Forza Horizon 4 now tootling around Fortune Island
Zoom zoom
While I was being dragged down to the depths of England last week (business reasons), Forza Horizon 4 was pushing higher into Scotland with the launch of its first expansion, Fortune Island. The fictional new hunk of rock has sprouted off Scotland, seemingly drawing inspiration for roads and landmarks from a number of places around the highlands and islands, including Skye. It's a wild and rugged landscape which needs to make no concessions to reality, basically (though some real Scottish landscapes seem to consider reality optional, in my experience). Also, it has hidden treasure. And a Morris Minor with wooden trim.
Here, see these roads, these mountains, these cliffs, the aurora borealis, these villages and landmarks which clearly are based on places in real Scotland that aren't on islands and therefore have been shuffled around a bit and renamed.
God, this is a beautiful country. Parts of Scotland look like they're out of fantasy movies, which is probably because they're often used as filming locations. Last month I swam in a blood-red burn winding through a moss-caked glen, which I'm told was used as some magical spring in Outlander. And it's just there. Around. All these unreal landscapes are. All the time. And somehow that's acceptable? It's okay to just have magical landscapes hanging around? People allow this?
I've seen some Forza Horizon 4 players saying Fortune Island is basically more of the same with new puzzle-y treasure hunts on top. Which sounds fine if you want more Horizon 4? Or really like treasure chests. Or Morris Minors. It's not a bad game to want more of.
"Forza Horizon 4 is quickly turning into one of my favourite racing games," wrote Stirling Matheson (still the best name of anyone to ever write about racing games) in our Forza Horizon 4 review. "For me, it's up there with iRacing, but for totally different reasons."
Fortune Island costs £15/€20/$20 on its tod or comes as part of the Expansions Bundle with the mysterious second expansion (due in 2019 by the end of June) for £29/€35/$35.