To make it worse, I found out the hard way that FH4 on Steam doesn’t have wheel support, so if I wanted to use a wheel (with full FFB support, not just a wheel pretending to be an Xbox controller), I had to re-buy on the Microsoft store.

Really, for most people, there’s not much reason to buy the new ones, except that they keep de-listing the old ones and making them impossible to buy.

They also delist previous titles from stores. Forza 4 disappeared a while ago, 5 will be gone soon. Wouldn't want anyone buying the older, cheaper, maybe better titles instead of the latest one.

Also the intro threw me off right away, at least in 4 there was still a veneer of you starting as a lowly pleb, 5 was just "YOU'RE THE SUPERSTAR!!!" right from second one and it was just patronising.

Agreed. FH4 and 5 are fun, but the monetization is obnoxious and it often felt clunky just to get into fun racing activities quickly.

I remember seeing a cool driving thing to do only to be told “you need to pay X to do it”

Nah

It’s not just you! Forza Horizon has been the main series of video game I looked forward to. I loved 3 and 4.

It didn’t take long for 5 to concentrate fully on the weekly bullshit and making the game more about puzzles and Hot Wheels-style excitement than driving.

This is the first Horizon game in over a decade that I couldn’t care less about. It just feels like a sad shell of the previous games.

I enjoyed FH5, but FH4 was better. 5 is the onky one I don't actually own yet, I basically did everything at launch during a Gamepass trial. I plaued FH4 almost daily for like a year or more.

FH5 came out in 2021.

Fh5 was released on PlayStation this year. It was released on Xbox like 4 or 5 years ago

Why? The porn thing?

Car plows into an underground tunnel, screen goes blurry.