One Week in Forza Horizon 5

I have been inconsistent in playing the new Forza simcade since early access. It has been a weird experience because even up to now, I still am experimenting with what overlays and background apps it can work with just so it would not crash.

I even tried streaming my first few hours playing it with a Logitech G29 wheel but it proved troublesome due to random crashes right at the introduction without any warning. This was worrying for me since I used to play a lot of Forza Horizon 4 on a different PC without any of the crashes I still am having. The next day, 6th of November, I was experiencing a different kind of issue isolated within Forza Horizon 5 only - slow audio. It would start occurring from the main menu and despite mixing all the possible audio settings through my old-but-trusty Line6 TonePort UX2 interface, I was at the end of my wits.

I was ready to throw the towel in since it got weirder when I tested that the in-game audio works well enough through my laptop’s speakers. Well, that did not last long until I decided to dig in deeper and searched for threads that experienced the same issues in older Forza Horizon titles.

I am preparing to make a proper tutorial for all the people that are also experiencing the same thing because the problems or issues this game presents to PC gamers are layers upon layers of deduction and previous knowledge.

However, to say that I have not progressed farther than the intro would be counterintuitive since I was able to isolate the programs causing the problems down to the drivers needed to be uninstalled before playing Forza Horizon 5.

It has been going well ever since I found out the sequence of whatever it is that I needed to do. It feels like I am doing a ritual to offer to the executable of Forza Horizon 5 just so it wouldn’t crash on my mint and somewhat-powerful laptop.

Going through the world that they have built is both fantastic and frustrating. Crashing through and on trees has always been a treat whenever the roads get boring and progressing through the story has always been mind-numbing. I suppose the latter has been built that way for the longest time ever in this spin-off considering that most people that would be playing this game will be heavily into customizing, collecting, and crashing.