This was the first game that I had to do a bit of work to get running properly on the Steam Deck. Essentially, I had to bind a key to press Alt + Enter to switch between the various full screen versions of the game until it displayed. Once that worked, we were in business baby! Thanks to the post Forza Horizon 4 Steamdeck Oled - Black screen over on Steam to point me in the right direction. Also, pro tip, if you’re playing it on the deck, bind a key to take screenshots because otherwise you’ll end up hitting the button that changes the in game camera view.
I never expected to have so much fun with this game but it completely sucked up 4 full days of weekend gaming time. When I went searching for a racing game, I wanted something that was along the lines of “70% Gran Turismo, 20% Need for Speed/Midnight Club, and 10% Rally” and I feel like Forza Horizon 4 lives up to those expectations.
I really wanted a game where I could buy cars that I knew about in real life or found interesting and then had the options of upgrade engine, tires, etc… and that’s pretty close to how the upgrade system actually works. You’ll get some pretty graphs and some information on how the upgrades will impact the car, but you literally can just watch the car rating move up and make sure you turn more stats green than red and you’ll end up with a fairly good output. There’s some common sense elements to it like don’t put drag tires on your rally car but for the most part you are pretty well contained into a bubble. There are also options to specifically tune your cars stats individually if you want to get into differentials and gear ratios, but that’s not for me and so I avoided it the entire game.
The game starts you off as a no-name driver participating in the Forza Horizon event based in the UK and immediately takes you through a series of races that expose you to the various elements of gameplay, cars, types of racing, and weather, that you’ll be experiencing through the game.
Probably the coolest element of the game is the varied weather, which will have impacts in how you end up racing and how your car reacts. That slick Lambo you’ve been driving around all summer long might now suffer as snow falls on the road and you find yourself sliding a bit more. Some races even require you to have snow tires installed on the vehicle. This is where this monster Jeep I had really shined and I had a blast driving it around through the snow and blasting off ramps on the side of mountains.
There’s quite a varied set of race types including dirt, cross country, drag, street, road, and chapter challenges like buying a taxi company or taking part in some stunt driving for a movie, but as the game wore on into the later races, it started to get a bit repetitive and I could tell that I was nearing the end of my playing time when I started using the same 4 cars depending on what type of race I was doing.
If you like games like this, it’s worth snagging this one specifically because it’s being delisted on December 15th, 2024 and you can find it for quite the steal.