This game is one of the most fun racers I’ve played in years. (Skip to the TLDR if you want to skip the personal stuff.)

It’s kinda funny though, since my history with the Forza Horizon series is a bit more complicated than that. I played and loved the first game when it came out, mostly enjoyed the second (even though I admittedly played the much weaker Xbox 360 version) and absolutely loathed Forza Horizon 3. I don’t know what exactly it was about that one that drove me crazy. Was it the characters that wouldn’t stop nagging you about activities you should be doing? Probably. Maybe it was the map that felt more like a diorama rather than a real place. Perhaps it was the horrible PC port performance, or the experience that was trying to download it through Microsoft’s store front, only for the download to fail and you had to redownload all that data all over again. The more I think about it, it was probably all of those things combined, a perfect storm that pushed me to just uninstall it shortly after Blizzard Mountain came out. I remember telling myself that the only way I would ever try Forza Horizon again was if it came to Steam. At the time, I figured that was a pipe dream, but I’m glad I was wrong.

The thing is, Forza Horizon 4 is itself pretty similar to Forza Horizon 3, in terms of structure at least. Where Horizon 3 pushed the series away from having a linear story and more towards being a sandbox of sorts, Horizon 4 takes that and refines it to a near perfect sheen that then inches itself a bit closer to turning this series into a AAA budget Test Drive Unlimited successor, complete with houses you can buy and drivers you can play dress up with. Some would say they’re pointless additions, but I’ve had way more fun dressing my driver up to be ridiculously flashy and pairing that up with crazy looking cars than I initially thought possible. It’s a fun little “life sim-lite” touch that you don’t even really have to engage with if you don’t want to; just put on a helmet and racing suit when you get them and be on your way. That being said, the houses are really just glorified fast travel points here, so I’d love to see them fleshed out more in a future game, especially since the rest of the game is practically flawless.

As for the core racing and driving gameplay itself? Yes, you still get nagged about new races, PR stunts, and other activities, but only for the first time they appear; from then on, the game just lets you do what you want and have fun. I know some people think the map is too samey and bland, but personally I love it; it feels like a smaller, more local stop on a bigger, grander tour. For me, it’s been such a delight cruising around, especially as the seasons change, that it’s made me look forward to Forza Horizon 5 that much more, to see how it fits a more diverse map into this super solid formula. Of course Steam, in terms of being a game download client, is miles ahead of the Windows Store. However, this version did have some very weird performance problems at launch; constant micro-stuttering, some annoying crashes out of the blue. As of a few months ago though, it’s felt rock solid to me, but YMMV.

I mentioned earlier that Forza Horizon is more of a sandbox these days, but I had no idea it would be this addicting all these years later. That’s part of why I’m finally getting around to writing a review after over 300 hours played since its Steam release; because as much as there are other games I could be playing, I still find myself looking at the Festival Playlist each week and thinking to myself, “Yeah, why not do another Trial championship for a truck I already have? I could just sell it later.” That’s just how fun the driving is in this game, that I want to keep playing it, unlike the previous game in the series that I had to force myself to push on instead.

TLDR: Believe the hype. Forza Horizon 4 is one of the best racing games on PC, period. The driving is sublime, there’s tons of cars to collect and customize to your heart’s content, and the game has so many different ways of driving and racing around (road, dirt, street scene, cross country, Super7 community challenges, that battle royale mode “The Eliminator” that is way more fun than you would think) that this really is a nearly perfect racing paradise. Even with Forza Horizon 5 around the corner, there’s still so much here to play with and enjoy, even if you just pick it up for the time being until the new one comes out, that I could never not recommend it.