Forza Horizon 4: The Refuge I Didn’t Know I Was Looking For

I was not supposed to fall in love with Forza Horizon 4.

I am not a car enthusiast. I do not follow automotive news, I do not know the exact difference between two models released three years apart, and I do not dream about horsepower, engines, or collector editions of old sports cars. In video games, racing has never really been my territory either. It is not a genre I naturally go toward. I understand the appeal, of course, but from a distance. Most of the time, I prefer games that give me a world to explore, characters to follow, music to remember, or a story that stays somewhere in my head after I close the game.

And yet, here I am, more than thirty hours into Forza Horizon 4, genuinely surprised by how much I enjoy it.

Released in 2018 by Playground Games, Forza Horizon 4 is an open world racing game set in a fictionalized version of Great Britain. It was the first episode in the Horizon series to introduce a full seasonal system, with spring, summer, autumn, and winter changing the look and feel of the map over time. It is also, strangely enough, one of the most welcoming games I have played recently. Not because it is simple or small, but because it never asks too much from me at once. It lets me come and go.

That is probably the first thing I loved about it. Forza Horizon 4 is easy to enter. I can launch it for twenty minutes, half an hour, two hours, or an entire evening. The game does not punish me for playing casually. It does not demand that I remember a complicated questline, optimize a build, or sit through long narrative sequences before doing anything. I open the game, choose a car, put the radio on, and drive. Sometimes I race. Sometimes I just follow the road.

There is always something nearby. A small race. A speed trap. A road I have not discovered yet. A barn rumor. A seasonal challenge. A random skill chain that starts because I took a corner too fast and destroyed half a stone wall. The game has this very pleasant rhythm where progress happens almost by accident. You set out to do one thing, then another event appears on the map, then a song comes on the radio, then the weather changes, and suddenly you have been there for an hour.

I had not found that feeling in a long time.

The YouTube comment that sent me there

My discovery of Forza Horizon 4 did not start with cars. It started with music.

I was on YouTube listening to one of my favorite tracks of all time, "A Moment Apart" by ODESZA. It is one of those songs that immediately creates images in my head. It has that wide, cinematic quality I love, the kind of sound that feels made for travel, memory, and movement. While reading the comments, I noticed that many people were mentioning the introduction of Forza Horizon 4. I did not know why. So I searched for it.

That was the moment the game caught me.

The introduction of Forza Horizon 4 is probably one of the best advertisements for a video game I have ever seen. It throws you directly into the idea of the game before explaining anything. You drive through changing seasons, different cars, changing surfaces, different moods, all carried by ODESZA’s music. It is not just a technical introduction. It is a promise. It tells you: this game is about motion, weather, music, and freedom.

At the time, I only wanted to understand why so many people were talking about it under the music video. A few hours later, I had installed the game. A few hours after that, I understood.

There are games you start because of reviews, because of awards, because a friend insists, or because everyone online seems to be talking about them. And then there are games you discover because of a weird little trail of associations. A song leads to a comment. A comment leads to a video. A video leads to a download. And suddenly a game you would normally have ignored becomes part of your routine.

That is what happened here.

A racing game for someone who does not care that much about cars

The funny thing is that Forza Horizon 4 works even if you are not deeply interested in cars.

Of course, if you love cars, the game is probably even better. There are hundreds of vehicles, tuning options, rarity systems, auctions, collections, and all the little details that make car fans happy. But what surprised me is that none of this knowledge is required to enjoy the game. You can stay on the surface and still have a great time. You can choose a car because it looks good, because it sounds nice, because it feels pleasant to drive, or simply because the game gave it to you and you want to try it.

That is mostly how I play.

I am not comparing torque curves. I am not optimizing everything. I am not spending hours tuning gear ratios. I respect the people who do, but that is not my relationship with the game. My pleasure is more immediate. I like taking a car, leaving the festival, and seeing where the road takes me. Sometimes the car is completely inappropriate for the terrain. Sometimes I drive terribly. Sometimes I hit things. Often, actually. But the game rarely makes me feel stupid for it. It absorbs the chaos.

The only racing game I remember playing in a somewhat similar spirit before was Test Drive Unlimited. It ran on my old laptop, modestly, probably not in ideal conditions, but I remember the pleasure of driving through an open environment rather than simply moving from one closed circuit to another. That is the part I liked. The idea that the car was not only a racing tool, but a way to inhabit a map.

Forza Horizon 4 gives me that feeling again, but with far more generosity.

It is not a pure simulation, and I am thankful for that. It has enough driving feel to make each car distinct, enough danger to make rain and snow matter, and enough arcade energy to keep everything accessible. It sits in a comfortable middle ground. I can care about the road without becoming an engineer.

The Assassin’s Creed Odyssey feeling

The game it strangely reminded me of is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

This may sound absurd. One is an open world racing game set in Britain. The other is an action RPG set in Ancient Greece. They have almost nothing in common mechanically. And yet, my emotional reaction to both games is surprisingly close.

When Assassin’s Creed Odyssey came out, it completely impressed me. I loved its version of Ancient Greece. I loved sailing between islands, arriving in a new region, seeing the light change, climbing a mountain, discovering a temple, or simply letting the world unfold around me. It was vast, welcoming, sometimes too large, but always generous. I did not only play it for the missions. I played it because I liked being there.

Forza Horizon 4 gives me a similar feeling, but in a more compact and lighter form.

Its Britain is obviously smaller than Odyssey’s Greece. It is also less alive in the traditional open world sense. There are no villages full of characters, no dialogues, no mythological quests, no political conflicts between city-states. The map is not trying to be a historical world. It is closer to a landscape album. A countryside road, a small village, a forest path, a city street, a muddy trail, a frozen lake. The world does not have the narrative density of Odyssey, but it has atmosphere.

And atmosphere matters a lot to me.

In both games, I find the same pleasure of movement. In Odyssey, it was the horse, the ship, the cliffs, the sea. In Forza Horizon 4, it is the road, the curve, the radio, the weather. I think that is why the comparison makes sense to me. They are both games where the world itself becomes the reason to continue.

I like games that let me travel without insisting too much on what I should feel. They give me a place, and then they trust me with it.

The seasons are the soul of the game

The seasonal system is probably the best idea in Forza Horizon 4.

It sounds simple when you describe it. The game has four seasons, and the map changes with them. But in practice, it does a lot. It gives the world a sense of time. It makes the same place feel different depending on when you return. It changes the roads, the colors, the grip, the visibility, and sometimes the available paths. A lake that was water in one season can become a frozen surface in winter. A sunny countryside road can become wet, muddy, or covered in snow.

What I really like is that the game does not wait for me. If I take a break for a few days and come back, the season may have changed. There is something oddly pleasant about that. The world continues without me. Not in a stressful way, but in a way that makes it feel less static.

Many open world games have beautiful maps, but they can become frozen in time. You always return to the same weather, the same lighting, the same mood. Forza Horizon 4 avoids part of that fatigue by making the landscape rotate. The map is not huge compared to many modern open worlds, but the seasonal system stretches it. It gives familiar roads a new texture.

Winter, especially, changes the experience. I am not always sure I love driving in winter, because the road becomes more difficult and my already questionable driving gets worse. But I love that the game dares to change the comfort of its own world. It does not only decorate the map with snow. It changes the way I have to approach it. I slow down more. I brake earlier. Sometimes I do not, and I end up in a wall, which is also part of the experience.

Autumn may be my favorite visually. There is something about the color palette, the wet roads, the countryside, and the slightly melancholic atmosphere that fits the game perfectly. It makes the whole world feel like a Sunday afternoon drive, even when I am doing something ridiculous at 250 km/h.

A refuge in a noisy era

I think part of why Forza Horizon 4 works so well for me is that it arrived at the right time.

We live inside a permanent stream of information. My generation grew up with digital tools, social networks, global news, notifications, timelines, videos, messages, and opinions arriving all the time. Everything feels immediate. Everything feels urgent. Even when nothing directly concerns us, we end up absorbing it anyway. Conflicts, elections, prices, disasters, scandals, new tools, new fears, new things to learn, new things to worry about.

After a while, even leisure can feel noisy.

Some games add to that noise. They have daily rewards, battle passes, limited events, multiplayer pressure, optimization guides, meta discussions, rankings, and the constant feeling that you are late. I understand why those systems exist, but I often find them tiring. I do not always want my free time to feel like an extension of a dashboard.

Forza Horizon 4 has systems, of course. It has events, seasons, rewards, points, cars to unlock, and challenges to complete. But somehow, at least in the way I play it, it does not feel aggressive. I do not feel trapped by it. I feel invited.

That difference matters.

When I launch the game, I know I can leave quickly. I can do one race and stop. I can drive without a goal. I can change car, change radio station, cross the map, or just follow the GPS line until something happens. It is a game that gives me small objectives without making them feel like obligations.

That is why I call it a refuge.

Not because it is quiet. It is often loud, fast, colorful, full of engines and music. But mentally, it is quiet. It lets me focus on one simple activity: driving through a beautiful place while listening to music. Sometimes that is enough.

The radio changed everything

Music has always been one of the most important parts of video games for me. I can forgive many things in a game if the music stays with me. A good soundtrack can transform an ordinary moment into a memory. I still listen to video game music outside of games all the time, and when a game makes me do that, it usually means it has reached me in a more personal way.

Forza Horizon 4 is a little different because most of its music is not an original soundtrack in the traditional sense. These are real tracks placed inside the game through radio stations. But that does not make the musical experience less important. Actually, it may be one of the reasons it works so well.

The game has several radio stations, including Horizon Pulse, Horizon Bass Arena, Horizon Block Party, Horizon XS, Hospital Records Radio, and Timeless FM. My strongest connection has been with Horizon Pulse and Horizon Block Party. I did not expect that. In some ways, the game even reconciled me with certain pop and hip-hop sounds I would not necessarily have searched for by myself.

There is something very interesting about the radio system today. We live in the Spotify era. We can skip instantly. We can search any song, build any playlist, avoid anything that does not immediately please us. It is convenient, and I use it every day. But it also makes listening impatient. Sometimes I skip before the song even has time to become interesting.

In Forza Horizon 4, I cannot fully control the music. I can change stations, yes, but I cannot simply choose my favorite track whenever I want. I have to wait. I have to accept the flow. Sometimes a song I do not know plays, and I let it continue because I am in the middle of a race or because the road fits the mood. Sometimes I discover a track by accident. Sometimes I wait for the one I love.

And when it arrives, it feels better.

That is how I ended up keeping some songs outside the game. "Colors" by Beck. "Higher" by Outasight. "Symphony" by Towkio featuring Teddy Jackson. "Wallflower" by Young Futura. These tracks now carry a little piece of Forza Horizon 4 with them. I can listen to them away from the game and still see the road, the weather, the car, the speed, the absurd crashes, the countryside.

That is when a game’s music system has done its job. It escapes the game.

Cars I will never own, and that is fine

There is also a funny simulation fantasy in Forza Horizon 4.

Owning a car in real life is expensive. Buying one is expensive. Maintaining it is expensive. Fuel is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Even the used car market has become complicated and painful. A car can be freedom, but it can also be a financial problem on wheels. In that context, there is something almost relaxing about a game where I can drive machines I will almost certainly never own.

Some of the cars in Forza Horizon 4 are so far from my real life that they become pure fiction. I would need several lifetimes, or several generations, to justify buying them. In the game, I can take them through the mud, crash them into fences, drive them through fields, launch them off hills, and then continue as if nothing happened.

It is ridiculous, obviously. But it is also liberating.

For someone who does not consider himself a car fan, I have started to understand part of the appeal. Not the technical obsession, maybe, but the fantasy of it. The shape of a car. The sound. The way it handles. The feeling of speed. The idea that a machine can change your relationship to a landscape.

I also keep thinking that my fuel consumption in the game would be absolutely catastrophic in real life. With the way I drive, I would probably destroy my budget, my tires, and several public infrastructures in less than fifteen minutes. Thankfully, Forza Horizon 4 is generous. It lets me be irresponsible in a consequence-free world.

That is part of the charm.

A game I discovered too late, but maybe at the right moment

There is something strange about discovering Forza Horizon 4 now.

The game is not new anymore. It came out in 2018, had its life, its expansions, its community, its updates, and was eventually delisted from digital stores in December 2024 because of licensing agreements. In the usual cycle of video game discussion, I am late. Very late, even. The internet has already moved on several times. Forza Horizon 5 came out. Forza Horizon 6 is now about to arrive, with Japan as its setting, which is obviously tempting.

But being late can be nice.

When you arrive late to a game, the noise around it is gone. You are not playing because everyone is talking about it. You are not trying to keep up with the discourse. You are just meeting the game on your own terms. That may be the best way to discover something like Forza Horizon 4. No pressure, no hype, no expectations. Just a road and a song.

I do not know yet if I will jump into Forza Horizon 6 immediately. The Japanese setting is clearly attractive, and I can already imagine how beautiful a Horizon game could be there, with dense cities, mountains, coastlines, rain, neon, and seasonal changes. But I also do not feel finished with Forza Horizon 4. There are still roads I have not fully memorized, cars I have not tried, songs I still wait for, and seasons I want to see again.

That is rare for me.

Many games lose me after a few hours, even good ones. Sometimes I respect them more than I enjoy returning to them. Forza Horizon 4 is the opposite. I do not need to convince myself to play it. I just find myself opening it when I need something simple, beautiful, and immediate.

Closing the road, for now

Forza Horizon 4 surprised me because it found a place I did not know was empty.

I did not need a racing game. I did not need a car collection. I did not need another open world full of icons. And still, this game gave me something I had been missing: a light refuge, easy to enter, easy to leave, but hard to forget. A place where I can drive without thinking too much. A place where the seasons change even when I am gone. A place where the radio sometimes knows better than I do what I want to hear.

That may be the best compliment I can give it.

It made me care about a genre I usually ignore. It made me listen to songs I might have skipped elsewhere. It made me enjoy cars without needing to become a car person. It reminded me that sometimes the best games are not the ones we plan to love, but the ones that catch us from the side, through a song, a comment, a road, a mood.

Forza Horizon 4 is not just a racing game to me now. It is one of those games I will associate with a specific moment in my life. A small escape from the information stream. A digital countryside where I can disappear for twenty minutes and come back feeling slightly better.

And honestly, that is already a lot.

To finish, I leave here a few tracks I discovered or rediscovered through Horizon Radio and kept listening to outside the game: "Colors" by Beck, "Higher" by Outasight, "Symphony" by Towkio featuring Teddy Jackson, and "Wallflower" by Young Futura. In a way, they are now part of the road too.