Nothing will recreate the initial feeling of an open world Forza game and we can all appreciate a proper Need for Speed killer. I'm hoping they will remaster this someday because it will have more players than even Forza horizon 5
@@wydua Players want what's new. If they dress up the graphics, and update handling models there's no reason why people wouldnt flock to the shiny new thing (even if it's a remake)
The thing is it would be better if they don't remaster it because they would remove a lot of things that were "a product of their time" and not for "modern audiences"
Really rn we need a Forza Horizon killer. Racing games as a genre have felt too formulaic. We need something new and fresh to kick off another renaissance like there was in 2010 or 2003.
1000% agree. The atmosphere is better. You actually start at the bottom and not with a supercar. Bosses were corny but fun to have. As cool as the make your own events are in FH3,4,5, FH1 events feel tailored to the cars. With NFS waning at the time, FH1 hit the spot when it came out.
As someone who grew up with the 90s NFS games and played the 2000's street racing focused titles as a teen, FH1 felt like the perfect NFS game that EA refused to make.
This game created a vibe unrivalled not just by any other racing game, but by almost any other game full stop. Its amazing how much they could create with so little, compared to how little they can create with so much now. Imagine what we could have if someone managed to recapture the vibe and progression of this game with todays open worlds, graphics, and car lists.
I wouldn’t say unrivaled in a reality that ProStreet, FlatOut 2 and (as my fellow mentioned) Motorstorm existed. But I’ll let it slide since this wasn’t that same era anymore. NFS 2015 nailed the vibe too and was a banger but yet to come. Horizon and Paradise was the only things going in that time for racing games, that’s why they’re so memorable.
There was a video that showed that FH1-3's music was curated by an actual festival DJ. Even if I wasn't a fan of certain genre's all the songs sounded like something to vibe to when cruising and when racing. FH4's music wasn't bad, but I found myself constantly shuffling stations until I heard the few songs I liked. FH5 well, people joked that it sounded like some Microsoft employees just picked music from their department's spotify list.
@@Leon_SKennnedy I agree. I think they knew it had to hold up. So it was the same standard but fresh. Since then, I think it became a slight afterthought or maybe they started to cheap out on the licensing
I had never played FH1 and went back to play it last year and hoooly, it is so damn good. It really clears the modern Horizon by a mile, and it's definitely become my personal favourite.
I wish you got to experience it back in 2012 man. It was incredible the online community on that game was also the best of any Horizon game. The racing playlist was great. None of that S1 cross country bs
@@NFSlegend2Same I wish I could experience the game in its hay day. I only got to experience recently through Xenia and loved it Especially the Map I honestly wouldn't mind closed map sections like 1 I feel like it allowed for great backdrops and map had great driving roads with undulations etc.
i feel like the only issues with it are the small roster of cars and poorer customization options. other than that, as an actual game, it blows the rest of the series out of the water. i wish that playground would realize that we want horizon to have an actual campaign with actual progression instead of just sandbox mode. tbh if they had a single player campaign and an online sandbox mode it would be the perfect compromise between fh1 and fh5
@@atmo1839 exactly!!!! I also want to it to feel most like a intimate festival like one you go to with friends. The new games are wwwwwaayyy to over top. We don't want some huge blockbuster action movie, we want a more grounded game that has you start out in grass roots racing. Like grid life. There shouldnt be legit gt3 and gr2 cars in the game. Save that for motorsport or just lock that stuff away for endgame
2 main reason FH1 is actually my favorite: 1) The atmosphere is by far the most complete and vibrant 2) The sense of progression is real and satisfying. You did an amazing job explaining these points in detail, and none of the other Horizons even remotely try in these areas. It's almost a shame.
5:23 damn this hits hard after just seeing how good fh1 did with the race starts, incredible video with a bunch of things I’ve never noticed about fh1 , my fav thing about fh1 was the online KING mode , FH1 was the only game to have 1 king at a time , all other horizons used 2 which imo just wasn’t as fun
I miss Horizon Colorado 2012, it was just a simpler time. I remember I was 12 years old when this game came out and I would just come home turn on my 360 and once I started playing It felt like I got transported to the festival. All mental struggles of mine just evaporated and I loved the visuals of driving around through a place that felt like home. It had beautiful trees, buildings, sunsets and of course beautiful cars. I partied at the festival and I think we all did. Unfortunately in this universe everything has a set lifespan even the universe itself. So make every bit of your life count, make your life fun it will only come once. So my final message is make life your horizon! Goodbye.
It’s definitely not fair how much better 80% of FH1 is better than every other horizon game. The presentation, music, progression, design, and map. Everything just feels like there was actual care and love put into the game, where as it was immediately obvious as soon as you start FH2 that all of that love and care was gone. As for the map, yeah it may be the smallest, but it’s totally the best designed and cared for too. ALSO it was stated on an Episode of Maximum Driftcast a couple years ago, but the exact idea behind gridlife was to make a real life Horizon festival.
The user created lobbies specifically for online free roam was amazing. Having the abilities to set time of day, spawn location, car upgrades, performance class restrictions, and adding a title on top of it for people to join. I dont get why they dont bring it back, and why racing games dont do it more often. It created a sense of community and expanded the longevity of the game and what you could do outside of the main story. I remember just spending hours joining drift or drag racing lobbies with the occasionally cruise. Something about jumping onto online and actually interacting with players is something that lacks in Horzion.
What also makes FH1 better than sequels is lack of offroad. Not that offroad racing/driving is bad in itself, but maps, events and races in FH4 and 5 are forcing way too much of that.
I was 13 years old when the game game out, I still strongly believe that this was and still is the best Forza horizon game, everything down to the music, the whole festival vibe, actual bosses to beat and progression in this game. U had to be there back in the day to fully experience what this game was like, and then the online multiplayer oh man😭 this game was just perfect!
Man.... I preordered it in 2012. Recieved it after getting out of school. I think it was a wednesday. From the wait till release to the day i finised it for the first time, my favorite gaming experience of all time. What a masterpiece.
Horizon 1 may not be the best Horizon game but it is definitely the best Horizon Festival, it nails this aspect of the series more than every other entry. It's not the best Sandbox though as it lacks the full open-world of the others but on the other hand every area in this game feels like it belongs. There's no throwaway parts of the map with nothing to see or do which I feel is a massive asset desite the limited scale. It also had a fantastic roster of cars (especially with DLC) despite being very small compared to the latest entries in the franchise, one of the best examples of Quality vs Quantity imo. This is also the game that got me into cars and car culture, I'd played NFS and FM3 previously but none of them managed to grip me like Horizon did when it released. So many great memories from this game and it laid the foundation for where I currently am today as a person in terms of my interests. The Soundtrack is an absolute banger, I'm also biased because I spent my early teens listening to similar genres but goddamn Bass Arena in particular still slaps. Pulse is also fantastic and even XS has some great songs that continue to be in some of my playlists that I listen to regularly. Honestly comparing FH1 to FH4/5 feels like a completely different series. Even from FH3 the differences started to manifest massively but FH4 is the start of the game becoming a full-on Sandbox for people of all ages and backgrounds with no particular interest in cars required.
@@TheCapitalWanderer Yeah more or less. The Hot Wheels DLC was the first clue to me that they were targeting a broader audience, and those trends just progressed with each game.
I do miss the progression from FH1. Getting handed supercars from the start has its own appeal, but there's just something about working your way up from a dingy hatchback that I can't get enough of.
Most modern games lack "World Building", which to me is where the soul of a game comes from, if the game does not have any serious "World Building" you have what I would call a game engine demo, not a game.
Reminds me of Stray. Stray doesn't have huge maps, it doesn't have fancy features or technologies, it doesn't have continuous battle passes and regular updates, it doesn't rely heavily on music or even sound effects and voice acting... But it had world building. A lot of world building. A lot of amazing world building. And that alone, rightfully, earned Stray a place as one of the best games of 2022. Without World Building, nothing else matters, and Stray proved that.
It's always sad how xbox had enough money to make remaster of fh1 on 10 years anniversary but instead gave us broken update that even forgot to place checkpoints in fh 4 initial race while also showing main menus from previous games with visible remastered models of cars that were introduced into the game few months later during random seazon.
I still have the OG Horizon on my old 360 at my parents house and will play when visiting home where I don’t have my PC. It’s so much fun to go back to this game for the nostalgia trip and the different feel compared to modern Horizon games. Amazingly it still feels fresh when you’re used to Horizon 4/5. And Horizon’s soundtrack had a huge impact on the progression of my taste in music through middle school and high school. Horizon Pulse was absolute fire in this game.
You nailed pretty much every reason why FH1 is the best. I would add that even UI of the game has more character and the certain theme to it, instead of overly complicated tablet look in the newer games. Also I really loved the red filter of this game. It just makes it more memorable and nostalgic. Fits the summer festival theme, speaking of which, I'd rather have that back than have all the seasons that shuffle without your control. What kind of festival goes on all year anyway? The point is, it's not about summer EDM festival with cars you're gonna look back to with nostalgia anymore. Live service has ruined the fantasy and soul of gaming in my opinion. A game has to have an end to make it memorable instead of something that was dragged out way too long and made you sick of it.
Man you captured all of my thoughts on Horizon 1 into one incredible video, its great to see that people still acknowledge the older forza games even to this day nearly 12 years later. Its a trip down memory lane.
FH1 will always be the best of the series. The fact that you couldn’t customize the events forced you to have a diverse garage. The lack of proper offroading sections made you actually follow the roads instead of cross countrying everywhere like modern horizons does. And it’s the only one with a couple proper mountain roads. All of that combined with the great vibes makes it unbeatable. I even got some crazy unicorn cars through the forza forums and you felt like a real VIP because it was hard to get them, not by micro transactions or crazy auction prices, but by actually interacting with the community. I love the game.
all horizon 1 needs is tuning and better implementation of online, then it becomes one of the best games of all time. which is crazy considering it already is one of the best RACING games of all time
I’m a Colorado native and I believe this game really captures the vibe and car culture of Colorado there for even with its flaws it’s my favorite. Also helps that this game came out my senior year of high school and I remember using all of my free time to play this game haha
I really do think FH1 is the best one, compared to it all the others don't even feel like they have a campaign and I hate that. My only complaint about FH1 is that there was no car tuning. Also I miss the online car clubs and having friends be able to borrow some of my cars.
Its by far the best. The vibe and art direction is simply amazing. Dont get me wrong I do like some of the later games (H2 and H4) however I feel FH is suffering a similar fate has the fast and the furious series. Ex: FH1 = the fast and the furious FH2 = 2 fast 2 furious FH3 = Fast 6 FH4 = Furious 7 FH5 = Fate of the furious I agree with every talking point you had one why FH1 is "the best" in the series.
@@nightcreeper3839fh3 is probably in second place for me… the map, addition of widebody options and it was was the first horizon game where I played online and was a “part of the community” but fh1 will always be first place imo because most of the points made in this video
For me FH1 just feels like a complete version of the later games. It's like if someone saw all the latest forza games and tried to build an actual well thought-out game. It has progression, atmosphere and good world building, good sound design. It has everything that makes any kind of game memorable.
From the moment of opening the box and there being that pink "festival ticket" in the box, to starting it up, seeing the beautiful landscape to Porter Robinson's "Language" being played it just hit immediately. There was so much effort and passion put into this game to make you feel like you were really taking part in something that could possibly be real. The music was fantastic as well and the fact that this was before the game got ridiculous with its race types and stuck to real racing. Following Forza Motorsport 4, this is where T10 was in their stride and while I really like FH 2, it seems it lost its touch afterwards as well as the FM series. I think it's time to pop back in that disc and play through FH1 again. :)
I've gone back and replayed FH1 several times, it has the most enjoyable map and physics/driving feel to me. The only downside is the comparatively thin car selection. The atmosphere, soundtrack and sense of progression haven't really been matched by another title.
1 and 2 had strong personalities in their own way on top of being awesome games, the latter is my all-time favorite. 3 was really good though the festival aspect started to take a back seat. I love the intro to 4 but after that's over the spirit dies out very quickly, which to me marked the point where Horizon stopped being a game and became a live platform with little to no charisma. I deeply hate 5, even its intro is meh at best. I had some hopes we could get a return to how it was done in the first Horizon but I would be fooling myself to think it will ever happen now that the sandbox approach is their golden goose when it comes to attracting the widest audience possible. Perhaps something in the AA or indie space could move forward what Horizon 1 stands for.
Never forget, coming home from best buy, a copy of a fh1 in my hand, dad is sleeping on the coach and I am just play and just emersed by the open world gameplay. FH1 is pretty much up there for me when it comes to racing games. The vibes that emitted from FH1 hasn't been matched since. This game was so much more than my just my childhood. Still miss playing through it. Apart from FH4's very real feeling British map which t me is the most beautiful FH map, FH1's felt the most realistic with really fun driving roads. The sound track is something I still listen to today. Every time I hear Empire of the Sun's Walking on a Dream, R U Mine? or Lonely Boy, every song fit the map and driving feel so well.
It's a realized world instead of a sandbox, and one that emphasizes all of the advantages of that approach. You can give modern games as deep a car list, as large a map or list of tracks, as much graphical fidelity, and as brilliant a handling system as is possible, but without a good story to provide the motivation to keep playing, a game can feel empty. The greatest games of all time transport you into another world with different, fantastical rules and a great rival you need to bring down. When talking about games like that, it's not just the motivation to keep playing. It's about the motivation they give a player to keep walking the path towards victory. The greatest games of all time aren't tech showcases with photorealistic graphics and 8K ass hair - they're games that possess 8 polygons total and yet still manage to build a more compelling experience than most modern games even try to. And they do it the old-school way: by telling a damn good story. Forza's Horizon series has a lot of good games, but only one good story. Hate to break it to ya Hoki, but just an episode in, and the winner is clear.
I never played this, but the way you describe how the game is laid out, makes it seems like so much love and care was put into this. Wish the newer Horizon games had this much care put into them.
Forza Horizon 1 is goated, easily my favorite Horizon game. The map, the music (the music from fh3 onwards becomes absolute trash), the progression and overall character of the game is phenomenal. To this day remains the best in the series.
Forza Horizon 5 lacks the story direction that helps us to appreciate every part of the world. It lacks characters and it's those characters that make cars feel special, such as the antagonist's car
I'm glad you brought up the sign-ups booths. I miss them so much. They also made it easier to not accidentally overshoot and drive passed the race events that are now marked with a nearly invisible floating white line.
Haven't tried any Forza game, but this is the only one that I really regret not being able to play. Yeah sure the PS3 had Motorstorm and PS4 would have DriveClub which are good but this? It's such a vibe
just a suggestion - you should totally review the two Shift games made by Slightly Mad studios. They're so obscure, niche and they flopped so hard that the internet could really re-evaluate them using the perspective of a sim racing enthusiast, even though neither of those games is a sim. Who knows, maybe you could find something worth appreciation? and regarding Shift 2, the default steering sensitivity, speed sensitivity and deadzone settings are garbo and need to be lowered
Forza Horizon 1 will forever remain in my top 5 games of all time. It has sat at my #1 since I was 9 in 2014 and got my xbox 360. It is easily the best game on the 360, better than halo 3, 4, the cod golden era, anything like that. This game was what lit my love for motorsports and cars, as well as shaping my music taste from the ground up through bass arena. The one thing you didn't mention that I would have would be the car sounds. Some of them are definitely not great, but a lot of them are better than the sounds we have on the current cars, like the rx-7, and even the cars we have nothing to compare to sound great, like the gumpert apollo. Like you said, the vibe is really what makes it so special, it's unparalleled in any game I've ever played since aside from maybe mirror's edge catalyst. I genuinely feel bad for anyone who couldn't or didn't play the game in its heyday, because if someone plays it now it just won't be the same because they've probably played a game or multiple games that use the things that made horizon 1 special, so to them it'll probably be good, but just an xbox 360 game. It's gaming's greatest example, just like old halo and cod, of you had to be there to understand.
Still my favourite. This is THE Horizon festival and the atmosphere can never be replicated. Nothing will ever replicate the feeling you get watching that incredible intro, live action, incredible music and absolutely unreal character. Newer games do a number of things better in regards to online racing, ugc and competitive aspects but nothing will ever compare to the progression and character of this game. The bosses and npcs have actual emotions, they make progressing feel rewarding and adds a competition element to the single player progression that disappears in every subsequent iteration. The sound track is also the greatest ever, no other game has got it as spot on as FH1 for the atmosphere.
The biggest thing for me is just the road network. Horizon 1 has the most "realistic" and fun to drive roads. There's almost zero flat road sections on the map. They're full of camber, inclinations and declinations, twists, turns, etc. and you can't just plough through the guard rails. To be fast, you have to be good. It made slow cars fun, and fast cars a challenge. The roads also aren't 4 or 5 lanes wide on a 2 way street. In all the newer titles the roads got wider, flatter, and straighter to "balance" the game around doing 250mph and not needing much input. They're just super boring in anything other than Koenigseggs. For the best example, compare all of the games "final" Goliath races and how much of a snore they are in 2+ I also might have ruined my play time with Horizon 2 because as mentioned, you don't need to change cars, ever. And showcase events no longer earn you the car. So I actually did play through pretty much the entire game in my starter car. I guess they "fixed" that by randomly giving you cars in wheelspins so you just change cars when you're bored.
The one which is paradoxial to me is Horizon 4. I love it's map, and I think it does the varying elevation and balance between countryside and villages/towns/cities pretty well. It's definitely miles better than FH5's generic openness and nothingness. But then you get a country road which somehow is wide enough to fit 4 cars PER LANE, despite the British countryside having a notorious reputation for it's roads being tight and narrow.. It's baffling.. if they just made it ACCURATELY tighter and narrower, the map's balance and feeling would've improved 100x.
@@Perseus7567 I find pretty much all the games after 1 to be pretty boring since they're mostly empty fields, and 2 "innovated" by letting you drive through them and introducing the cross country races, which still suck. It's also odd to me that people think 4 has a lot of elevation when half the map is flat, and the other half is a pretty gentle hill.
Hi HokiHoshi, you are by far my favourite forza youtuber and i really enjoy everything you do. Something that would up my love for your channel even more though would be if you made a video explaining Forza Horizon 2 PC emulation. Thank you and keep up the amazing videos!
I love the 2013 wrx STI. Trying to do the work to be able to actually take mine to the track (and not be worried), hopefully only another year until I can put on the finishing touches. And yes I’m on my second long block lol (if you were wondering).
Great points on how "lived-in" the Colorado world felt, and the commentary on merging sim physics with arcade game modes
11 місяців тому+3
I agree and I'm sad that, even though I bought and played the game when it was new, I never bought the DLC and I would really like to play the Rally expansion.
fh1 was special to me alongside fm4 cause it was kind of my gateway into the car culture of the time. one thing that REALLY helped this was the old fm4-era social features, like lobby multiplayer and the old storefront for paints and tunes. you could really get a sense of what was big at the time through interacting with the social features and it was seeing all of this creative content that made me want to dive further into the broader 2012 car scene.
Great video. I played it on the Xbox 360 and I'm revisiting it currently on the Xbox Series X. Totally agree FH1 has that perfect vibe and gameplay balance that keeps you coming back. Cheers
In Forza Horizon 5, I often find myself simply driving in a straight line mindlessly, going towards jumps across a vast open world. But for what? What is the incentive anymore? It's been done. For as large as the game is, at very few points does it actually incentivize you to follow the map's road layout (even barriers are destructible). Even INSIDE the developer-created circuits and challenges, you can often cheese the checkpoints and sometimes there are challenges that REQUIRE you to go off-roading when you wouldn't expect to, but it's near impossible otherwise to follow the road and win. The game's balancing is so utterly broken. Then there's FH1. The polar opposite; perfect balancing, characters that get on your nerves and push you hard to want to defeat them if for no other reason, to wipe that smug attitude off their faces. You rise the ranks starting as a nobody. There's an actual story and game laid out for you to experience-- a beginning, middle end... road layouts that are fun as heck to drive on casually (take in the views), as well as race on despite not having the freedom to go anywhere. The atmosphere is beautiful, the pop/rock music blend creates the best radio soundtrack experience ever. There's a really great edge to the game. You see your rivals, you see the crowds cheering for em... You see the life of the party. I was a 10 year old when I first played FH1, but it's a game that I felt even back then respected my intelligent, while being a slightly more adult experience but not violent or extreme nor insulting. Then every subsequent entry has become increasingly more sterile, and afraid to be offensive even when it never was, just so it could reach a broader audience. It sacrificed its identity for the sake of games sales, which... fine. But I've gotta call that out. Certainly no bad words anymore, promotional models, trash talking. No personality. In an attempt to become the game where you can do anything, Horizon has become a series where you want to do nothing.
It's not even that the modern FH games feel barren, it's that they're still trying to tell FH1's story just with slight differences. There's only so many times you can tell a story relating to "a new driver entering a Horizon Festival-based racing community and working his way up to the top" before the story just feels lame and generic. Personally in my opinion they should make Horizion something else, not a Festival, for FH6. Nothing says it *has* to be a Music Festival-based competition each game, so they should expand and try something different with it.
I remember playing the Demo So many Times and would reboot the Demo again if my time was up UNTIL eventually it was 2014 (I Still had 360) My brother decided to get Horizon! I remember playing it for Hours on end worked my way to my dream car and most of Young Gen’s Z Early Dream Car the Aventador. Still I kept my favs as of the Shelby Mustang, Subaru Impreza, 2nd Gen Honda Civic, and Murcielago SV. The MUSIC shaped my taste with Techno and that influence had leaked into my Taste overall. I ALWAYS get the chills listening to Porter Robinson. The Cinematography, environment, and the vibe i loved all of it. I loved Horizon because it was more modern at the time with the car roster as I was playing Midnight Club, Forza Motorsport, and NFS Most Wanted (All Great Games) the cars and Music had me captivated at as young age. And then my brother sold the game i haven’t beat it yet but I’m planning to get a 360 so i can relive and experience new things as well as build up my cars i had. This game will ALWAYS have a place in my heart 🙏
I started with FH2 and I never played FH1. And from the looks of it, this progression system is GOLDEN! Beats any Forza Horizon after it, where you just get everything from the "get go" and do what ever you want... It feels like I bought a game to not play it if I already have everything...? Hopefully they change how they've been doing things or make a remake of FH1.
This IS the best Horzion game. No clickbait at all. Starting in a VW shitbox and actually making you race and earn the cars you want. It made every car you owned feel special and that you actually worked for it. Just like TDU this made everything you did feel like an actual accomplishment. Love this game. This is my first Forza so I can tell I’m definitely biased
I think this video is a knock out of the park, and you probably only discussed 40% of the amazing things about FH1. The online, coop challenges, realistic wheelspins, the car list, the maps specific locations, they chose neon pink and neon yellow as primary colors in the menus all for atmosphere, the fact that the true off-road section are highly limited and yet this game still feels so free. The pinnacle of any open world racing game, and it was all made for a 360. Imagine if they could’ve made this game using the One’s hardware.
Nothing will replace playing FH1 for the first time, after years of disappointing racing games. The best points of this game need to show up in the next FH, while incorporating the better multiplayer features that have been added from the newer titles.
Horizon 1 has soul, it has challenge, it has an edge. The whole point was to be NFS Prostreet but in a Forza engine and they nailed it. Forza 2 and 4 are the most beloved of all the motorsport games because they had, as you put it, that Gridlife edge to it, and Horizon captured that beautifully in the open world environment. The sequels just...don't hit. The multiple festival tents dilute the special-ness of having the homebase, the way you can just cross country in literally any car without repercussions just makes the concept of roads completely irrelevant. Whats the point in trying to stay on the road if you can just bash through trees you'd ordinarily wrap a car around? Bring back restrictive roads, and if you actually want to go off road, you need yknow, an actual off road car? Wild concept I know. I don't know why they decided to throw away everything that made Horizon unique, but then again I don't know why T10 threw away all the soul from FM4 onwards in Motorsport either.
11:19 I would mention one more game that would probably fit into the "more arcade" category like NfS, and that is Test Drive Unlimited 2. Really, FH1 and TDU2 are very similar in a lot of ways and their release dates are just a year apart, with TDU2 being the older of the two. Both TDU2 and FH1 were parts of my childhood and I love them both dearly.
I think you half-forgot a point, but it's ok, because i don't see a lot of people talking about this: the AI isn't made up of drivatars. Tell me what feels more realistic: driving against "Ramona Cravache", or driving against "DoggishTitan736"? This drivatar system makes you feel like you're driving against robots, not actual people that exist in the world. And the worst part is that it isn't very hard to make up some names and put them in the game (trust me, i'm a coder myself and this is not hard at all) The last Forza game that i played before FH5 was FH1. I didn't play FH2, 3 or 4, so FH5 was kind of a shock to me in many ways, some good, some bad. Don't get me wrong tho, FH5 is good and i already put 200+ hours driven on it, but it doesn't come close to FH1
That's a good point! The idea of drivatars was that they would copy the real player's driving style, so you could race your friends even when they were offline. They have never been able to nail the execution though, and as you say, the random usernames actually feels more soulless than in-game NPC rival names, even though they are all AI drivers.
@@Marrrrtin It should absolutely just be optional. Sometimes I wanna see some more interesting looking Drivatar cars, and sometimes I just wanna see some generic, real-looking stuff. A toggle option in settings would give both groups of people what they want.
I know its impartial to rate a game with nostalgia, but the memories that I have from fh1 will never be recreated. The era of time was different and the community that was established was truly alive. Nostalgia aside, the game has so much charm with a feeling that can't be matched. FH1 is not only my favorite in the series but my favorite game entirely
I remember reading, years ago, an interview with one of the designers of FH1. They went to Colorado and took *tens of thousands* of images for reference when making the map. A ton of effort went into it, and it shows.
This game was so beautiful. I can't put my finger on it but like the FH2 map it just felt so special. It had so much character. It always felt like you were in a dream world. I really hope in FH6 we have more beautiful roads like the canyon road. Amongst all of the things mentioned in this video such as the awesome race starts in FH1, we need 'meet up' locations drive to. I feel like the main FH5 map is just a vast expanse where you aimlessly drive around with no real place to go to. There's no proper meet up locations or dreamy driving roads to travel. We pretty much just have the festivals. We need some cool pubs, cafes, petrol stations and garages!
I’ve been replaying this game for the first time in years. This game shaped who I am and what cars I love. I truly adore this game and especially the music. Dubstep peaked in the early 2010s and this game takes me back to that everytime I boot it up. What an incredible game
I personally like fh1 physics better I think it’s because you can feel the weight and then the roads also felt more drivable like now you can just straight line everywhere and it’s more empty
Man.... I preordered it in 2012. Recieved it after getting out of school. I think it was a wednesday. From the wait till release to the day i finised it for the first time, my favorite gaming experience of all time. What a masterpiece.
The problem isn't just that you're given a couple of good vehicles early on, it's that the rest of the good vehicles you aren't given are then worth like 100,000,000,000 CR each in the Autoshow, or double that on the Auction House because it was limited time in the Festival Playlist. It creates such a weird thing where the game hints it's going to be easy to progress and get what you want, and then suddenly pulls out an UNO Reverse card and goes "akshually no, you'll have to grind for the rest of your life for the other good cars, or exploit money glitches, or pay us real money." Giving a couple of good cars early on can be an effective boost that makes things a little easier if you want it, but doesn't over-do it, as long as you can still progress properly for all the other good stuff. Unfortunately, FH seems to miss that second part nowadays.
It might be nostalgia but. Forza Horizon (1) for me was always and will always be the best Forza game (shared with Forza Motorsport 4). I just remember being a child on my Xbox 360 and booting up this masterpiece. I don't really need to explain why because this video is the best resume I could find and watching this truly amazing video gave me a warm feeling inside. Just this week I bought a Xbox 360 E with a bunch of games and of course with Forza Horizon (1). It is amazing to relive these moments.
It's going to seem strange, but there's something about the crowds too. In the later FH games, the crowds seem to go from Dense to Sparce to Nothing back to Sparce back to Dense (Finish line). There is a touch of that in the original FH1 of course, but you never felt like you were driving to just spectators. You always felt that you were driving to a crowd.
I just realised that you have a video like this describing every FH as the best one and I just think that's really nice, highlighting the best parts of each game, and what sets it apart from the rest. I have played a bunch of FH4 with my friends and had a blast, honestly. Never got into FH5, not a big fan of the mexico setting, but I am awaiting FH6 with measured optimism, fingers crossed for that Japan setting, finally.
FH1 Will forever be my favorite Forza, there's something just so charming and satisfying about it, I've replayed it more times than I can count lol. One thing I hate about the newer Forza Horizons is how you instantly get access to these supercars, there is absolutely no progression, you just run around doing different events, its almost soulless. Another thing I loved about FH1 is how sometimes you'd hear them talk about you on the radio, like you were actually there and people noticed how you were climbing up the ranks faster than any other rookie. and I LOVE the car restrictions, it makes you experience difficult vehicles with different quirks, and it actually makes sense, rather than having 1 vehicle you can take to every event.
This game honestly changed the way I look at racing/driving games and I loved every minute of it, I still hop on it every now and then and it still feels amazing to drive. I really miss the online mode though, I still know all the usual "drift meet" spots were people would just gather and have a good time, drifting the same layout over and over again, tandem-ing with random strangers and showing each other the cool cars you made.
Nice. Another great video. Forza Horizon 1 is my favorite FH game, for basically all the reasons you mentioned. The progression and the feeling of being nobody who works to become somebody and characters that make the world and event feel more real. And the little details, such as the actual event sign up areas and characters in the pre-race grid, like you mentioned. With they would just remake it for modern hardware, ha ha!
I am currently playing it but i gotta say nothing beats the feeling of listening to blind faith while driving through the canyons of Colorado. Man i love it
This still has one of the best intros to any game I've ever played. The Porter Robinson track coupled with the cut scenes. It was just incredible and very nostalgic today.
Man I miss when this game came out, in my opinion the golden era was FM4, FH1, FM5, and FH2. I’ll never forget how much joy these games brought me growing up.
5:49 very technically speaking, they also exist in horizon 2, but only for bucket lists and only on the xbox 360 version (its the same asset from fh1 though)
There will never recreate that first time opened FH1 up too the title screen when I was 12 man, it was unreal I wish I play this game for first time over and over again it’s that damn good. Definitely in my top 10 racing games of all time.
Fun fact: the drive you did at the end of the video in the blue Diablo is actually a recreation of the real road going through the Colorado National Monument with surprising accuracy to the actual road and environment
I guess for me it was the community....the fact I could ALWAYS go to the red rock canyons and drift until I could barely keep my eyes open with random people, no matter what lobby I was in, or what time I was on. Even heading down to the dam to see who could drift the whole thing haha.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Nothing will recreate the initial feeling of an open world Forza game and we can all appreciate a proper Need for Speed killer. I'm hoping they will remaster this someday because it will have more players than even Forza horizon 5
Sadly not, because casual players are..weird. looking into the fact that fh4 has higher rating than fh 1 is...yea.
@@wydua Players want what's new. If they dress up the graphics, and update handling models there's no reason why people wouldnt flock to the shiny new thing (even if it's a remake)
The thing is it would be better if they don't remaster it because they would remove a lot of things that were "a product of their time" and not for "modern audiences"
Really rn we need a Forza Horizon killer. Racing games as a genre have felt too formulaic. We need something new and fresh to kick off another renaissance like there was in 2010 or 2003.
I just want a forza horizon game with need for speed levels of customization.
1000% agree. The atmosphere is better. You actually start at the bottom and not with a supercar. Bosses were corny but fun to have. As cool as the make your own events are in FH3,4,5, FH1 events feel tailored to the cars. With NFS waning at the time, FH1 hit the spot when it came out.
As someone who grew up with the 90s NFS games and played the 2000's street racing focused titles as a teen, FH1 felt like the perfect NFS game that EA refused to make.
@@dln.sweeney Concordo.
This game created a vibe unrivalled not just by any other racing game, but by almost any other game full stop. Its amazing how much they could create with so little, compared to how little they can create with so much now. Imagine what we could have if someone managed to recapture the vibe and progression of this game with todays open worlds, graphics, and car lists.
even Motorstorm?
I wouldn’t say unrivaled in a reality that ProStreet, FlatOut 2 and (as my fellow mentioned) Motorstorm existed. But I’ll let it slide since this wasn’t that same era anymore. NFS 2015 nailed the vibe too and was a banger but yet to come. Horizon and Paradise was the only things going in that time for racing games, that’s why they’re so memorable.
Motorstorm Pacific Rift
They got a real live DJ and festival organiser to pick the soundtrack for this game, that is why it is so good even today
There was a video that showed that FH1-3's music was curated by an actual festival DJ. Even if I wasn't a fan of certain genre's all the songs sounded like something to vibe to when cruising and when racing. FH4's music wasn't bad, but I found myself constantly shuffling stations until I heard the few songs I liked. FH5 well, people joked that it sounded like some Microsoft employees just picked music from their department's spotify list.
@@PsychiiXI think it was fh1 and fh2. fh3 onwards was Microsoft themselves.
The DJ was rob da bank I think
@@existentialselkath1264I'm surprised FH3 wasn't done by a DJ since it's soundtrack is the second best in the series
@@Leon_SKennnedy I agree. I think they knew it had to hold up. So it was the same standard but fresh. Since then, I think it became a slight afterthought or maybe they started to cheap out on the licensing
Damn, no wonder it captures the 2012 vibe so well
I had never played FH1 and went back to play it last year and hoooly, it is so damn good. It really clears the modern Horizon by a mile, and it's definitely become my personal favourite.
I wish you got to experience it back in 2012 man. It was incredible the online community on that game was also the best of any Horizon game. The racing playlist was great. None of that S1 cross country bs
@@NFSlegend2Same I wish I could experience the game in its hay day. I only got to experience recently through Xenia and loved it
Especially the Map I honestly wouldn't mind closed map sections like 1 I feel like it allowed for great backdrops and map had great driving roads with undulations etc.
i feel like the only issues with it are the small roster of cars and poorer customization options. other than that, as an actual game, it blows the rest of the series out of the water. i wish that playground would realize that we want horizon to have an actual campaign with actual progression instead of just sandbox mode. tbh if they had a single player campaign and an online sandbox mode it would be the perfect compromise between fh1 and fh5
@@atmo1839 exactly!!!! I also want to it to feel most like a intimate festival like one you go to with friends. The new games are wwwwwaayyy to over top. We don't want some huge blockbuster action movie, we want a more grounded game that has you start out in grass roots racing. Like grid life. There shouldnt be legit gt3 and gr2 cars in the game. Save that for motorsport or just lock that stuff away for endgame
I was a release day player, the community was on another level.
FH1 just felt really...romantic, a feeling that was first seeded by GT4 for me, and FH1 took it over to a new height.
It sits up there with the giants. NFS:MW, FH1, GT4, FM4. Every one of them had a magic that just got lost somewhere along the way.
@@Paladin1034 Só obra de arte nessa lista!
2 main reason FH1 is actually my favorite:
1) The atmosphere is by far the most complete and vibrant
2) The sense of progression is real and satisfying.
You did an amazing job explaining these points in detail, and none of the other Horizons even remotely try in these areas. It's almost a shame.
5:23 damn this hits hard after just seeing how good fh1 did with the race starts, incredible video with a bunch of things I’ve never noticed about fh1 ,
my fav thing about fh1 was the online KING mode , FH1 was the only game to have 1 king at a time , all other horizons used 2 which imo just wasn’t as fun
Bring back the boss 429
I miss Horizon Colorado 2012, it was just a simpler time. I remember I was 12 years old when this game came out and I would just come home turn on my 360 and once I started playing It felt like I got transported to the festival. All mental struggles of mine just evaporated and I loved the visuals of driving around through a place that felt like home. It had beautiful trees, buildings, sunsets and of course beautiful cars. I partied at the festival and I think we all did. Unfortunately in this universe everything has a set lifespan even the universe itself. So make every bit of your life count, make your life fun it will only come once. So my final message is make life your horizon!
Goodbye.
100% well said sir
It’s definitely not fair how much better 80% of FH1 is better than every other horizon game. The presentation, music, progression, design, and map. Everything just feels like there was actual care and love put into the game, where as it was immediately obvious as soon as you start FH2 that all of that love and care was gone. As for the map, yeah it may be the smallest, but it’s totally the best designed and cared for too.
ALSO it was stated on an Episode of Maximum Driftcast a couple years ago, but the exact idea behind gridlife was to make a real life Horizon festival.
The user created lobbies specifically for online free roam was amazing. Having the abilities to set time of day, spawn location, car upgrades, performance class restrictions, and adding a title on top of it for people to join. I dont get why they dont bring it back, and why racing games dont do it more often. It created a sense of community and expanded the longevity of the game and what you could do outside of the main story. I remember just spending hours joining drift or drag racing lobbies with the occasionally cruise. Something about jumping onto online and actually interacting with players is something that lacks in Horzion.
What also makes FH1 better than sequels is lack of offroad. Not that offroad racing/driving is bad in itself, but maps, events and races in FH4 and 5 are forcing way too much of that.
I was 13 years old when the game game out, I still strongly believe that this was and still is the best Forza horizon game, everything down to the music, the whole festival vibe, actual bosses to beat and progression in this game. U had to be there back in the day to fully experience what this game was like, and then the online multiplayer oh man😭 this game was just perfect!
Man.... I preordered it in 2012. Recieved it after getting out of school. I think it was a wednesday. From the wait till release to the day i finised it for the first time, my favorite gaming experience of all time. What a masterpiece.
0:00 Introduction
1:18 Personality/Vibe
3:45 Characters
6:10 Racing/Progression
10:24 Cars/Physics
12:17 Map
14:07 Soundtrack
15:04 Conclusion/Outro
ty
Horizon 1 may not be the best Horizon game but it is definitely the best Horizon Festival, it nails this aspect of the series more than every other entry.
It's not the best Sandbox though as it lacks the full open-world of the others but on the other hand every area in this game feels like it belongs. There's no throwaway parts of the map with nothing to see or do which I feel is a massive asset desite the limited scale.
It also had a fantastic roster of cars (especially with DLC) despite being very small compared to the latest entries in the franchise, one of the best examples of Quality vs Quantity imo.
This is also the game that got me into cars and car culture, I'd played NFS and FM3 previously but none of them managed to grip me like Horizon did when it released. So many great memories from this game and it laid the foundation for where I currently am today as a person in terms of my interests.
The Soundtrack is an absolute banger, I'm also biased because I spent my early teens listening to similar genres but goddamn Bass Arena in particular still slaps. Pulse is also fantastic and even XS has some great songs that continue to be in some of my playlists that I listen to regularly.
Honestly comparing FH1 to FH4/5 feels like a completely different series. Even from FH3 the differences started to manifest massively but FH4 is the start of the game becoming a full-on Sandbox for people of all ages and backgrounds with no particular interest in cars required.
Yep, FH1 felt like a game catered to car people but the series gradually seemed to shift towards mass appeal.
@@dln.sweeneyi'm pretty sure it was made for car people in the first game, franchise started going wild after Horizon 3 right?
@@TheCapitalWanderer Yeah more or less. The Hot Wheels DLC was the first clue to me that they were targeting a broader audience, and those trends just progressed with each game.
I do miss the progression from FH1. Getting handed supercars from the start has its own appeal, but there's just something about working your way up from a dingy hatchback that I can't get enough of.
Most modern games lack "World Building", which to me is where the soul of a game comes from, if the game does not have any serious "World Building" you have what I would call a game engine demo, not a game.
Reminds me of Stray.
Stray doesn't have huge maps, it doesn't have fancy features or technologies, it doesn't have continuous battle passes and regular updates, it doesn't rely heavily on music or even sound effects and voice acting...
But it had world building. A lot of world building. A lot of amazing world building.
And that alone, rightfully, earned Stray a place as one of the best games of 2022.
Without World Building, nothing else matters, and Stray proved that.
It's always sad how xbox had enough money to make remaster of fh1 on 10 years anniversary but instead gave us broken update that even forgot to place checkpoints in fh 4 initial race while also showing main menus from previous games with visible remastered models of cars that were introduced into the game few months later during random seazon.
I am ofc talking about pagani from fh1 main menu
The introduction to Forza Horizon 1 as a kid felt like listening to a favourite song for the first time.
I still have the OG Horizon on my old 360 at my parents house and will play when visiting home where I don’t have my PC. It’s so much fun to go back to this game for the nostalgia trip and the different feel compared to modern Horizon games. Amazingly it still feels fresh when you’re used to Horizon 4/5.
And Horizon’s soundtrack had a huge impact on the progression of my taste in music through middle school and high school. Horizon Pulse was absolute fire in this game.
You nailed pretty much every reason why FH1 is the best. I would add that even UI of the game has more character and the certain theme to it, instead of overly complicated tablet look in the newer games. Also I really loved the red filter of this game. It just makes it more memorable and nostalgic. Fits the summer festival theme, speaking of which, I'd rather have that back than have all the seasons that shuffle without your control. What kind of festival goes on all year anyway? The point is, it's not about summer EDM festival with cars you're gonna look back to with nostalgia anymore. Live service has ruined the fantasy and soul of gaming in my opinion. A game has to have an end to make it memorable instead of something that was dragged out way too long and made you sick of it.
This is absolutely the best one. I’ve played and enjoyed them all.
This one is absolutely incredible. Best campaign (actually has people) and best map
I’d also like to add, the car sounds are the most accurate here, too
Man you captured all of my thoughts on Horizon 1 into one incredible video, its great to see that people still acknowledge the older forza games even to this day nearly 12 years later. Its a trip down memory lane.
FH1 will always be the best of the series. The fact that you couldn’t customize the events forced you to have a diverse garage. The lack of proper offroading sections made you actually follow the roads instead of cross countrying everywhere like modern horizons does. And it’s the only one with a couple proper mountain roads. All of that combined with the great vibes makes it unbeatable. I even got some crazy unicorn cars through the forza forums and you felt like a real VIP because it was hard to get them, not by micro transactions or crazy auction prices, but by actually interacting with the community. I love the game.
It's like the first time with a drug
All the following hits are chasing the high
all horizon 1 needs is tuning and better implementation of online, then it becomes one of the best games of all time. which is crazy considering it already is one of the best RACING games of all time
I’m a Colorado native and I believe this game really captures the vibe and car culture of Colorado there for even with its flaws it’s my favorite. Also helps that this game came out my senior year of high school and I remember using all of my free time to play this game haha
I really do think FH1 is the best one, compared to it all the others don't even feel like they have a campaign and I hate that. My only complaint about FH1 is that there was no car tuning. Also I miss the online car clubs and having friends be able to borrow some of my cars.
Its by far the best. The vibe and art direction is simply amazing. Dont get me wrong I do like some of the later games (H2 and H4) however I feel FH is suffering a similar fate has the fast and the furious series.
Ex:
FH1 = the fast and the furious
FH2 = 2 fast 2 furious
FH3 = Fast 6
FH4 = Furious 7
FH5 = Fate of the furious
I agree with every talking point you had one why FH1 is "the best" in the series.
FH1 is my favorite. I went back and played it a few years ago and it held up to my standards. Love the soundtrack too.
You don’t have to argue when everyone agrees that FH1 is the best (especially with the mod that adds all the content)
For me the best is FH3 but I can see why people say FH1 is the best
Not everyone agrees because a lot of current players didn't even know it existed
@@nightcreeper3839fh3 is probably in second place for me… the map, addition of widebody options and it was was the first horizon game where I played online and was a “part of the community” but fh1 will always be first place imo because most of the points made in this video
For me FH1 just feels like a complete version of the later games. It's like if someone saw all the latest forza games and tried to build an actual well thought-out game. It has progression, atmosphere and good world building, good sound design. It has everything that makes any kind of game memorable.
The only damn horizon where you can get money for selling cars and those pink slip races man ❤❤❤
From the moment of opening the box and there being that pink "festival ticket" in the box, to starting it up, seeing the beautiful landscape to Porter Robinson's "Language" being played it just hit immediately. There was so much effort and passion put into this game to make you feel like you were really taking part in something that could possibly be real. The music was fantastic as well and the fact that this was before the game got ridiculous with its race types and stuck to real racing. Following Forza Motorsport 4, this is where T10 was in their stride and while I really like FH 2, it seems it lost its touch afterwards as well as the FM series. I think it's time to pop back in that disc and play through FH1 again. :)
I've gone back and replayed FH1 several times, it has the most enjoyable map and physics/driving feel to me. The only downside is the comparatively thin car selection. The atmosphere, soundtrack and sense of progression haven't really been matched by another title.
1 and 2 had strong personalities in their own way on top of being awesome games, the latter is my all-time favorite. 3 was really good though the festival aspect started to take a back seat. I love the intro to 4 but after that's over the spirit dies out very quickly, which to me marked the point where Horizon stopped being a game and became a live platform with little to no charisma. I deeply hate 5, even its intro is meh at best.
I had some hopes we could get a return to how it was done in the first Horizon but I would be fooling myself to think it will ever happen now that the sandbox approach is their golden goose when it comes to attracting the widest audience possible. Perhaps something in the AA or indie space could move forward what Horizon 1 stands for.
Never forget, coming home from best buy, a copy of a fh1 in my hand, dad is sleeping on the coach and I am just play and just emersed by the open world gameplay. FH1 is pretty much up there for me when it comes to racing games. The vibes that emitted from FH1 hasn't been matched since. This game was so much more than my just my childhood. Still miss playing through it. Apart from FH4's very real feeling British map which t me is the most beautiful FH map, FH1's felt the most realistic with really fun driving roads. The sound track is something I still listen to today. Every time I hear Empire of the Sun's Walking on a Dream, R U Mine? or Lonely Boy, every song fit the map and driving feel so well.
It's a realized world instead of a sandbox, and one that emphasizes all of the advantages of that approach. You can give modern games as deep a car list, as large a map or list of tracks, as much graphical fidelity, and as brilliant a handling system as is possible, but without a good story to provide the motivation to keep playing, a game can feel empty.
The greatest games of all time transport you into another world with different, fantastical rules and a great rival you need to bring down. When talking about games like that, it's not just the motivation to keep playing. It's about the motivation they give a player to keep walking the path towards victory. The greatest games of all time aren't tech showcases with photorealistic graphics and 8K ass hair - they're games that possess 8 polygons total and yet still manage to build a more compelling experience than most modern games even try to. And they do it the old-school way: by telling a damn good story.
Forza's Horizon series has a lot of good games, but only one good story. Hate to break it to ya Hoki, but just an episode in, and the winner is clear.
I never played this, but the way you describe how the game is laid out, makes it seems like so much love and care was put into this. Wish the newer Horizon games had this much care put into them.
Forza Horizon 1 is goated, easily my favorite Horizon game. The map, the music (the music from fh3 onwards becomes absolute trash), the progression and overall character of the game is phenomenal. To this day remains the best in the series.
Forza Horizon 5 lacks the story direction that helps us to appreciate every part of the world. It lacks characters and it's those characters that make cars feel special, such as the antagonist's car
I'm glad you brought up the sign-ups booths. I miss them so much. They also made it easier to not accidentally overshoot and drive passed the race events that are now marked with a nearly invisible floating white line.
Can't afford to travel to South France, so I want Forza Horizon 2 on PC
Horizon 1 story with Horizon 5 game play would be awesome
Haven't tried any Forza game, but this is the only one that I really regret not being able to play. Yeah sure the PS3 had Motorstorm and PS4 would have DriveClub which are good but this? It's such a vibe
just a suggestion - you should totally review the two Shift games made by Slightly Mad studios. They're so obscure, niche and they flopped so hard that the internet could really re-evaluate them using the perspective of a sim racing enthusiast, even though neither of those games is a sim. Who knows, maybe you could find something worth appreciation?
and regarding Shift 2, the default steering sensitivity, speed sensitivity and deadzone settings are garbo and need to be lowered
Forza Horizon 1 will forever remain in my top 5 games of all time. It has sat at my #1 since I was 9 in 2014 and got my xbox 360. It is easily the best game on the 360, better than halo 3, 4, the cod golden era, anything like that. This game was what lit my love for motorsports and cars, as well as shaping my music taste from the ground up through bass arena. The one thing you didn't mention that I would have would be the car sounds. Some of them are definitely not great, but a lot of them are better than the sounds we have on the current cars, like the rx-7, and even the cars we have nothing to compare to sound great, like the gumpert apollo. Like you said, the vibe is really what makes it so special, it's unparalleled in any game I've ever played since aside from maybe mirror's edge catalyst. I genuinely feel bad for anyone who couldn't or didn't play the game in its heyday, because if someone plays it now it just won't be the same because they've probably played a game or multiple games that use the things that made horizon 1 special, so to them it'll probably be good, but just an xbox 360 game. It's gaming's greatest example, just like old halo and cod, of you had to be there to understand.
Still my favourite. This is THE Horizon festival and the atmosphere can never be replicated. Nothing will ever replicate the feeling you get watching that incredible intro, live action, incredible music and absolutely unreal character. Newer games do a number of things better in regards to online racing, ugc and competitive aspects but nothing will ever compare to the progression and character of this game. The bosses and npcs have actual emotions, they make progressing feel rewarding and adds a competition element to the single player progression that disappears in every subsequent iteration. The sound track is also the greatest ever, no other game has got it as spot on as FH1 for the atmosphere.
The biggest thing for me is just the road network. Horizon 1 has the most "realistic" and fun to drive roads. There's almost zero flat road sections on the map. They're full of camber, inclinations and declinations, twists, turns, etc. and you can't just plough through the guard rails. To be fast, you have to be good. It made slow cars fun, and fast cars a challenge. The roads also aren't 4 or 5 lanes wide on a 2 way street. In all the newer titles the roads got wider, flatter, and straighter to "balance" the game around doing 250mph and not needing much input. They're just super boring in anything other than Koenigseggs. For the best example, compare all of the games "final" Goliath races and how much of a snore they are in 2+
I also might have ruined my play time with Horizon 2 because as mentioned, you don't need to change cars, ever. And showcase events no longer earn you the car. So I actually did play through pretty much the entire game in my starter car. I guess they "fixed" that by randomly giving you cars in wheelspins so you just change cars when you're bored.
The one which is paradoxial to me is Horizon 4.
I love it's map, and I think it does the varying elevation and balance between countryside and villages/towns/cities pretty well. It's definitely miles better than FH5's generic openness and nothingness.
But then you get a country road which somehow is wide enough to fit 4 cars PER LANE, despite the British countryside having a notorious reputation for it's roads being tight and narrow..
It's baffling.. if they just made it ACCURATELY tighter and narrower, the map's balance and feeling would've improved 100x.
@@Perseus7567 I find pretty much all the games after 1 to be pretty boring since they're mostly empty fields, and 2 "innovated" by letting you drive through them and introducing the cross country races, which still suck.
It's also odd to me that people think 4 has a lot of elevation when half the map is flat, and the other half is a pretty gentle hill.
Just recently beat fh1 on xenia and I gotta say it was one hell of a trip!
Hi HokiHoshi, you are by far my favourite forza youtuber and i really enjoy everything you do. Something that would up my love for your channel even more though would be if you made a video explaining Forza Horizon 2 PC emulation. Thank you and keep up the amazing videos!
I love the 2013 wrx STI. Trying to do the work to be able to actually take mine to the track (and not be worried), hopefully only another year until I can put on the finishing touches.
And yes I’m on my second long block lol (if you were wondering).
Great points on how "lived-in" the Colorado world felt, and the commentary on merging sim physics with arcade game modes
I agree and I'm sad that, even though I bought and played the game when it was new, I never bought the DLC and I would really like to play the Rally expansion.
fh1 was special to me alongside fm4 cause it was kind of my gateway into the car culture of the time. one thing that REALLY helped this was the old fm4-era social features, like lobby multiplayer and the old storefront for paints and tunes. you could really get a sense of what was big at the time through interacting with the social features and it was seeing all of this creative content that made me want to dive further into the broader 2012 car scene.
Great video. I played it on the Xbox 360 and I'm revisiting it currently on the Xbox Series X. Totally agree FH1 has that perfect vibe and gameplay balance that keeps you coming back. Cheers
In Forza Horizon 5, I often find myself simply driving in a straight line mindlessly, going towards jumps across a vast open world. But for what? What is the incentive anymore? It's been done. For as large as the game is, at very few points does it actually incentivize you to follow the map's road layout (even barriers are destructible). Even INSIDE the developer-created circuits and challenges, you can often cheese the checkpoints and sometimes there are challenges that REQUIRE you to go off-roading when you wouldn't expect to, but it's near impossible otherwise to follow the road and win. The game's balancing is so utterly broken.
Then there's FH1. The polar opposite; perfect balancing, characters that get on your nerves and push you hard to want to defeat them if for no other reason, to wipe that smug attitude off their faces. You rise the ranks starting as a nobody. There's an actual story and game laid out for you to experience-- a beginning, middle end... road layouts that are fun as heck to drive on casually (take in the views), as well as race on despite not having the freedom to go anywhere. The atmosphere is beautiful, the pop/rock music blend creates the best radio soundtrack experience ever.
There's a really great edge to the game. You see your rivals, you see the crowds cheering for em... You see the life of the party. I was a 10 year old when I first played FH1, but it's a game that I felt even back then respected my intelligent, while being a slightly more adult experience but not violent or extreme nor insulting.
Then every subsequent entry has become increasingly more sterile, and afraid to be offensive even when it never was, just so it could reach a broader audience. It sacrificed its identity for the sake of games sales, which... fine. But I've gotta call that out. Certainly no bad words anymore, promotional models, trash talking. No personality.
In an attempt to become the game where you can do anything, Horizon has become a series where you want to do nothing.
all you need to say is : this one has a story with a purpose.. Forza Horizon 4 and 5 just feels barren
It's not even that the modern FH games feel barren, it's that they're still trying to tell FH1's story just with slight differences.
There's only so many times you can tell a story relating to "a new driver entering a Horizon Festival-based racing community and working his way up to the top" before the story just feels lame and generic.
Personally in my opinion they should make Horizion something else, not a Festival, for FH6. Nothing says it *has* to be a Music Festival-based competition each game, so they should expand and try something different with it.
😢 Couldn't play Horizon when it hadn't turned into Festival Playlist: the game
I remember playing the Demo So many Times and would reboot the Demo again if my time was up UNTIL eventually it was 2014 (I Still had 360) My brother decided to get Horizon!
I remember playing it for Hours on end worked my way to my dream car and most of Young Gen’s Z Early Dream Car the Aventador.
Still I kept my favs as of the Shelby Mustang, Subaru Impreza, 2nd Gen Honda Civic, and Murcielago SV.
The MUSIC shaped my taste with Techno and that influence had leaked into my Taste overall. I ALWAYS get the chills listening to Porter Robinson.
The Cinematography, environment, and the vibe i loved all of it.
I loved Horizon because it was more modern at the time with the car roster as I was playing Midnight Club, Forza Motorsport, and NFS Most Wanted (All Great Games) the cars and Music had me captivated at as young age.
And then my brother sold the game i haven’t beat it yet but I’m planning to get a 360 so i can relive and experience new things as well as build up my cars i had.
This game will ALWAYS have a place in my heart 🙏
It’s incredible how a game so old with inferior graphics could feel 10 times more realistic than FH5 in all senses. (And also sad)
I started with FH2 and I never played FH1. And from the looks of it, this progression system is GOLDEN!
Beats any Forza Horizon after it, where you just get everything from the "get go" and do what ever you want... It feels like I bought a game to not play it if I already have everything...?
Hopefully they change how they've been doing things or make a remake of FH1.
This IS the best Horzion game. No clickbait at all. Starting in a VW shitbox and actually making you race and earn the cars you want. It made every car you owned feel special and that you actually worked for it. Just like TDU this made everything you did feel like an actual accomplishment. Love this game. This is my first Forza so I can tell I’m definitely biased
it has been almost 10 years since i first played forza horizon 1 and i still have a crush on alice
LMAO RELATABLE TBH
@@pxartfun4688 ikr for some reason she gives off the same vibe as that one nice pretty girl in school nobody notices
Played all the horizons except 4, so far 5 is my favorite.
I think this video is a knock out of the park, and you probably only discussed 40% of the amazing things about FH1. The online, coop challenges, realistic wheelspins, the car list, the maps specific locations, they chose neon pink and neon yellow as primary colors in the menus all for atmosphere, the fact that the true off-road section are highly limited and yet this game still feels so free. The pinnacle of any open world racing game, and it was all made for a 360. Imagine if they could’ve made this game using the One’s hardware.
The roads are actually interesting in B class.
There we go, already the best map in the series (asside from maybe 2, which I haven't played)
Nothing will replace playing FH1 for the first time, after years of disappointing racing games. The best points of this game need to show up in the next FH, while incorporating the better multiplayer features that have been added from the newer titles.
Horizon 1 has soul, it has challenge, it has an edge. The whole point was to be NFS Prostreet but in a Forza engine and they nailed it. Forza 2 and 4 are the most beloved of all the motorsport games because they had, as you put it, that Gridlife edge to it, and Horizon captured that beautifully in the open world environment.
The sequels just...don't hit. The multiple festival tents dilute the special-ness of having the homebase, the way you can just cross country in literally any car without repercussions just makes the concept of roads completely irrelevant. Whats the point in trying to stay on the road if you can just bash through trees you'd ordinarily wrap a car around? Bring back restrictive roads, and if you actually want to go off road, you need yknow, an actual off road car? Wild concept I know.
I don't know why they decided to throw away everything that made Horizon unique, but then again I don't know why T10 threw away all the soul from FM4 onwards in Motorsport either.
11:19
I would mention one more game that would probably fit into the "more arcade" category like NfS, and that is Test Drive Unlimited 2.
Really, FH1 and TDU2 are very similar in a lot of ways and their release dates are just a year apart, with TDU2 being the older of the two.
Both TDU2 and FH1 were parts of my childhood and I love them both dearly.
I think you half-forgot a point, but it's ok, because i don't see a lot of people talking about this: the AI isn't made up of drivatars. Tell me what feels more realistic: driving against "Ramona Cravache", or driving against "DoggishTitan736"? This drivatar system makes you feel like you're driving against robots, not actual people that exist in the world. And the worst part is that it isn't very hard to make up some names and put them in the game (trust me, i'm a coder myself and this is not hard at all)
The last Forza game that i played before FH5 was FH1. I didn't play FH2, 3 or 4, so FH5 was kind of a shock to me in many ways, some good, some bad. Don't get me wrong tho, FH5 is good and i already put 200+ hours driven on it, but it doesn't come close to FH1
That's a good point! The idea of drivatars was that they would copy the real player's driving style, so you could race your friends even when they were offline. They have never been able to nail the execution though, and as you say, the random usernames actually feels more soulless than in-game NPC rival names, even though they are all AI drivers.
@@Marrrrtin It should absolutely just be optional.
Sometimes I wanna see some more interesting looking Drivatar cars, and sometimes I just wanna see some generic, real-looking stuff. A toggle option in settings would give both groups of people what they want.
I know its impartial to rate a game with nostalgia, but the memories that I have from fh1 will never be recreated. The era of time was different and the community that was established was truly alive. Nostalgia aside, the game has so much charm with a feeling that can't be matched. FH1 is not only my favorite in the series but my favorite game entirely
the amount of memories i have from this game is countless, there wasn't a single dull day playing this game
I remember reading, years ago, an interview with one of the designers of FH1. They went to Colorado and took *tens of thousands* of images for reference when making the map. A ton of effort went into it, and it shows.
This is the reason why I love forza horizon 1 it is one of the best forza horizon series all time and that’s why I love it
Please make this make sense. Cheers
This game was so beautiful. I can't put my finger on it but like the FH2 map it just felt so special. It had so much character. It always felt like you were in a dream world.
I really hope in FH6 we have more beautiful roads like the canyon road. Amongst all of the things mentioned in this video such as the awesome race starts in FH1, we need 'meet up' locations drive to. I feel like the main FH5 map is just a vast expanse where you aimlessly drive around with no real place to go to. There's no proper meet up locations or dreamy driving roads to travel. We pretty much just have the festivals. We need some cool pubs, cafes, petrol stations and garages!
I’ve been replaying this game for the first time in years. This game shaped who I am and what cars I love. I truly adore this game and especially the music. Dubstep peaked in the early 2010s and this game takes me back to that everytime I boot it up. What an incredible game
As a Forza racing game fan, I love all Horizons. and your videos bro!
I personally like fh1 physics better I think it’s because you can feel the weight and then the roads also felt more drivable like now you can just straight line everywhere and it’s more empty
Man.... I preordered it in 2012. Recieved it after getting out of school. I think it was a wednesday. From the wait till release to the day i finised it for the first time, my favorite gaming experience of all time. What a masterpiece.
I hate starting a new game and having Ferraris, lambos and all the shit… there’s no progression at all and I hate that
The problem isn't just that you're given a couple of good vehicles early on, it's that the rest of the good vehicles you aren't given are then worth like 100,000,000,000 CR each in the Autoshow, or double that on the Auction House because it was limited time in the Festival Playlist.
It creates such a weird thing where the game hints it's going to be easy to progress and get what you want, and then suddenly pulls out an UNO Reverse card and goes "akshually no, you'll have to grind for the rest of your life for the other good cars, or exploit money glitches, or pay us real money."
Giving a couple of good cars early on can be an effective boost that makes things a little easier if you want it, but doesn't over-do it, as long as you can still progress properly for all the other good stuff. Unfortunately, FH seems to miss that second part nowadays.
It might be nostalgia but. Forza Horizon (1) for me was always and will always be the best Forza game (shared with Forza Motorsport 4). I just remember being a child on my Xbox 360 and booting up this masterpiece. I don't really need to explain why because this video is the best resume I could find and watching this truly amazing video gave me a warm feeling inside. Just this week I bought a Xbox 360 E with a bunch of games and of course with Forza Horizon (1). It is amazing to relive these moments.
It's going to seem strange, but there's something about the crowds too. In the later FH games, the crowds seem to go from Dense to Sparce to Nothing back to Sparce back to Dense (Finish line). There is a touch of that in the original FH1 of course, but you never felt like you were driving to just spectators. You always felt that you were driving to a crowd.
I just realised that you have a video like this describing every FH as the best one and I just think that's really nice, highlighting the best parts of each game, and what sets it apart from the rest. I have played a bunch of FH4 with my friends and had a blast, honestly. Never got into FH5, not a big fan of the mexico setting, but I am awaiting FH6 with measured optimism, fingers crossed for that Japan setting, finally.
FH1 Will forever be my favorite Forza, there's something just so charming and satisfying about it, I've replayed it more times than I can count lol. One thing I hate about the newer Forza Horizons is how you instantly get access to these supercars, there is absolutely no progression, you just run around doing different events, its almost soulless. Another thing I loved about FH1 is how sometimes you'd hear them talk about you on the radio, like you were actually there and people noticed how you were climbing up the ranks faster than any other rookie. and I LOVE the car restrictions, it makes you experience difficult vehicles with different quirks, and it actually makes sense, rather than having 1 vehicle you can take to every event.
This game honestly changed the way I look at racing/driving games and I loved every minute of it, I still hop on it every now and then and it still feels amazing to drive. I really miss the online mode though, I still know all the usual "drift meet" spots were people would just gather and have a good time, drifting the same layout over and over again, tandem-ing with random strangers and showing each other the cool cars you made.
Nice. Another great video. Forza Horizon 1 is my favorite FH game, for basically all the reasons you mentioned. The progression and the feeling of being nobody who works to become somebody and characters that make the world and event feel more real. And the little details, such as the actual event sign up areas and characters in the pre-race grid, like you mentioned. With they would just remake it for modern hardware, ha ha!
I am currently playing it but i gotta say nothing beats the feeling of listening to blind faith while driving through the canyons of Colorado. Man i love it
This still has one of the best intros to any game I've ever played. The Porter Robinson track coupled with the cut scenes. It was just incredible and very nostalgic today.
Man I miss when this game came out, in my opinion the golden era was FM4, FH1, FM5, and FH2. I’ll never forget how much joy these games brought me growing up.
Nothing will ever recreate the feeling of blasting down a Colorado desert in my new hard earned GTR with skrillex blasting on the radio
This game on a wheel is such an experience. It's literally Assetto Corsa physics but on steroids.
In FH1, I loved that you needed to really put in effort to get cool cars and it was always the hardest decision to choose between the cars you wanted
5:49 very technically speaking, they also exist in horizon 2, but only for bucket lists and only on the xbox 360 version (its the same asset from fh1 though)
Sucks FH1 was my favorite and just so happens to be the only one I'm banned from lmao
There will never recreate that first time opened FH1 up too the title screen when I was 12 man, it was unreal I wish I play this game for first time over and over again it’s that damn good. Definitely in my top 10 racing games of all time.
Fun fact: the drive you did at the end of the video in the blue Diablo is actually a recreation of the real road going through the Colorado National Monument with surprising accuracy to the actual road and environment
The title screen alone is enough to give me tears of nostalgia.
Great video. Excited for you to cover FH2
I guess for me it was the community....the fact I could ALWAYS go to the red rock canyons and drift until I could barely keep my eyes open with random people, no matter what lobby I was in, or what time I was on.
Even heading down to the dam to see who could drift the whole thing haha.