forz of horizon

so I played a bunch of forza over the weekend and thus far my primary reaction is:

what in the actual fuck is happening

i have Anxiety

I haven't played any forzas before this one and I thought it was, like, a game about car racing? but uhhhh no apparently it's Circa 2012 Ubisoft Game but in a car

the actual racing of cars is entirely ancillary to the Progression Mechanics

I'm being a *little* bit unfair here because the actual car racing part does legit feel pretty great

but like only a LITTLE bit unfair

I didn't save a video but at one point I somehow triggered like six different progression-system onboarding tutorials simultaneously, and it just locked me on the map screen while Perky Radio Voice yelled
HEY [playername]! HEY [playername]! HEY [playername]! to explain them all

shoutouts to xbox user MistrChief95 for creating a maxed-out tuning preset for the warthog and naming it HOGTUNING

they should let you steer the warthog with the mouse

every western AAA game is just This now and I feel like I'm twelve thousand years old

I like... extremely don't understand how the performance stats are supposed to work

this car was unlocked from the start and it has literally The Best Stats? I'm outrunning ferraris in a hatchback

I mean granted it's a hatchback with a spoiler

you would think a game with literally *534 cars* and also nine pages of tuning sliders would, like, tell you what the numbers mean? explain why you would want one car over another car? have a tutorial teaching how to approach corners in different types of cars? But No

there's like 45 minutes of voice-acted HEY [NAME] YOU CAN USE ADVENTURE POINTS TO UNLOCK ADVENTURE ZONES AND CONVERT HYPER CREDITS TO SUPERPOINTS BY SPENDING CARSPERIENCE and then the actual gameplay is "here's a physically-accurate handling simulator; hope you can figure it out"

to be clear I'm having a great time launching Satan's Hatchback off of cliffs and winning races by pinballing off the other cars instead of braking

I just get a distinct sense that I'm Playing It Wrong and the game refuses to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing instead

looking at the decal editor and literally the first thing in the Curated category is astolfo lmao

Customizing your vehicle? Xbox Game Studios recommends: femboy lamborghini

showing my deep appreciation for automotive racing history by stealing dozens of old cars out of random mexican farmers' barns