First off, the DLC is good stuff. I played around a bit, but I haven’t yet laid down times with the Karmann Ghia. I will eventually. But…
The reason why that has been on the back burner is because I have been grinding out the Factory Driver achievement. Finally, after endless months of playing and 91% of the game complete, I got it with AMC. I have the Gremlin, Pacer and Javelin, and of the three the Pacer is probably the best overall when modded though the Javelin can compete at higher levels. The Gremlin, with no wheelbase, no weight in the back, and three speeds, is a nightmare at the limit, every bit as precarious as my Pinto and the Javelin is very, shall we say, spirited. Good luck without traction control when driving the Javelin. The Pacer, however, just goes where you tell it to go with little drama, and because of its dimensions it is almost impossible to roll. It just looks goofy, which is the allure for me.
So, it took me 2701.88 miles and 36 hours, 19 minutes and 40 seconds of driving, but I got one of the three big grind-it-out achievements. I already had World Tourer, which is a race on every single track including dragstrips and point-to-points.
The last grinder is Bucket List, and at the rate I play recently that will take me another few weeks but it will get done, leaving me only Forza Faithful and making me break out Forza 3 for a while. Once I’ve finished all of the achievements it’ll be time for Horizon, but I’ll still play this a good bit, maybe learn how to drift. Who knows?
I do know that this is the longest I’ve ever stuck with a game, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. It isn’t perfect, to be sure, but there’s little that I would change. I could stand for them to get rid of the drifting, I have exactly one perfect drift, done only for the achievement, compared with over 10,000 perfect turns. I know that drifting is the thing for some players, but it’s nothing but a hassle for the vast majority of us. At the minimum they shouldn’t peg an achievement to it, give the drifters titles and badges out the wazoo if you must but not an achievement.
Also, with 650+ cars, a few more tracks would have been nice. Alas, we got Benchmark and Car Soccer for DLC and that’s it. That’s a missed opportunity I hope they address in Forza 5. As far as Horizon goes, all of the cars introduced so far have been noting more than copies of cars already available in this game. If they want to keep people who are burned out on 3 and 4, they need some new stuff.