If you've fallen hard for Forza Horizon 2 after Microsoft gave you the chance to try it for free this month, you'd better grab the extra content and DLC sooner rather than later - developer Turn 10 has confirmed the racer is now speeding towards its 'end of life'.
Tucked down at the bottom of a recent Forza-flavoured update post (via Engadget), Turn 10's Brian Ekberg made the announcement, although stopped short of detailing why the game is being retired four years (to the day) after it was released.
'A heads up for the Forza community: Forza Horizon 2 will reach 'end of life' status on September 30. That means that the game and its associated DLC will no longer be available for purchase,' Ekberg said.
'After September 30, players who own Forza Horizon 2 will still [be] able to download and play the game and its associated content as normal. However, Forza Horizon 2 and its DLC will no longer be for sale.'
If you have a valid Xbox Live subscription you can try Forza Horizon 2 for free as part of August's Games With Gold, so if you're looking for a little Forza fun before Forza Horizon 4 is out 2nd October, get involved - the game disappears from the Games with Gold storefront on 31st August, before leaving the store forever at the end of September.
In his Eurogamer review, Oli Welsh said Forza Horizon 2 set an 'intimidatingly high bar' for other racing games.
A Forza Horizon 4 leak recently revealed the racer will offer a mission inspired by fan-favourite Halo campaign level, The Silent Cartographer.
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Drivatars, the cloud-based AI opponents that debuted in Forza Motorsport 5, reappear in Forza Horizon 2, populating the race challenges and free-roam modes with virtual drivers based on real players. In individual races, these drivatars' skills are set based on the difficulty level you’ve chosen in the settings, but you’ll encounter a wider range of AI skills when roaming about. Don't worry; you're told how 'smart' your potential AI opponent is before you have to accept their challenge in point-to-point races.
The career mode features the standard assortment of race events to choose from, along with a selection of 'Bucket List' challenges. These give you a specific car and a task—completing a certain number of jumps, for instance, or reaching a specific speed along a course—and reward you with that playable car as a reward for success.
The Bucket List events will appeal to those who don’t want to have to grind their way to some of the fastest cars in the game's initial selection of 200 vehicles. While most of these cars are carried over from Forza Motorsport 5 (and why wouldn't they be), there are more than a few unique models, including some extreme off-roaders that come in very handy when the idea of driving on roads becomes too constrictive. The developers claim there are over 700 different events in the game, and it should take at least 100 hours to complete them all, which should provide plenty of racing content for players.
Forza Horizon 2's reward structure seems quite biased in favor of accumulating wealth rapidly; certainly the early criticisms of Forza Motorsport 5 for requiring too much grinding don’t apply here. As in FM5, tweaking difficulty settings upward increases how many credits and XP you earn for each race. We're not sure the game is well-suited to playing at the most extreme difficulty settings, though—it’s not really that kind of game. Sure, you can turn on full damage, use the clutch with your gear shifts, and so on, but that feels a bit like missing the point. This isn't meant to be a hardcore simulator, so turn off the damage and embrace the arcadey nature of the game.
Overall, the physics model in Horizon 2 feels tweaked a little in favor of accessibility to a wide range of players and away from the hardcore sim crowd. If you’re a simracer and already look down your nose at your console-playing brethren, move along, there’s nothing for you here. This is no bad thing, in our opinion. Fans of the Project Gotham Racing games, in particular, will find much to like in Forza Horizon 2. You can play on full difficulty with a wheel and pedals, but it’s just as fun with the controller on a slightly easier setting.
As you level up through the game you’ll also win more credits and cars, and there’s another reward system involving Perks. These act as modifiers to different skills, boosting the amount of XP you earn by drafting, or drifting, or narrowly missing other cars. Barn Finds also return, allowing you to search the map for rare cars that have been hidden away in order to fill up your garage.
In a change from the first Horizon, you’re now able to fully upgrade and tune all of the cars, just as you can in Forza Motorsport 5. You can even helpfully tweak settings before every race in a way that's much more laborious than in Forza Motorsport 5. The paint shop and livery editor are present and correct as well, and even before the game’s launch date there are plenty of custom paint jobs populating the highways and byways (and fields).
Thanks to the drivatars and the large map, Forza Horizon 2 feels plenty massive and connected even when playing in solo mode. But you’ll need to unlock online play by completing the first few solo challenges to get the true experience. In many ways Forza Horizon 2 brings back plenty of the features that fans of the series have missed in Forza Motorsport 5. Car Clubs are back, making it much easier to organize communities within Forza Horizon 2.
There's no online lobby structure here; instead, you can join or create online sessions while driving about. Online play comes in two main flavors: road trips and free roam. Road trips are pretty self-explanatory—everyone heads toward the same destination, and you compete in different races and events along the way. Think of it like an online version of career mode, with a certain degree of structure to it. By contrast, free roam is less organized; one player will be designated as leader and can set waypoints or create events at will, but otherwise everyone is free to cruise around the map to their heart's content.
If we have one complaint, it’s that Forza Horizon 2 makes us feel old. (I’m in my late 30s, and the game’s target audience feels at least 10 to 15 years younger than that.) Driving across Southern Europe while an annoying hipster narrates feels like a young man's game. If we have a second complaint, it's that it's tiresome to continually head back to the central hub to change cars, rather than just doing that via a menu.
Beyond these small quibbles, Forza Horizon 2 provides an engaging driving experience that we'll be coming back to regularly. After all, where else would you get the opportunity to drive a Ferrari at 200 mph the wrong way down a French autoroute?