Forza Horizon 2 Review and why Forza Horizon is way better

Forza Horizon 2 Review and my thoughts on Forza Horizon, and both Need for Speed Most Wanteds 

Forza Horizon 2 is a cool game that takes place in southern Italy and France. It's been 2 years since the Colorado Horizon festival. Horizon has a car and music festival in Italy and France now. You play as a different silent white male protagonist with brown hair. In the the first game you played as a silent white male protagonist with black hair. There isn't much backstory on the protagonist. He just wants to race cars and be a champion. For all we know, he could have killed over thousands of people in a linear set piece combat tour.

On the 360 version progression is finishing at least 3rd place and above in 4 races in an area. After that a next section opens up where there is 4 more races in a area. You repeat this process 12 times to get to the Horizon championship. After that you win the game. What makes the game a mega grindfest for 100% is each race has 10 different race divisions, which means 480 races to complete. 
Forza Horizon did a better job of complete 3 to 4 races, race 1 to 1 against a champion opponent. Do it 6 times and beat the champion Darius Flynt. Forza Horizon 2 you play as a car racing against other cars instead of a human in a car racing against humans in cars. Forza Horizon did a way better job of the human element. Forza Horizon 2 feels dead. There was no people at the festival were tired of 3rd time in a row winner of DoucheChills Racer.

The soundtrack on 360 is significantly reduced compared to the Xbox One version. Instead of 7 radio stations and over 150 songs, it is only 3 stations and about 60 songs.
The soundtrack was way better in Forza Horizon. Starting the game hearing Porter Robinson's Language was amazing, because I heard that song a couple times before playing it and I was like "Oh shit Language is in this game awesome!" Mord Fustang Lick the Rainbow was awesome. I still think Mord Fustang is to seperate the low proletariat who quick glance and say they love Ford Mustang. 2012 had a better lineup. It was like hey man its 2012, weed is gonna be legal in Colorado man. We got cool music and cool cars.

Forza Horizon 2 soundtrack I can definitely say I ain't with it. The majority of the songs do not complement cruising down the southern France and Italy. The songs aren't catchy, and will not be ahead of the curve like the first game. After playing the first game, 6 months to a year later I started hearing Miike Snows Paddling Out on Coors light commericals, Santigold Disparate Youth beginning bassline when Youtube was doing commericals for the Week of Geek.
I really loved listening to Tesla Boy Spirit of the Night, Empire of the Sun Walking on a Dream, and Electric Guest Awake, just exploring Colorado at night. 

Am I too hard on Horizon 2? Am I experiencing ludo driving audio scenery dissonance. If I was European would I like it more? How come there isn't people in hoodies doing parkour on buildings in the Italian side? 

Forza Horizon 2 is a solid game, but Horizon was so much better.
The parallels of Forza Horizon 1 and 2 reminds me of Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005 and 2012.
I loved Need for Speed Most Wanted. It was a solid racing game. The pursuit system was great. The crashbreakers was a nice mechanic to get police off your tail. While bullet time in the game sounded silly, it was great for avoiding spike strips last second. The story and characters was a cheesy but didn't overstay its welcome. The main thing was getting from #15 to #1 and advancing to the next racer. It was a racer against racer. The first 15 minutes of the game set up the plot for the entire game. Get your BMW M3 car back.

Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 I had high hopes for since it was made by Criterion. However the game was very minimal on content. It was just do 2 to 3 races per car to get upgrades, and grind for specific skills to get a 2nd tier higher upgrade. For progression it was just getting enough pursuit points to race against the next car while the police are chasing you. Do this 10 more times. Most Wanted 2012 became a post car apocalypse like Burnout where all humans are dead and cars roam the earth. 

Earth Defense Force 2025

The Ravagers are back. It's been 8 years since the last Earth Defense Force game made by Sandlot. 2017+8=2025. Pretty clever. Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon was made by a Western Developer.

The campaign is large. It has 85 levels. Huge step up from the 50+ levels in Earth Defense Force 2017. This is the first Earth Defense Force game with up to four players online campaign co-op. Another nice feature is the ability to play two player split screen and play online. 

Red ants and dragons can pick you up and chew on you until you shoot them or your teammates do. Getting caught in spiderwebs is now a possibility. There is more destruction. Giant buildings and towers toppling is cool.

The dialogue from the EDF soldiers is funny. Besides top notch B+ dialogue, they sing the Battle of the Hymn Republic retrofitted for their fight against the Ravagers.

There are a swarm of insects, arachnids, robots, flying robots, dragons, and super dragons. The murder economy is based on killing bugs get better weapons, to kill more bugs and get better weapons. There are five difficulty levels. Essential to grind to pick up better weapons to fight insects on higher difficulties. 

Things EDF 2025 does better than Insect Armageddon, is not needing to grind points to buy guns to unlock. The four classes are more heterogenous compared to the 4 classes in Insect Armageddon. For example For some of the Fencer's weapons to be such as laser target rockets, an Air Raider needs a laser pointer in order for the weapons to work. For some of the Wing Diver weapons to be more effective, the Air Raider can shoot out battery packs so Wing Divers to cut reload time. There's no splash damage from giant carriers falling compared to Insect Armageddon where you always needed to get out of the way of falling carrier.

Things EDF 2025 does worse. The Fencer/Heavy class is super slow. When you pick up a health pack, doesn't heal everyone in the group only that person. There is a huge amount of vehicles but most of them suck. Vehicles in EDF IA handled a lot better and they didn't handle all that great. Also vehicles have limited ammo, thus making them not as effective. No sprint button. Levels are huge, and lack of sprinting prolongs commute time.

I give EDF 2025 a 4/5 with 100% conviction

2013 GOTY Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V by Rockstar Games is the greatest detailed open world game to date. The scale and level of detail is unmatched. The lightning and water effects are insane for a game on the Xbox 360 going on it's eighth year. I've played over 250 hours. Got all the achievements in the game, single and multiplayer. It's so good. You ain't gotta like it cuz the hood gone love it. Had some excellent memories in singleplayer and multiplayer.

In the single player there is three playable characters Mike, Franklin, and Trevor and they each have their own special ablities. Mike has bulletime, Franklin has car slow-mo, and Trevor has rage. Playing as three different characters did add some freshness to the series.

Some fun multiplayer experiences was robbing convenient stores with friends and making a break for it. Playing missions like Top Fun, and the Dog Fighting Last Team Standing. Another mission that was a lot of fun was Titan of a Job, On Manuevers, and a mission where 3 people drop off planes while the other 3 have attack helicopters to escort them. Putting bounties on my friends and hiding in a tunnel and sticky bombing anyone that drives through. Avoiding being killed bountywise by taking a submarine and diving to the bottom of the ocean. Being a asshole and sniping a guy a kilometer away just riding his bike up a mountain just to not die. I got to go to the strip club, and I got to flirt with the stripper how my level 70 character at the time was da shit.

When the missions work, it is a lot of fun, having specified role guys to complete a mission. The soundtrack was great. Animation impressive. Best addition to GTA is saving anywhere via phone. While GTA V didn't have the narrative focus as GTA IV, the gameplay elements and mechanics were highly refined. The cover system was a lot better. The driving was more responsive.

I got into the stock market metagame. Reading the updates on the stock prices on GTA V stocks. Grew my characters portfolios to $28 million to 1 billion dollars.

GTA V blew my mind more than any other game to be #1.

PAX East 2014

PAX East 2014

Thursday Morning

This was the first time I traveled to PAX with someone. When I picked up my friend Chris Ott, the first song I played in the car to the airport was Helix Nebula by Anamanaguchi. This was deliberately planned.  In the Atlanta airport a TSA agent said “Commander Shepard over here.” I was wearing a N7 shirt. While waiting to board to go to Boston, I got 25 streetpasses at the Atlanta airport. It was huge, since I finally had an Army to whoop some ass in Warrior’s Way.

Thursday Night

I went to the Pizzeria to meet some online friends. Landon was the first person to notice me. I got to speak to Addison @akd, Robert @23Breach, Cole, Curtis @zabu_san, Stephen @ShanghaiSix, Dylan @Phazon117, Bree, and Travis @turbobison. For Travis I questioned his 1st place Black Power Ranger doing the Black Power pose, as an homage to the 1968 Long Jump, since there was 2 Black guys that did the Black Power pose. There should have been 2 Black Rangers and not just 1.

Friday morning

I arrived in the queue line early at 7:40AM. What made this one nice, was they let people in before 8 AM. Chris and I got in a line the was 5 times shorter than the other lines, since the pillar was hid the line. The bag check was really quick. They didn’t check every zipper. It was basically a clearly a 7 quart pressure cooker isn’t in the bag, you can go through.

In the queue line I got to use my 3DS XL and streetpass and get tens upon tens of streetpasses at a time. It made the queue line wait go by faster, but I felt becoming less engaged and talking to people. I stopped so I could hit the beach balls in the queue line. I barely read the physical guidebook. When I was standing up clearing streetpasses, I ripped a fart that had some noise and I got a guy behind me just heard a smigedon and stood up. Man his face was cringing and he stood up within 2 seconds.  I felt like I fucked up bigtime in a way but he played it cool, but deep down he knew he got face farted less than 2 feet away.

For the beachballs, people near me started catching them and draw giant penises in Sharpie. Not only they drew penises there was random numbers associated with them like “If you want a good time.” The ball that had multiple penises drawed on it came back to our section multiple times. It was funny, seeing the beachball with the penises doing, crazy spins when it was being hit all across the queue line.

When the queue line opened, I got to demo Sniper Elite III and Wolfenstein New Order. Wolfenstein played well. For Wolfenstein they gave away Wolfenstein Bags. Sniper Elite III looked great on PS4, and a lot of the issues of Sniper Elite V2 were resolved. Sniper Elite III expected to release this July 1, 2014. I got a Sniper Elite III poster.

I saw Willy randomly while walking the show floor in the Indie Megabooth. I got to meet Alex, and gave a giant donation to his Random Assault podcast.

Went to the PC Gamer panel. It was ok. They started wanted everyone to rise from their seats for the PC Gaming anthem. They played Doom E1M1 a screen with a American flag waving gif said videogames. All Willy could say was slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. Saw Tyler Wilde there he saw me but no conversation. I had no idea Palmer Luckey the creator of Oculus VR  was only 21 years old. Didn’t like the random guy in the audience that shouted traitor when he was introduced. I streetpassed as much as I possibly could at the PC Gamer panel. Must have gotten about 50 streetpasses there.

I had my first real meal at 2PM. I had a shitty $5 cheeseburger. After eating lunch Chris and I chilled at the handheld gaming lounge. From 2 to 6:30 Chris and I cleared streetpasses. Willy later joined and did a mix of Pokemon and streetpassing. Some time later Alex joined us. It was just a new group of streetpassers. The fact there was a barrage of people from the PAX Pokemon league and other handheld tournaments provided a constant influx of new people to streetpass with. There was only 1 time I didn’t get 10 streetpasses. Friday I went streetpass crazy going from 25 tags to over 500. The Pedometer on the 3DS can verify my streetpassing for 3 hours. NOT ONE STEP. One of the best things I brought was a power bar to charge my and a friends devices. There was one person from Alaska that I streetpassed with which every 10 minutes there was some guy in the background saying “Thanks Alaska!” Thing I remembered most streetpassing that time was Willy saying. “I snore like I fart. Out the ass.”

Friday Night

After Streetpassing in the handheld lounge for 3 hours, I went to the gameshow night panel where once again I streetpassed as much as I could. During the streetpassing Willy would not have opposite sex with Alex because touching a womens penis is disgusting.The only thing that prevented me from streetpassing was the draining battery life. Alex got to be a contestant on Dan Amrich’s Game Show Night Jeopardy. It was brutally fast. Alex had no chance and the other people were so quick. For painful obvious person missed what was the game title of Oni when it was released. He said Marathon and the entire room sighed. The last question was What is blue, collect rings, and goes really fast. He would have accepted Danky Kang as an answer. Alex missed out on a Mortal Kombat 3 question, because he didn’t give his 100% Bergers. Next time I attend a PAX Game Show Night I will give a special gift for Blankety Blank. He should have gotten $2300.

Saturday Morning

Instead of going to the queue line right away I walked around the convention center before it got busy. First time I ever did that at East.

I went to the FirAxis panel where the revealed the Civilization Beyond Earth, and there I still did some streetpassing.

2:30PM I went to the EEDAR Awesome Video Game Data. He calls it awesome because it shows up earlier in the alphabetically by name. He shared about the gender breakdown and how it is reaching parity. The dilemma free to play games have with 5% responsible for 50% of the revenue and the other 95% for the 50% of the revenue. People who are willing to spend more on mobile games are people who already spend lots of money on all other games. The top 3-4 games in any market rake in 50+% of all revenue. Also he quoted that 12.5% 1/8 of all retail games bring in 75% of the revenue. While mobile has some success stories there is a huge signal to noise ratio with thousands of games released on the app store each year. He also gave great news that actually more games as a whole for the 7th generation consoles are having less multiplayer than in previous years. Multiplayer is good for a game if the multiplayer is really good. However there is just less AAA releases in general compared to previous years to explain for the drop. A point he brought up about single player gaming is it is a new phenomenon is the history of humanity in relation to games. Chess, checkers, tag, cards, all have elements of multiplayer, and in the beginning stages of game development the technology wasn’t there to make good multiplayer games.

After the panel I went to meet the Known Griefers Blog TalkRadar fans, Pat, Chris, and Rock. We went to the classic arcade section and they played Ghost Busters. We had conversations on what we’ve seen and so forth. For the Mass Effect related stuff, I said there will be a person “Hey I had sex with your character in Mass Effect” I showed them about Sniper Elite III, and they loved it. They played so far in, a guy from 505 games said whoa you were not supposed to play that. “Leaked reveal there is a mission you play during night time.” After they were done playing a little kid under 10 years old started playing it.

After hanging out with them I met up with Chris Ott again and went to go to the 2K party. The Empire Restaurant was a fancy smancy Asian restaurant. They had $15 to $20 appetizers. The party was for the first 250. It was free drinks and free food. It was $100 of food and drinks for free. 2K had an open bar for the entire night. While drinking the mixed drinks, they weren’t that alcoholic, and the long wait line to get another drink ensured your liver enough time to detoxify for another round. PAX Attendees were under dressed. They had a bathroom attendant. Alex wanted to know if the Bathroom Attendant would wipe the piss off his dick. Leaving the restroom there was a drunk guy saying I was the guy from Hong Kong and then the group of friends said I was in his group from Hong Kong. At the 2K party I got to meet Josiah, and he was previously at the Bethesda Party. I got to drink all 4 mixed drinks. The SpaceWalk was bad. I couldn’t eat any more food after that. The Spacewalk was like drinking vomit.

After the 2K party we foolishly embarked on a journey to the PC Gamer ASUS Republic of Gamers AfterParty at the Estate. The walk to get there was a lot of fun. Lot of jokes cracked along the way. For the 3DS pedometer. It was the only time I got 4000 steps in 1 hour. When we arrived at the Estate. It was a line of 4,000+ people snaking 2 blocks long for a venue that can only hold 800 people. Next to the Estate was another club of people waiting in line who were clearly in the night club scene. There was a couple of people who walked out of the Estate too well dressed. Willy said “The jokes on you you went to the wrong club.” After seeing a 2 block long line, I called it a day and went back to the apartment.

When I was about to sleep that night I felt like I was going to throw up and also Chris Ott was snoring very loud. It was horrible. Like he was trying to clear his nose while snoring. He always beat me to going to sleep.

Sunday Morning

I went to the queue line. I waited in line next to 2 guys in their early 30’s that were lifelong friends. One guy said he loves the NVIDIA shield because having a wife and kid hard to play on PC so just plays on shield. One bad thing Sunday was the queue lines were all leaving at once regardless of what line lined up first.

First thing I went to see was the Ocolus VR. I was the last person in line before the cutoff. The person in front of me was didn’t shower and the person behind me had a 1500 google glass.The demo was couch knights. The VR headtracking worked very well. It was short. It took me an hour to wait and to leave. My 3DS had no battery which was good because I could do other stuff besides clear notifications all the time.

I went to the Mass Effect signing line to have my games signed by the voice actors/face models but the line went nowhere. While waiting I talked about Mass Effect with another guy waiting in line who likes Mass Effect as much as everyone else in the line. In the meantime we also talked about Assassins Creeds about approaching a critical mass in too much stuff for newcomers to get into.

After reading a tweet that Paul and Keegan were going to leave soon I made my way out of the line to at least say hi to them. I learned that they had no Code Red Mountain Dew in Canada. I told him them about my first Code Red Mountain Dew story as if May 2001 really mattered to them. Also I speculated that the Mountain Dew Democracy is just surplus Mountain Dew from when US did it in 2010.

While waiting buying a Mountain Dew Code Red I saw Ted Rossi, Jeremy, and another guy for the first time at PAX East.

At 2 PM I went back to the Boot Hill Heroes booth. Got some Broccoli Beef courtesy of Alex. Had our Random Assault meetup of 5 people counting Alex and said our goodbyes. Streetpassed a Russian guy in the handheld lounge again. I said “Give back crimea” on personal greeting.

I was waiting by the Front Towards Gamer Operation Supply Drop back and forth Sunday as a hub. I got to speak to Rana McAnear the face model of Samara and Morinth in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

At 5pm on the show floor, Alex, Curtis, Chris, Willy, and I had our group pics before we said our goodbyes. After saying goodbye, I just chilled near the entrance and I streetpassed for the next hour. I got over 1000 streetpasses.