Forza Horizon and How I feel About it

This past Tuesday I was sitting on the fence whether to buy Forza Horizon or not. Going back and forth with myself and after watching countless videos on YouTube I decided to bite the bullet only because my copy of Forza 4 was cracked and I was lacking a racing game. I wasn't sure what to expect from an open world racer, but with people from Turn10, some former Codemasters ( Dirt, Grid, F1 2012) people and Playground studios I was anticipating a fun game.

The first hour or so you go through the tutorial period and race with all the assists on, which for me seems remedial and super easy. As soon as I had the ability to change the settings and increase the games difficulty I maxed it out. Manual Transmission no driving assists, and AI set to insane, I was a Forza 4 veteran after all who played on the hardest settings should be easy. First couple races I was getting my @$$ kicked I couldn't believe it. Eventually I set the AI to hard to level the playing field and haven't touched it. I was surprised at how difficult the game could be and welcomed the challenge.

In Forza Horizon there is a hidden stability mode until you set the difficulty to expert, then it turns everything off and is close to simulation as your going to get. You can turn other things back on such as automatic transmission, driving line, rewind to your preference creating a custom setting. Even with all the assists off this game isn't trying to be Forza 4, but that is fine with me. You still need to know how to drive a car properly and use the racing line to have a chance to win race. A FWD car will not steer if your full throttle in a corner and a RWD car will over-steer if you accelerate to quickly in a corner, so discipline is still needed.

Another part of Horizon I enjoy is how large this world is. You can drive for hours finding cool roads to drift on, or hit the highway and red-line your super car. Speed Traps and Speed Zones set challenges while just cruising around. They track your speed at each location and post it leader-boards  Every time you hit one it tells you which of your friends you beat or who was faster then you. There are also other racers just cruising around which you can challenge to race to win some cash, but the earnings are small in comparison to the main events in Horizon.

Two things the disappointed me we the lack of cars and the same wheels from Forza 3. In Horizon there is just over 200 cars I believe and for myself only a handful are attractive. I don't understand while they chose some of the cars they did. There is an obvious focus on super cars. Ferrari has the largest selection with easily double or triple the cars compared to other manufacturers.
The wheel selection and body upgrades are the same as Forza 4, which means the same wheels as Forza 3. Forza has always been marketed as a title for the car enthusiast, but if you are one and you follow the trends in automotive styling you will know that few of the wheels in the game are actually applicable to today, with expecting of the timeless one such as Volk's TE-37's.

Overall I am enjoying my experience with Forza Horizon. I was glad a picked up this game and I'll be playing it for some time to come.