Racing Retrospectives: Forza Horizon 4

If you’ve been following along on my attempt to gush about the entire Forza Horizon series, you may be asking yourself “why are we going to game number 4 after you did 1, and then 6?” Initially I was going to do them all in order, starting with my Forza Horizon 1 Retrospective, but when I decided to talk more about Forza Horizon 6, I figured maybe I should take things a different route.

First one in the franchise, first one you’ll try buying in 2026, and now the first one I ever got into playing. Eventually games 2, 3, and 5 will get their time to talk, but for now I want to talk about my time with Forza Horizon 4, what it’s all about, and why it’s still one of my favorites.

The Background

Starting with the game itself; just like every other game in the Horizon series, it’s been developed by Playground Games; a studio based in England that’s worked on exactly 7 games in total. That’d be the entire Forza Horizon franchise and the upcoming 2027 release of Fable.

Having gone through Colorado, the coast of the Mediterranean, and a good chunk of Australia, it made sense for the team to just bring it back home to the UK for a go through, and I’m glad they did. Taking a beautiful map and packing it full, with seasons and more? They knew what they were doing, and did it well.

As for me? It may show off the “youth” I have to some, but I picked up Forza Horizon 4 during my Sophomore year of college in 2019. It was practically the only game I played during winter break that year, and it carried me pretty well into the COVID pandemic as well when 2020 rolled around.

The first time I had to quarantine over that for a week, it was basically me and the Xbox One S, as my PC was still packed away at the time, which meant putting a majority of my time alone into that game. 

I’ve been on and off of it since, especially with Forza Horizon 5, and all of the writing I’ve done for RH. But I finally picked it up for PC in 2024 when it was going off the Steam Store, and since then I completed the DLC’s in their entirety, and have come back even more when I just want to feel something.

It’s been featured in at least one thumbnail since I can now properly play it on a handheld, and now I’m just trying to finish as much as I can while I’ve got the time. It’s a game I’ve been enjoying for 7 years, and even with 5 other games in the franchise it’s easy to see why. 

The Gameplay

This part’s going to be pretty simple, I want to mention it just in case someone hasn’t realized it yet, but Forza Horizon 4 is a racing game, where you come in as a pretty famous driver, and you’re competing in races until you reach the top echelon of performance. You go faster, the cars get faster, the races get bigger. Complete the main “story”, complete the sidequests, and finish the previous Forzathons to get more cars, more money, more homes. 

It’s a pretty repetitive gameloop if you’re properly on your third, or fourth run in the franchise, but the thing that made Horizon 4 refreshing was where it was specifically. The scenery was great, the seasons were incredible, and the music kept you wanting to do just another race.

Horizon 5 and 6 refined this as they went, albeit with some downturns like “increased wheelspins” in Horizon 5. Admittedly, my big complaint with Horizon 4 has always been that they reward you too easily, but those dopamine hits surely do better for some of us than others.

The Vibe

This sounds like a bit of an awkward topic to put, but the vibes of Forza Horizon 4 are immaculate, and remain my favorite of the entire franchise. The only one that’s really come close in my opinion is Horizon 1, though 6 definitely has its own style that should be appreciated. As the first game to introduce seasons, Horizon 4 basically had to design four separate maps to make up your seasonal experience.

Despite hating it in real life, Winter driving has been my favorite thanks to all the frozen over lakes and rivers you can actually drive on. That being said, Fall has always looked the best and there’s no doubt in my mind Spring and Summer are almost identical minus the rain.

Horizon 4 remains a game I feel comfortable just driving in with the soundtrack running. The big open fields, and especially the windfarm remain some of my favorite places to just let loose, while Edinburgh is probably now the third best city behind Tokyo and Surfer’s Paradise to tear through corners in. All of this put along one of my favorite DLC’s in the franchise, and to boot, one of my favorite soundtracks.

This game is my vibe, even after trying every other Horizon game. That being said, my biggest complaints come from the sparse elevation changes mostly located around the mountains in the far north, and the random big trees you just can’t crash through. Minor inconveniences though.

The Soundtrack

Speaking of the soundtrack, if you’ve talked to anyone about the music in any of these games, one song that’ll probably come up is ODESZA’s A Moment Apart. The title screen song for Horizon 4 it’s the first thing you hear and has been burned into my mind forever. I may have enjoyed songs from other entries, but this one really takes the cake.

Outside of one really incredible song, Horizon 4 was home to seven different radio stations. Bass Arena, Block Party, Pulse, XS, Hospital Records, Timeless FM, and if you had the LEGO DLC; Radio Awesome, which as you’d expect, only played Everything is Awesome from the original LEGO Movie.

All of these covered a wide range of genres from Classical, to R&B, up through Rock, Alternative, or just Pop. When I first played, I left the game on Timeless FM due to the comedy of In the Hall of the Mountain King playing while I barrel across a field of sheep that can just get out of my way.

Nowadays, though, I’ve left it on Horizon Pulse a lot more with songs like Be Good 2 Me by Luxxury, Never Say Die by CHVRCHES, and Deadly Valentine by Charlotte Gainsbourg being particular favorites. Though Block Party has some good songs as well like Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) by Digible Planets. The hosts themselves also added to the atmosphere. And while some may have been too cheesy, it was still a great addition to a car themed music festival. 

The Side-Tracks

The Story

One thing I’ve been trying to do with Horizon 4 recently, has been to complete all of the side stories. Whether that’s disproving wild insurance claims, transporting ducks as fast as possible, or counting down the top 10 cars in games; I’ve been trying to finish them. They’re cheesy, they’re short, and in some cases they’re a bit frustrating, but it’s been fun trying to complete these sidequests.

Horizon 5 has stories but they don’t feel as fleshed out, and honestly Horizon 6 feels even worse in that regard. The worst of the stories to me was likely the Top Gear Horizon Special. While I don’t blame Chris Harris, it just didn’t have the same charm to it that the older Forza collaborations did with the original Top Gear trio.

These may be cheesy add-ons, but they’re super fun to go back on and 3-star. Especially when I can cheat them by driving on the frozen lake.

The DLC 

There were two DLC for Forza Horizon 4; LEGO Speed Championship, and Fortune Island. I’m going to glance quickly over the LEGO DLC as I wasn’t a big fan. Simply put; drive your fast cars on LEGO tracks in a LEGO world and build your LEGO house out of LEGO while the LEGO people watch you beat your opponents. It was a lot of LEGO, but really didn’t feel too special to me.

Fortune Island on the other hand was incredible to me. The extreme elevation of the mountains, the radical ocean front views on every edge, and the intense weather effects felt different to me, and were so much fun to drive along. The Drift Club story line felt good here, and the Trailblazers became one of my favorite PR Stunts thanks to this DLC.

The map wasn’t huge, but it genuinely felt like another game inside of Horizon 4. I’ve completed just about everything there, if not everything including the treasure hunts, but I still go back to drive those roads. 

I also enjoy the race that goes around the mountain where I can “accidentally” bump someone off the edge and watch them fall into the ether. But that’s just me enjoying an arcade game. 

The Cars

There are over 750 cars in this game, and I can’t cover them all. So I’m going to point out a few ones that I notably enjoyed driving around in the game. The Mclaren Senna, both the title car and a fun one to drive around. The Volvo Iron Knight; really stupid, but also surprisingly fun to drive through the city which arguably feels way tighter because of it.

The Alpine A110, while a traditional fast car was one that was fun to look at, and fun to drive. And lastly the aptly named “Audi 2 Audi Sport Quattro S1”; my favorite offroad and rally vehicle in the game. I just wish I used it more.

Final Thoughts

So where do I stand on Horizon 4? Now that I’m out of the Honeymoon Phase with Horizon 6, I think it still tops the list for me personally. It was the perfect mix of landscape, music, and cars without feeling horribly overwhelming. I wish more people would get the chance to play this game again, but just like everything with licensed music, it had to get delisted eventually. I’m probably going to go back and finally 3 star all of the PR stunts, but I can easily see this pushing me well into the 100-hour+ mark on Steam. Especially knowing I already had around 70 on Xbox. 

Next up is probably going to be a downturn, as I should probably talk about Horizon 5 at some point, but now that I’ve got an Xbox Series X I can pop my discs for Horizon 2 and 3 in, and give those a 4K go around. Whether it’s Italy, Australia, or Mexico, I’m going to find something to love out of the last three in the series that I want to cover. It’s just a matter of when. And if there’s another series you think I should dump my life into for a while; please let me know. I do enjoy gushing about good racing games.