Forza Horizon 4

I've spent more Saturday nights than I care to admit loading up a British countryside server with friends, and Forza Horizon 4 is responsible for a lot of those evenings. Playground Games built something genuinely special here: a sim-arcade hybrid set across a gorgeous recreation of Britain, where the entire open world shifts through four seasons on a weekly rotation. Winter freezes Derwentwater solid so you can drive across it. Spring churns the off-road tracks into mud pits. Every week the game feels slightly different from the last, and after years of play that rhythm still holds up. The car roster sits at well over 450 vehicles, ranging from vintage British classics to modern hypercars, and the handling model sits comfortably between full simulation and pure arcade. Dial in your preferred assists and it works for a total newcomer on a gamepad just as well as it does for someone running a direct-drive wheel with load-cell pedals. That accessibility ladder is genuinely one of the best in the genre. Wheel support is solid and the game responds well to a proper setup, though you are not going to get the kind of nuanced force feedback that a dedicated sim title offers. Think of it as sim-adjacent: real enough to feel rewarding, forgiving enough to keep the fun going. The shared world supports up to 72 players simultaneously, and the online co-op campaign lets up to six people tackle events together. Forzathon Live drops seasonal group challenges onto the map on the hour, which is a genuinely clever way to pull strangers into the same corner of the map for a few minutes of chaotic fun. The Blueprint Creator lets you stamp custom races anywhere on the road network, which kept our group entertained long after we'd seen every official event. One honest disappointment: there is no split-screen local multiplayer at all. If your vision was four people on one couch passing controllers, that is not this game. Everyone needs their own machine and their own copy. The menus are a genuine mess. Currency overload is real: you are juggling credits, Forzathon Points, and skill points across a garage that sprawls into the hundreds of cars, and the UI never quite gets out of its own way. It is the one area where the game still feels rough years after launch. The Eliminator, a battle royale mode dropped in post-launch, is a fun curveball that holds up as a quick session-filler with friends even if it never escaped novelty territory. Here is the thing you need to know before anything else: Forza Horizon 4 was delisted from sale in December 2024. You cannot buy it new on Steam or the Microsoft Store anymore. If you already own it, keep playing, the online component was still functional after delisting and single-player works fine. If you do not own it, your path to a copy runs through third-party key resellers, and you will want to verify key validity carefully before spending anything. That reality puts a hard ceiling on who this review is practically useful for right now. For existing owners, though, this remains one of the most complete open-world racing packages ever shipped on PC.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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