbelievable). Features a small, but manageable car list that actively encourages and necessitates variety in which cars you race.

All good things to say in comparison to where I think the series evolved with Horizon 4. But saying all that, I still find this game to be empty and utterly sanitised. The driving physics are still rad and pretty much the same. It's a fun game to play, but it still feels a bit too easy. And I'm hypocritical, but I find the strict adherence to road racing a detriment to the fun. It's not really an open world racer. It's an open world menu screen where you can drove to whichever track event you want to participate in. It's a good blueprint for what's to come, sadly I think they went too far with it and kind of lost whatever identity they were striving for. I also don't find the car presentation in this game to be that appealing, something it shares with Horizon 4. The cars barely feel like they exist. Just a bit dated. Fun. But really just a sanitised, slightly better Need for Speed.

I played a little bit of The Crew 2 last week, simply because I thought it was worth it for the unique map and the nice looking car interiors. I thought it was relatively good enough if it's stretching itself thin in every direction by featuring such a large map and cluttering it with way too many diverse vehicles. If it it stripped itself it down to solely cars, I thought it had the makings of a world class driving game (albeit maybe not a world class racing game) in the mold of its spiritual predecessor, Rest Drive Unlimited.

Motorfest is closer to that game. It's mostly cars. It's a smaller map. It's kind of a more direct Forza Horizon (FH5) clone but that's okay because again, Test Drive Unlimited walked so Horizon could run. I think the driving and car handling is way imporved. The map is stunning. The destructible environments make race events less of a curse than in The Crew 2. And this game just has a sense of fun and frivolity that Horizon is missing. All the little unique playlist touches are gorgeous and nice to play through. The festival environment in this game spreads itself much broader. The whole map feels closer to the tone of the Hot Wheels DLCs and the game is better off for it. I'm sure I'll get bored at some point but this is the antidote to the modern racer right here. A better Need for Speed than Unbound. A better festival racer than Horizon 5. Just stunning.

fucking stunner from start to finish. today exists John Wick but 12 years ago Max Payne perfectly blends John Woo gun-fu with Tom Clancy esque military tactility to create the perfect third-person shooter. a noir game with the pompous thematic seriousness and grounded mechanics of a The Last of Us with a DOOM-like sensibility for cartoonish over-the-top mayhem; often an abandonment of reality in favour of action set-piece that live to be referred to as "badass". it is a game about a desperate, broken man, trying to find himself amidst the chaos his poor choices have led him to; it's also a game about human trafficking where you dive in slow motion to take on a shooting gallery Brazilian thugs and goons while HEALTH's "Tears" blares more than triumphantly through the speakers. it's a fucking art piece of action gamemaking; a drunken heavy spectacle of masculine pride and self-loathing. a game that makes me happy to be a worse person so that I can die alone and feel cool about it.

somehow I doubt i'll ever play a game I like more.

avoided this because I figured it'd be a kind of lame film school dude's fetishisms of 50s Japanese Samurai cinema.

And I guess it kind of is, in a way. but no more shallow than any other character action video game that apes from cinema is, except this game's concept of camera placement and framing is actually pretty fucking stellar. it's genuinely more cinematic than games like God of War or Ghost of Tsushima think they are. trek to yomi might be one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.

at times it's sort of choked by its visual aesthetic, a lot of the game feels very dry. but it's basically if Journey went Kurosawa mode for 5 hours. if you've played any modern side-scrolling action game, you might not be impressed. if you've seen Sanjuro you might not be impressed. but honestly I think those two things go together really well, sort of like buttered toast or chocolate milk. just a very basic but tasty combo (and I mean pretty much every side-scrolling action game I've played thinks it's fucking Vaporware Jesus so this is kind of refreshing to some degree).

if you have only seen Oldboy, Kill Bill, and John Wick, then you'll love this.

cool-ish combat. nice, slick settings. Sekiro-lite mechanics and paper thin characters/atmosphere/story/themes hold it way back. there's a kernel of a good - or great game in there, the hand-to-hand combat is a refreshing solution to the absurdity of video game violence, but this game still feels way too impersonal and as abstract with its violence as something like Hotline Miami (which itself oozes more style and punk ethos).