Playground games and Microsoft have announced That Forza Horizon 4 will be deleted on December 15. At that point, the 2018 open-world racing game and its additional content will no longer be available for purchase on the Xbox Store, the Microsoft Store, or Steam, and will be removed from Game Passage. It will remain playable for those who own a digital or physical copy, and online features will still be available.
Removing older games is an increasingly common practice, and a concerning one for game preservation. However, in the world of racing games it is nothing new. The genre is heavily dependent on licensing agreements with car manufacturers (and often music publishers). These agreements typically have a built-in expiration date that requires the games to be removed from sale after a certain period of time. Playground did indeed notice that Forza Horizon 4‘s removal was “due to licensing and agreements with our partners.”
Not much can be done about that, but it still sucks that many historically important or downright brilliant racing games are difficult to buy and play these days. It’s especially bad that this fate has befallen Forza Horizon 4which is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Playground’s freewheeling racing series.
Image: Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios
In reality, there is no such thing as a bad Forza Horizon game. I love them all – including the current Mexico-set entry, Forza Horizon 5. Forza Horizon started as a spin-off of the Gran Turismo-style circuit racing series Forza Motorsport, but has now completely eclipsed it. That’s thanks to the cheerful festival atmosphere of the Horizon games, and the inherent accessibility and fun of exploring big, beautiful maps based on real-world tourist destinations in a range of cool, exotic and even eccentric cars.
But there is one reason why the fourth entry stands out – or rather, one reason that feeds into many others. Forza Horizon 4 is set in Great Britain. As a British person I may be biased. But the thing is, Playground Games is also British, so it’s also biased. You’ll feel that extra level of familiarity and love for the British landscape and British car culture in every corner of the game.
The game’s beautiful map is a compressed tour of the island of Great Britain that moves smoothly from the honey-colored villages of the Cotswolds, through the eerie moors and coastal castles of Northumberland, to the majestic Scottish highlands, where you stop to admire the granite spiers to record you. of the Scottish capital Edinburgh – for the first time in a racing game since the excellence of Bizarre Creations Project Gotham Racing 2. (Horizon4 creative director Ralph Fulton, who now heads the development of the new Fableis a proud Scot, which is evident from playing the game.)
Image: Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios
The changeable British weather also led to the inspired addition of seasons, which transform the map (and the terrain physics and vehicle handling) into spring, summer, autumn and winter. You’ve never seen an overcast British sky, or the sun shining faintly through spring showers, so well depicted in a video game. The seasons returned Forza Horizon 5but while the Mexican climate allows for spectacular weather effects, map-wide transformations are not as effective as Forza Horizon 4‘s snow blanket.
Britain’s proud automotive history is on full display in ForzaHorizon 4also highlighted in some of the game’s story events where you get to drive Minis, London black cabs, Land Rovers, sleek 1960s Jaguars and the unstoppable 1931 Bentley.
Forza Horizon 4 marked a shift toward ongoing, live-service-style content in the series, and Playground has come up with a reasonable plan to wrap this up now that the game is being scrapped. The game’s final Festival Playlist series will begin on July 25 and end on August 22. Some Daily and Weekly Challenges will continue after this date, and all previously exclusive Playlist reward cars will be made available via the Backstage Pass system. A number of Festival Playlist-themed achievements will no longer be available to earn after August 22.
Unlike some other racing game series, where content accumulates over time and tracks are recycled from one entry to another, the open world map for each edition of Forza Horizon gives it a unique touch. For that reason alone Forza Horizon 4 is definitely worth having in your library – where else can you go 100 miles an hour down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and up Arthur’s Seat?
Microsoft will offer deals for the game through its eventual cancellation in December; it is currently 80% off on Steam, with the Ultimate Edition costing just $19.99. If you’re interested in racing games, you should buy them while you still can.