Paradise lost
I boot up an event in Forza Horizon 5 (Playground Games, 2021) and load into my Monster Energy-Sonax-Toyo-Tires Ford Hoonigan. This is the car the game ‘recommends’ for most races so who am I to say no? Half of the stickers littering my Monster Energy Ford Hoonigan are ads for contractually obligated race car brands; others are the results of marketing deals so common in both gaming and racing culture that I barely bat an eye.
I drive my Monster Energy Ford Hoonigan through the mud and dirt, hoping it will cover up the ads and allow me to just enjoy the stunning 4K rendition of a Mexico overrun by million dollar cars and frat-bro radio hosts. It doesn’t. For some reason half of the “drivatars” the game spawns in are under the name of Xbox friends I haven’t talked to since playing Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, 2009). They are all driving the Monster Energy Hoonigan. I can’t escape it.
For years I’ve been chasing the high of Burnout: Paradise (Criterion, 2008), one of the only driving games I truly love. I say ‘driving’ games because I hate racing in them. The fun in Paradise comes quite literally from everything else the game offers in its open world — still one of the medium’s best. Paradoxically, the only experience I’ve found to come close in recent years is finally getting to play Burnout 3’s (Criterion, 2004) crash mode on my friend Tom’s hacked PS2.
Horizon 5’s devil-may-care attitude about completing content got my hopes up. The icon-littered map shows alternatives to doing laps, like cross country races and the occasional epic set piece event. It is a near indecipherable content bulletin board with the promise of something for everyone, if you can find it. So I just drive. Roaming around the gorgeous open-world I stumble upon smaller objectives that begin to scratch that Paradise itch.
Pulling up to speed trap challenges reward you for going fast through tricky bits of road; skill songs come on the radio, giving you bonus points for stunts done before the track ends; signs that give experience for busting them force you to think creatively about the open world while reinforcing the way “seasons change everything” in the latest Horizon entries. The promise is a play space that is not just beautiful, but dense with activities. So why is it scared to death of boring you? Why is so much of my goddamn precious time spent in menus?
Horizon 5’s menus fully embrace the excess of contemporary AAA games. “Change Car,” “Buy Car,” and “Car Collection” are all separate blocks on the Windows 8, Metro ass UI. There are six tabs with four to eight options each. After pressing the start button once, you have over 30 options of where to go next. “Settings,” which houses difficulty and the (admittedly first-rate) accessibility options, is just one small block on this menu despite being the single most important panel for newbies and casual players, not to mention disabled players.
Anyone with a mild anxiety disorder will tell you this sucks. It’s bad design. It’s too much. But the AAA games industry doesn’t believe in too much. No such thing as too many options. More options equals more happy customers equals more money. Design has nothing to do with it.
It’s more than just overwhelming menus. Every car has a skill tree, filled with mostly useless perks. Just there out of obligation. Since when does an arcade racer need the same hooks as an RPG?
Completing races and other achievements earn you wheel spins on the big shiny game show platter, rewarding you with either credits or a new car. It’s not gambling exactly because you can’t pay to keep spinning, but it takes the form of it. Invest enough skill points in a car and you can earn a super wheelspin (the bigger, shinier game show platter, with the fancy cars and big prizes). Why do we need RPG elements that feed into faux gambling in every single game? Horizon 5 is gorgeous and the cars feel great. How many progress bar drip feeds does Microsoft think I need?
YouTuber TmarT2’s extremely popular let's play of the game includes this video where he just spins the wheel for 15 minutes. It has over 600K views. It is not Forza’s fault that, for some, this is a “safe and free” alternative to gambling addiction. But the popularity of these elements is illustrative of how every AAA game needs to be a forever game, a concept at odds with the breakneck pace of their release schedule. Absurd deadlines — that lead to overwork — are imposed by the same companies insisting these hooks be standard in every game.
Articles with headlines like “'could 2021 be the worst year ever for videogames?” from people who should know better don’t help, either. We need to stop equating AAA delays with ‘no games to play’ when, if you include platforms like Itch.io and mobile app stores, more games are coming out each year than ever. As Vinny Caravella says, “there has never been a better time to be playing videogames.”
Forza Horizon 5 is a confidently built open-world game. You wouldn’t believe it based on the endlessly repopulating to-do list and amount of lizard-brain scratching notification icons constantly popping in the menus. These dopamine hits have long been a crutch to keep gamers from getting bored with uninspired combat loops or drab worlds. Once an incentive to keep playing the game and spend more money, they have now supplanted the gameplay entirely.
This is especially strange because Horizon 5 isn’t trying to manipulate you into impulse purchases. You can buy the “Car Pack” (full of cars, which you might assume a racing game already has) for $29.99 or the “VIP Pack” for $19.99 or both plus a “Welcome Pack” for the combined price of the two. You can preorder the yet-to-be announced expansions. But this isn’t a game with microtransactions. Its neurotic tasklist obsessions would make more sense with them. Instead Horizon 5 is tripping over itself, tongue tied by the language of modern games, without even a grift to justify its bad decisions.
Videogames are much more than their core mechanics. They are the totality of everything they contain, the little things more than the broad strokes. Horizon 5 pretends to be a game about the fun of driving fast cars, but at every hairpin turn it reminds you of the real joy of being sold to. You love getting presents, right? In Horizon 5 every day is Christmas.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. Don’t drag me down today Satan, in your holiday exclusive Santa Claus skin. I’ll wait patiently in Paradise City until it’s my turn.
Bryn Gelbart (he/him) is a writer and critic. His games writing has been featured in IGN, Deep Hell, and Game Developer. He knows you won’t pronounce his name right in your head and he forgives you. You can find him earnest posting @FeelTheBryn.
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