Difficulty: What Heroes Are Made Of
Forza Horizon 2 has a ton of options for catering the difficulty toward your skill level. You can tune the A.I. difficulty, enable rewind, and more. So, the game is as difficult as you want it to be. But that doesn’t mean you should just play on easy mode. You’re rewarded for playing with assists disabled, encouraging you to push your limits.
Related: Driveclub Car List
Driveclub adheres to a philosophy that you just need to figure out how to play the game and stop crying. Its A.I. will toss you off the road, leaving you to restart the race since you can’t rewind. In Tour mode, you can’t adjust the difficulty in any way. You also can’t adjust TCM, ABS, or STM. The game is static, and if you aren’t someone who knows how to apex well and overtake opponents, you’re going to tear your hair out.
Winner: Forza Horizon 2
Social Experience: Best Friends Forever
Forza Horizon 2 offers a myriad of options when it comes to enjoying the game with others. You can join a club of hundreds of players, and head online to play in Freeroam or Online Road Trip. Not only can you do any of the over 100 circuit, drag, and point-to-point races with others, but you can enjoy two unique game modes: King and Infected. I’ve already made several friends while playing Forza Horizon 2, and plan to do a few club meets in the coming week.
There are also system in place for designing custom liveries for your cars, and taking photos, both of which can be published online. There is no feeling of isolation in Forza Horizon 2.
Driveclub‘s experience is centered around clubs, which allow a total of six players to band together. These clubs have custom paint jobs, which are a cool way of showing off pride, and compete in Club Challenges. Unfortunately, there isn’t much variety in how you compete with others outside of online races and challenges, both solo and club, so it has very little staying power.
Winner: Forza Horizon 2
Damage Modeling: Will it Bend?
Forza Horizon 2 has a great advantage here in that it’s been able to borrow from previous iterations in a successful series. As a result, no matter what part of your car impacts barriers or other vehicles, you’ll see highly detailed damage represented on your car. If you slide your tail end out, you can bash your trunk in, and you’ll see the glass from your rear lights fall out revealing the reflectors and bulb.
Driveclub is much more akin to Gran Turismo 5‘s damage model, where it only goes as far as it needs to be able to say it has the feature. Major crashes lead to minor scuffs on the car, and deformation is never as accurately depicted as it should be.
Winner: Forza Horizon 2
Customization: Give Me Options Or Give Me Death
This is an easy one. Forza Horizon 2 allows you to upgrade your car in numerous ways, including engine and drivetrain swaps. You can throw a four rotor engine into a 240SX, and then tune it with negative camber on the rear suspension. Furthermore, I’ve spent hours upon hours buying cars and personalizing them so that when I head online I have some cool options.
Driveclub has four custom paint jobs shared across all your cars. Other than that, there’s no customization to be seen.
Winner: Forza Horizon 2
The Cars: The Whole Point of a Racing Game
Forza Horizon 2 has around 220+ different cars. These span American muscle, European prowess, and Japanese efficiency. There are slow cars, fast cars, and even cars that you would never think would be in the game. This, combined with the customization, is what gives the game a ton of play value.
Driveclub has 55 cars at launch. Virtually all of them are European. Yes, they sound and look better than Forza Horizon 2‘s cars, but the way they are unlocked is uninteresting. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more depressing garage than what’s in Driveclub.
Winner: Forza Horizon 2
Conclusion: Forza Horizon 2 Wins with Flying Colors
Truthfully, outside of Driveclub‘s outstanding presentation, it isn’t able to compete with the big boys in any way, shape, or form. It’s missing fundamental features that were standardized more than a decade ago. It suffers greatly as a result.
Related: Forza Horizon 2 Review
Forza Horizon 2 has become one my favorite games of all-time. I’ve already spent over 40 hours playing it, and plan to continue buying and customizing cars in the future.
If you own a PS4 and Xbox One, the decision for which racer you should get is as simple as determining how interested you are in graphics. Even then, Forza Horizon 2 is a great-looking game.
