XBLA review: Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious

No doubt the result of a quick marketing deal, Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious is a free-to-download standalone expansion to the Microsoft-exclusive Forza Horizon 2. While the relatively brief experience bears the Fast & Furious name, there is little in the way of story to tie this product to the film series. Ludacris does lend his voice talents to the menus and offers both pre and post-race commentary, an addition that provides decent context to the otherwise generic routine of competing with other racers for ownership of their prized rides. That said, this two-hour-plus experience lacks any other form of story content.

The routine of challenging other races in two-part competitions to win their cars is a predictable but fast-paced routine, and the game does provide plenty of varied locales and course setups to prevent things from becoming stale during its short runtime. A drift challenge, a timed return to your garage while keeping one of your latest acquisitions from receiving too much damage, and one particular race against a helicopter further spice up what might have otherwise become too predictable a game. Though the portion of the French countryside you are limited to is likely but a fraction of the area accessible in the full retail release of Forza Horizon 2, it is still quite expansive, stretching from a harbor town lined with old brick buildings out to hilly farmland, and on even further still to a long and winding stretch of highway that cuts over road leading to an airfield. Sunsets stream beams of an orange glow between structures, and even under the navy of night, the game’s lighting effects look phenomenal.

The same can be said for the cars, which look satisfyingly realistic. Though the Xbox One may be the console with higher graphical prowess than its 360 predecessor, these sporty cars look nonetheless incredible. Zipping down city streets at high speeds, buildings will mesh as blend of colors, offering an effective sensation of just how fast your vehicle is travelling. Slowing down to inspect these up close, however, will reveal flat, often blurry textures. The soundtrack, though limited to a handful of tunes, offers a decently-varied selection of current licensed hip-hop, rock, and technopop tracks. There is no option to customize the ten different main vehicles you collect over the course of the game, but considering how varied their makes and models are to begin with, as well as the fact that Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious is effectively a glorified demo, the lack of such a feature is none too surprising.

Of the ten different cars you collect on behalf of the Fast and Furious crew, the earliest ones handle clunkier than the late-game acquisitions. Practically every one of the automobiles has solid acceleration, while the top speeds only improve with each new vehicle added to your garage. The other consistency between nearly all of the cars, however, is the fact that the vast majority of them do not handle turns well. Drifting does not feel good from any but perhaps two of the vehicles, and while the frequency at which cars can spin out may be more realistic than other racing games, it also diminishes the fun factor. Even at the start of a race, cars will sometimes start veering off at an angle, despite you having not pushed the joystick sideways in the slightest. Regardless of whether you take a corner pushing ninety miles per hour or slow down to the crawl of twenty, your car is bound to slide all over the place in nonsensical fashion, as if the roads were covered in glare ice.

While most other racing games in this day and age adhere to the format of asking you to retry an entire race should you fail to place well or meet specific criteria, Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious allows you to make use of a rewind button between checkpoints. If you came into a turn too fast and spun out of control, a simple hit of the button will drag you and the competition back a few seconds so that you can better account for the zigs and zags of a particular course. It might lighten the challenge factor a bit, but it also lessens the frustration felt from the aforementioned not-so-great feedback the cars exhibit on anything other than a straight stretch of pavement. Offroad races are practically nonexistent, which is a shame, considering that the under-utilized Jeep Wrangler would be a perfect fit for romps down dirt roads or jump challenges over countryside hills.

Cars automatically repair at the start of a new race, which is appreciated, as scraping against or slamming into fences and trees can and will tear pieces off your car and scratch it up. While it may remove much in the way of repercussions for dinging up your ride, it keeps the relatively short-lived gaming experience to a fittingly fast formula. The game will predetermine which car you will be using for each race, and offer the use of nitro on only a couple of races, which only proves an annoyance late in the game, when you are restricted to one of the earliest, less elegant cars in your collection. Forza Horizon 2: Fast & Furious does offer up a moderate amount of extra content: a checklist for driving down every street, knocking over signboards, discovering one hidden car, and challenging time trials in ‘rival races’. Beyond that, there are speed zones where you can attempt to reach breakneck speeds in setting a record for the online leaderboards, the option to take photos of the cars in your collection, and the opportunity to try and beat your personal best chain combo of skill points, the latter of which are earned from doing just about anything and everything behind the wheel – drifting, reaching high speeds, performing burnouts, and dipping in for near-misses close to other vehicles.

My rating: 6 (out of 10)

Impressions of The Wonderful 101 demo

Less than a half-hour ago, I finished playing the demo for The Wonderful 101, Platinum Game’s first big exclusive title for the Wii U. While I’ve been really excited at the prospect of Platinum Games developing exclusive titles for Nintendo’s new system, The Wonderful 101 was a title I was very much on the fence about purchasing. It certainly looked interesting, but as a sort of odd combination of Pikmin-style squad command and top-down arcade play, I was concerned as to how the gameplay mechanics would ultimately be implemented. Now that I’ve finished the demo, I can honestly say that I’m no closer to making a decision on whether or not to purchase the full retail release.

To begin with the positive elements of The Wonderful 101, the game looks gorgeous. There’s a ton of detail put into school signs, billboards, business names, while houses and cars see a decent degree of variation. The chrome on your team’s friendly robot companion shines brilliantly, and the colors of the various hero characters as well as their weaponry pop against the backdrop of the city. The soundtrack is very much a throwback to action-packed Saturday morning cartoons and old anime works – equal parts cheesy and endearing.

The story portion of the demo only grants you full access to three main characters, though you can round up more temporary members like citizens and police officers to increase your team’s offensive and defensive strength. Wonderize Red is the character the demo will push you to use most frequently, as his giant fist is effectively the ‘vanilla’ basic weapon that doubles as a means to open doors and boxes. Wonderize Green is best used against slow enemies, as his firearms can deal a decent rate of damage from a safe distance. Wonderize Blue is the character I had the most fun with, as his wide and fast swings of his sword are most befitting an action game and prove very useful in taking out large groups of small foes that seek to surround your team.

Where the demo really fumbles is in its block mechanic. Holding the left trigger button collects your team together in the shape of a giant dessert gelatin, which can be used to deflect cannon fire and stun foes who might attempt to rush you with a heavy punch. The problem is that the block move only holds for about two seconds, meaning that putting it up too late will result in an enemy stomping through your ranks and scattering your teammates, and putting the gelatin shield up too late will result in the same outcome. While the other weapons rely on the power of batteries collected throughout each mission, the gelatin does not, and there is seemingly no way to extend the span of time it will hold for (at least in the demo – I would hope that the full game would allow for upgrades to abilities).

The enemy designs all seem to follow a similar school of design, which is good in the sense that they appear to have the same alien and robotic origins, but a bit of a downside in the sense that they all bear white, grey, and black bodies, with varying degrees of colored patterns or tubing. There are a few puzzle elements worked in, though nothing to the complexity of a Zelda title. Turning a series of wheels the right number of rotations so that the numbers their respective meters display is a brief but simple distraction, befitting of a game that is meant to appeal to both younger gamers and older veterans of the action genre.

And when it boils down to it, everything presented in the demo, from the story portion to the challenge mode, feels like an action game in the purest sense. Sure, you have many small characters under your command, but keeping track of all of them is a cinch. In the event that your team is scattered by attacking enemies, small yellow stars will appear over their heads to indicate that they are dizzy. When at full strength, the lead character will always be the one the camera follows, a glowing circle designating them as the current squad commander. Losing health is not much of a concern unless your team becomes scattered, and while I never came close to encountering a ‘game over’ screen during my playthrough of the demo’s two modes, I did find some of the more powerful enemies had a tendency to pile on one attack after another, leading my team to become scattered not seconds after I had regrouped them. It was incredibly frustrating at times, considering I was trying to follow the demo’s instructions and defend myself, but often there simply wasn’t enough time between one attack to the next for me regroup, shift my attention to the enemies, and time my block.

I really want the Wii U to succeed as a console, and as it currently stands, it certainly has a leg-up on the competition. Based on what I’ve seen of the PS4 and Xbox One promos, I still feel like the Wii U is the best console option for me (hence the reason that I purchased it and have zero intention of buying either of the other two eighth-generation home consoles). I also think Platinum has a lot of potential to be to the Wii U what Rare was to the N64, and I’d love to support more exclusive titles for the console (ZombiU was a grand slam, I felt). But I think that I really need to experience more of The Wonderful 101 hands-on, because the demo was actually a bit different than what I expected. That said, I do recognize that the demo presents but a snippet of what the full game has to offer, and for that reason I’d like to do some more digging into this before I make a final call on whether or not I want to add The Wonderful 101 to my video game library.