Snowdrifts and snowflakes are on the menu this week as Forza Horizon 4 rolls into the next season and for me it’s been a return to more familiar turf. After the slipping and sliding of Autumn I was worried I might be even more out of my depth here but if you’ve played the Blizzard Mountain expansion from Forza Horizon 3 you’ll get used to this quickly.

Some areas may open up or become more accessible now there’s a layer of snow so it’s worth revisiting areas where you may not have scored highly on speed cameras, jumps, etc. I found a couple of jumps far easier to attempt simply because the snow offers more traction.

One of the more impressive places you can call home and it comes with a nice bonus too.

One of the biggest changes you’ll see is of course the frozen lakes and rivers which offer large flat areas for drivers to take a spin on. There even looks like a drag strip on the lake too, if you level up enough to unlock it. A neat touch is that there are still puddles of surface water which means you still need to be careful as hitting one can lead you into all sorts of trouble.

Visually, winter offers by far the biggest contrast compared to the other months. Fields are bare, trees have no leaves and the moment you leave a road you’re likely to be up to your wheels in snow. I’ve yet to be caught in a blizzard on a scale similar to the earlier mentioned FH3 expansion but conditions at times can greatly impact visibility which can add a bit of challenge to events if it strikes when you are not prepared.

Areas once inaccessible are now less so thanks to winter.

For car pass owners, each week also comes with bonus cars to add to your collection. In this case it was a pair of classic Porsches. A frustration though is that these aren’t automatically added to your collection. It really is something that should be streamlined as you have to search for each vehicle and add it one at a time. Thankfully you can filter by value and find the free ones but for those players who buy a car pack with a half dozen plus cars they may spend at least the next fifteen minutes adding them.

The further you progress in levels the slower you find you will accumulate wheelspins which can have an effect on your ability to get the cars or cosmetics you’re wanting. Early on I made a lot of credits from those which I used to buy houses on the map as each offers bonuses on purchase. However there are still a couple that are priced well beyond the casual player and will require a real commitment to get.

Some jumps are much easier now thanks to the change in conditions.

With the amount of markers now on my map it’s probably time for me to settle into more championship events and less on hijinks. Those Forzathon events are still too hard to pass up so I doubt I’ll be able to refrain myself for long before smashing my way through the countryside again. 🙂

Forza Horizon 4 is out now for PC and Xbox One. At this time it may just be the only racing game you’ll ever have to own…