Some guy is standing
next to my Lexus LFA at
the end of my racing triumph. He doesn't seem
to be as excited as I am,
even though he apparently represents me. He's
the generic guy behind
the wheel, the catatonic
crash-test dummy whose
presence at the end of
every championship win
mystifies me. I call him
Gary.
Fortunately, Forza Horizon 2 isn't about Gary. For
that matter, it isn't about
me, either, but instead
about the cars, those marvels of engineering, those
occasional works of art. I
approach the rarest vehicles in Horizon 2 as I
might in real life: with
careful reverence, taking
caution not to blemish its
high-shine finish. It seems
a natural reaction to me. I
just spent over a million
dollars on this Bugatti
Veyron Super Sport; a
single fingerprint would be
a real shame.
Of course, cars like this
aren't meant to just be
ogled: as beautiful as they
might be, both in real life
and in the remarkably attractive Forza Horizon 2,
they are wild metal
beasts, and you are their
tamer. Like any game with
the Forza name, this one
understands that to appreciate the joy of racing,
you have to first know
the animal, hear it purr,
and know what draws
its ire. You aren't going
to be hugging curves in
that Camaro, but you
can drift sweetly into
them, after all. And
once you wrestle this
hulking creature of steel
and fiberglass into submission, it is yours to
command. Victory in
Horizon 2 is sweet not
because you beat the
other racers, but because you and the vehicle overcame your differences.
As in its predecessor,
the game's tracks are
carved out of an attractive open-world, this
one based in the
French
and
Italian
countrysides.
You're
here to participate in the
Horizon Festival, a typical driving-game framing device that leads
you from one race to
the next, and puts you
in control of one car