Forza Horizon 5has now been officially available for over a week now, allowing racers to stretch their legs and grow accustomed to the game’s features and gameplay quirks. Many players are also reachingForza Horizon 5’s endgame, reaching the Hall of Fame and discovering some particularly grating challenges. What’s garnering perhaps the most attention isForza Horizon 5’s Drivatars, bumped to their highest difficulty – Unbeatable. Suffice to say, the difficulty is living up to its name.
The community forForza Horizon 5has been having a conversation regarding the Unbeatable Drivatar difficulty, most of which has been highly critical. Like almost all racing games,Forza Horizon 5"cheats" with its AI in order to provide scaling difficulty options. Unbeatable doesn’t simply outrace players. Rather, it has technical advantages and limitations that are outside of the scope players have to deal with.Forza Horizon 5playersare frustrated by the AI’s often unfair advantages.
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What’s tricky about the situation is that no one really knows the specific waysForza Horizon 5’s Unbeatable Drivatarsare “cheating.” Players can only guess based on the AI’s in-game behavior. ZonerRoamer on the ForzaHorizon subreddit described the AI’s behavior as “like robots,” in that they drive a “perfect racing line without losing speed whatsoever in turns.” dzonibegood explains that “on straight runs they zip past me like they have a rocket strapped onto them and in the corners just zip on the inside as if they were on rails.” FantasticAmbition986 says that it’s not even the difficulty that’s the issue, it’s that the AI feels “random” and “woefully inconsistent” in difficulty between individual races and race types.
What’s undeniable is that Unbeatable AI inForza Horizon 5does several things better than humans are capable of. Launches are always faster than what players can do, grip on turns is always perfect, and despiteDrivatarsbeing advertised as having unique personality quirks, they cling to the “ideal” racing line.
Forza Horizon 5players are discovering ways of combatting the Unbeatable AI, of course. Ramming AI cars during turns is particularly effective, as much as some racers frown about it. Also, the “ideal” racing line is rarely that, so finding ways to maintain speed through corners is often the deciding factor in races. Certain race types are also worth avoiding against Unbeatable AI, like Cross Country, withRoad Racingand Street Racing uniquely difficult as well.
Obviously,Forza Horizon 5has only been available for a week now. Players are only just starting to really test the abilities of Unbeatable AI. If there’s a serious issue, developerPlayground Gameswill be able to evaluate the Unbeatable AI’s design and look for improvements. In the meantime,Forza Horizon 5players will have to struggle through it.
Forza Horizon 5is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
