Late in October 2012 the Forza juggernaut pulled up and threw Horizon at us. This open world racer received some favourable reviews from the gaming fraternity and our very own MarcusJonesy gave it a solid 8/10 when AbsoluteGaming had the chance for a hands on review. One slight criticism from many quarters was regarding the game length. There were many hours of game time to be had but in comparison to previous Forza titles, Horizon was a bit of a short one.
It was therefore no surprise to hear of a substantial amount of DLC being created by Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios and alongside the numerous car packs that have already graced the XBOX Live Marketplace, we now have a nice big wedge of downloadable content in the form of a rally expansion. Everyone likes to get a bit dirty out on the track do they not?
The Forza Horizon Rally Expansion pack is touted as a standalone title however you do need to own the original Horizon game in order to access it from the main menu. From there, you are quickly introduced to the rally scene in Colorado and as was the case with Horizon, you’re thrown straight in at the deep end to see how you fare.
There are then three ways in which you can go. You can take part in the Rally Championship, hit some of your friends times in Rivals mode or jump into a little multiplayer action with all those others who have forked out 1600 MS points (or had it included for free with their Horizon season pass), for the extra gameplay.
The main championship runs in much the same way as the original ‘wristbands’ from Horizon did, however we now have 7 rallies and over 20 stages and as is always the case with rallying, your overall time after the final stage is the one that counts. Mess up one stage and you’ll still have the chance to triumph as long as you can keep your next stages clean. Each completed rally gives you a number of points in your quest to reach the final and whilst the best way of doing this is by running through each stage in order, you can, if need be, purchase a Rally All Access Pass with in-game credits. This allows you to compete in any rally, in any order, including that holy grail of a final. Only those desperate for the final should bother even contemplating this as reaching the end goal through racing is a simple enough challenge. Whether you actually win each race is a different matter but thanks to the way the points total up, you can find yourself lifting the trophy even without winning all the previous rally stages. Thankfully, we have the usual 4 differing opponent difficulty levels for those who like to challenge themselves a little more. Most gamers should be able to hold their own on the easy and medium levels but move it up a notch to hard or insane and things do get a little trickier.
To help us reach the final we have been given 5 new rally spec cars to play around with. Each have the option of the usual aero and appearance upgrades but as with the main game I found an auto-upgrade is more than sufficient to compete and means that unless you really want to, the little tinkering around with individual parts gets missed. You can also take any of your previously bought Horizon cars and give them a rally makeover. This all sounds well and good but from experience, anyone wanting to set a half decent time will need to be in one of the new cars. For example, on one of the first stages at Beaumont Pass, I was happily in the top 5 whilst racing in my new rally spec Evo. I did that exact same stage in my trusty Horizon garage Jag and ended up 43rd! Lets just say I was back in that Evo pretty sharpish and that’s where I found myself staying for the duration of the DLC.
It’s a bit of a shame that the Rally pack hasn’t been integrated into the main game a bit more other than car sharing. Whilst Horizon was all about discovery and the open world, this add-on is just racing, Nothing more, nothing less. That’s not to say things are bad, it’s certainly right up there with Dirt as a rally experience and the handling of each car over differing road types is very pleasurable. I can’t however help think that with the huge Colorado music festival experience given to us first time round, it would have been better putting these new rally stages on the map and hidden amongst the hills of Horizon. They have thankfully carried over all credits and in-game XP between the two modes and what you earn in one is available in the other but I would like to have seen the rally scene given the full Horizon treatment.
Over in the multiplayer side of things and you’ll be finding the rally tracks are now available in the main multiplayer section of Horizon. Again, as was previously the case, it’s disappointing that single player and multiplayer don’t merge as one huge experience but that isn’t a Rally problem, that’s a Horizon as a whole issue. Once in a multiplayer game you’ll find the very best in ghost and time racing, again right up there with the Dirt series, but the lack of new cars and limited rally specific tracks meant things became rather repetitive, rather quickly.
The same goes for Rivals mode. This can only be accessed once you've set a time on each stage and whilst there is a degree of replayability due to the very nature of how Rivals works, I can only hark back to the repetition problem again. Honestly, once you have beaten your friends times, you really aren’t going to be going back to Rivals very often unless you're one of the very quickest in the world (and there ain't many of us that quick!).
If this DLC had been released as a proper stand alone retail title with numerous tracks and cars, I think it would sell in the bucket loads. It would have been a must-have title and I’d go as far as to say that it would be able to compete with the Dirt series quite easily. But Playground and Turn 10 haven’t done that and instead whilst this is a decent piece of DLC, it could and possibly should have been so much more than just a few races and an easy 250 gamerscore.
Unless you are a rally nut I’d say you’re probably best off saving your £12 until this pack hits one of the numerous XBOX Live sales.
