The Crew 2 wowed me, but it does have some notable flaws. Minor glitches aside, Horizon 4 is shaping up to be a superb racing game. This happened often throughout the demo, so here’s hoping they fix it in the full release. Horizon 3 had a similar issue, so it could be a bug in the Forza engine. This would bring my car and all AI traffic to a halt for a few brief moments. Sometimes, my vehicle would be moving faster than the map, so there’d be entire areas missing in front of me. I did run into one performance-related issue, though. Although, while I do have the in-game limiter set, the game never seemed to obey it, so there would be moments where the framerate would get up to almost 60. Certainly no powerhouse, but Forza Horizon 4 has treated it gently using the dynamic optimization set to Medium and a resolution of 1080p. I rock a Lenovo Y700 laptop, outfitted with a Nvidia GTX 960M (4GB), Intel Core i7 6700HQ (boosts to 3.30GHz), and 8GB of RAM. In fact, the game’s system requirements are lower than that of Horizon 3, so even more folks should get a chance to play this time around. I didn’t run into any of the same issues like what Horizon 3 had. It seems that Playground Games has really learned its lesson this time around, as the game runs beautifully. There are still a few titanium-grade trees here and there, but for the most part, Horizon 4 seems rather lenient when it comes to letting you romp around its open-world without much interruption. I was plowing through fences and shrubbery with ease, and seeing pieces break and fly all over was oddly satisfying. In particular, roadside objects are often breakable. What stood out to me is that there seem to be far fewer obstacles that’ll kill your speed.

But the available portion has been incredibly fun to poke around, and it offers some breathtaking sights. The demo doesn’t allow you to explore the entire map, unfortunately. Horizon 4’s Britain is filled with little gravel paths that meander through the hills (and there sure are a lot of hills), acres of beautiful countrysides, lots of historical architecture, and a healthy amount of asphalt that blends nicely with the surroundings. It’s a pretty big contrast to the Australian Outback from Horizon 3.

The map has a surprising amount of variety, even in a single season. The included events do a good job of showing off various parts of Playground’s take on Britain. After that introductory race, the demo lets you try out a handful of other events during the summer season, teasing you with the incoming autumn release of the game.

Paint in forza horizon 4 demo