Recent reviews by Pleepler

"We aced every KPI and still failed!"

That's what this game is. This game ticks every box in a "Build a car game for dummies" book but fails to execute. As I have seen several times in the automotive and consumer electronics industry; just hitting KPIs and slapping numbers on a product sheet doesn't make a product any good.

Poor optimization, poor writing, poor graphics considering the requirements, very poor physics engine, poor sound design, poor progression system, poor car classification system and roster, poor controls, desperately awful music.

But hey, they hit every KPI during testing, what more do we want?

It's clear that the game wasn't crafted, it was merely produced. And I wouldn't be surprised if this was meant to be a mobile game first given the handling model and the open world nature of it was added too late in the development cycle. Existence of premium currency confirms that - you buy a game for 50€, then you're expected to get their Solar Pass, and now you're also expected to spend money on a premium currency on top of it all? How miserable

I played during the Free Weekend event and I still feel robbed

This game is a lost cause. Do not buy. Under the current management and development style/philosophy it will never be good enough, even if it ticks every box under the sun

So far it's a no from me

Underbaked, overhyped, about as motivating as a morbidly obese gym trainer for hire. Considering a refund simply because the game has nothing to keep me playing, but its little mechanics are making it just annoying enough to keep me away. What a shame

To be a bit more elaborate, here's what my 2 hour refund window devolved into:
- Enter a raid
- Select the nearest extraction point on the map
- Collect loot on the way, quickly filling up inventory
- Extract
- Be upset that inventory management is atrocious
There, that's done in 6 minutes or so. Rinse and repeat

In what world is that fun? In what universe does that make you want more?

Strategy and adaptability is the key to success, except when a Soul card appears. Your whole plan falls apart in hopes of getting a Triboulet.

You got Canio instead. Welcome to Balatro, enjoy your stay

Where do I begin

I've spent some time in rallye games. Nothing about this DLC has anything to do with rallye

Now, a time trial is welcome because AI is traditionally braindead. But not on these roads - rallye is done on narrow roads with obstacles. Roads on this map are wide and open.

Rallye requires pace notes because there's so many unsighted corners you need a second pair of eyes to look ahead. Pace notes available here are mostly wrong, come too late, aren't descriptive enough, and totally omit distances. Which would be a problem on narrow roads, but there are no narrow roads, so just turn them off.

If only turning off pace notes was permanent. Because even if you turn them off, they will turn themselves on again after you reboot the game.

Another issue with rallying is the physics engine. Calling it an engine is a stretch, of course. Anyway, all cars feel hopelessly heavy, every car is at least 5 tonnes and takes eons to react to your inputs. Given that rallye cars are light and nimble to quickly switch directions, the best course of action for you is to go full grip and avoid sliding. Forza loves to kill fun so that's totally expected.

Now on to the terrain itself. Gravel has dips and divets that mean that braking distances are sketchy and it's easy to upset your car if you're not careful. Forza terrain has no bumps or divets, they're pure cosmetics. There is zero punishment for going off line, zero tramlining, zero bumps upsetting your brakes. No driving challenge whatsoever. Just avoid the barriers because immovable objects have no collision worth talking about - no bouncing off, just stopping you dead. Newton's laws are always violated, elasticity is a naughty word.

So yeah, traditional Forza fare. Surface level deisgn condensed into a tiny map with predictable corners, cliché unskippable dialogues making your skin crawl, zero replay value, just too long of a grind. You're thrown into a rivalry between 3 incredibly annoying and dislikeable characters; textbook narcissists fighting over who is the second best driver. And that's it. Where's the rallye championship? Oh, there is none, Forza only pretends to be competitive, on fringes to not be classified a slot machine. Your only opponent is your patience and tolerance towards bombardment of toxic positivity

Waste of money, waste of time

Reluctantly, this is my "I don't know what else to play so I might just spend 20 minutes on this before I figure out what else to do" kind of game

Engagement and entertainment value is provided by a weekly slop of objectives and events to do to accumulate points to redeem for cars you will never drive and passes to redeem cars you will absolutely never drive. Because why would you - all cars feel the same, all cars sound the same. What's the point anyway

Driving aspect briefly - Cars are either gripping or sliding. RWD and AWD cars always oversteer, FWD always understeer. There is no nuance whatsoever, so it's either driving on rails or driving on ice. Change of surface essentially modifies rolling resistance and allows for more slip angle (that's quite the stretch) before you go into slide mode

You just know that the tyre model doesn't exist, that suspension model doesn't exist, that the physics are as detailed as Need For Speed Carbon, except that the cars seemingly weigh 10 times more

Racing aspect is infuriating. AI does what AI does best - block, brake, rubberband and drive in a line like a bunch of ducks. Special shoutout to Showcase events that are designed to always end in a photofinish, with rubberbanding galore. If only the physics were a bit more sophisticated, especially in regards to crashes

Crash physics don't exist. There is zero elasticity in crashes. You hit a tree? Complete stop, not even a bounce. You scrape a wall of a building? Complete stop, not even a spin. You land on the ground? Infinite damping and a random speed factor to slow you down, nothing more. You hit another car? Again, no elasticity, just glue. You hit an event wall? Just hope you haven't breached a critical dead stop angle, otherwise you can in some instances freely wallride around, game doesn't care. And if you hit debris, you slow down by a determined factor, your car doesn't get unsettled by anything.

Narrative and story, or whatever that drivel is, is barely filler, and for your own sanity you shouldn't engage with it for even a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary. It's insultingly bad. Written for simpletons, toxic in its approach to everything really, stripped of any emotion or ambition

So what are you actually paying for in this game?

A weekly serving of automotive slop in a forgettable environment that you can turn on every week, or even every day if you have a child, and just waste your time away. It's a little bit better than giving your kid an iPad just because you can actually see what's happening on screen

Forza Horizon. The official game of babysitters and parents too lazy to actually participate in child's development

Surprisingly positive, but buyer beware.

Getting past the cringe story and characters, which, if you take it more as a parody of Gen Z and modern culture than something to be taken seriously, becomes a rather enjoyable experience. It's OTT on purpose, but then there comes ASAP Rocky being all mindful and deep as a puddle, which comes across as pointlessly patronizing. His character is a net negative, underlining repetitive gameplay loop which at least doesn't take that long to complete. Career really only serves as a tutorial stage for Multiplayer.

And Multiplayer is fine. It's just fine, some modes are pure chaos while other modes are, well. Let's just say that when someone with a nickname that is pure hate speech is Level 300 and is dominating every race, you tend to have suspicions towards that person. Unfortunately there's no shortage of these people. And in some cases I have to ask myself whether I'm just that slow, or that S328 rating car others use is maybe 400+ and cheated. I don't know. I don't want to know. Stick to doing Linkups. They're good money

5/10 game, ruthlessly average gameplay with creative flair. Worth the price on sale (was 95% off)

Game is pretty fun now. Runs okay, looks really good, drives really well. Online seems stable and useable, although rolling starts are still lacking.

You know what? Even though this game was meant to be out of EA in November 2025 and we're still continents away from that, it's getting to a point where you can say that the basics - the core foundation - is there. Now onto the rest

If I bought this game on release, I would be a very unhappy customer

Barely 6 hours of action. Barely getting introduced to the story and 1st act is over. Barely getting into 2nd act and whole story is over. At least it was cheap

Barely a game worth playing. Barely worth creating. Barely a game

This game does not offer enough to justify being a subscription based game. Everything you see bar the core functionality is made by the community. All the maps bar the first campaign ever is made by community members. All you're paying for is incremental changes and server maintenance. Given the performance of servers, they're not maintained enough, with lag spikes and desync a very common occurence

Until now, the game even in its free flavour was enjoyable. You got access to 25 campaign maps where you could hone your craft, and then get absolutely humbled in Arcade mode by community maps that didn't need to adhere to any standards. Now you only have 10 campaign maps. On these maps I've achieved 7 Author medals way too easily, even though I haven't played in months. So what, does Nadeo expect me to get massive FOMO because I'm suddenly a great player? Nice try

Once again, this is not a game that's worth a subscription. Now it's barely worth the Free to Play moniker, it's more of a demo

It's really good. And it fulfills the basic premise of GT3 cars - they're easy to drive, but very challenging to drive fast. We'll get there eventually