Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious review (Xbox One)

Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious was developed by Playground Games and published by Microsoft Studios on Xbox One and Xbox 360. It was released March 22, 2015 for free and will remain free until April 10, 2015 when it will begin costing $10.

When I first heard about Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious I was blown away by the fact that the power of advertising had reached this point. A limited-time free game to promote both an upcoming movie and a six-month-old game was completely mind boggling to me. But the sheer brute force of advertising that is apparent is actually quite irrelevant. All that really matters was if Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious was any good. And to be blunt, my mind was quickly put to ease about the game’s quality and soon focused on the task on hand: finishing sets of races to unlock the next new and shiny car.

Here’s what I liked:

Skill chains – In order to perform a skill chain, players need to keep doing basic tricks to rack up multipliers and points, all while driving at a breakneck speed. The skill chains are the epitome of everything that is great about this game. The only time I felt as though my driving skills were being put to the test was when I was attempting to get a new high-scoring skill chain in an attempt to pass my friends. What are normally basic tricks are suddenly made incredibly hard when driving at dangerous speeds while being presented with low maneuverability on the tracks. I was forced to think on my feet and scan the environment as quickly as possible in an attempt to pull off my next feat, and I loved every second of it.

The world — Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious‘s world is amazingly beautiful and full of life. The cities and highways are bustling with cars; the woodlands and areas are filled with lovely trees; and world is diverse enough that nothing feels the same. Driving around in the first-person point of view was an utter treat and gave me a newfound love for racing games.

Promotes friendly competition – Basically everything in Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious has been turned into a friendly competition, whether it’s through the rival system or even something as mundane as the number of roads discovered. Heck, the Gamertags of friends even hover over opposing AI cars during races in an attempt to personalize the races and further motivate players. The aforementioned rival system is where the game’s promotion of friendly competition really shines through. After each race players are shown a friend’s time that was close to the original time and are then encouraged to race them one versus one for an endless loop of one-upmanship. Even if you blow your friends’ times out of the water you’ll still want to keep at it because you’ll be given the chance to go up against someone else with a similar time to yours.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

No incentive to play on – Fast and Furious is quite a short game and really offers no tangible reason to keep playing upon completion of the “story.” You play as an up and coming street racer, and the only goal is to unlock 10 cars via winning races. There are usually about two races per car, and there are about 20 main missions in the game; however, all of that can easily be completed in an hour or two. There is other side stuff, such as reward boards to crash into and skill score events, but there is little of substance to do outside of unlocking the cars. And honestly, the other stuff doesn’t matter; none of the side stuff is tied to the Achievements, and it unlocks nothing new. After beating the core game I found myself speeding through Nice with little to do and quickly moving onto other things.

Super easy – Regardless of their racing game background, most players will zoom through the races provided. I played one whole racing game last generation (Blur) and still had no problems with any of Fast and Furious‘ races. Each race was fun, but I rarely struggled to get into the top three prior to the halfway point and ultimately first place by the finish line. What’s more, the races can be won in any order, because the very last one really isn’t much more challenging than the first.

Wrap-up

Having never played a Forza game or watched a Fast and Furious film, I dove into Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast and Furious with very few expectations in mind. I enjoyed every second of my, albeit fairly short, drive through the game. Gamers looking for a deep racing game that they can sink hours upon hours into will be fairly disappointed with what is offered. But for nearly everyone else, Fast and Furious is steal.

Score: Buy it