Forza Horizon Rally Pack DLC Review: Such A Tease

I love Forza Horizon. Love the daylights out of it. Despite its variety of events, including mixed-terrain shindigs and Need for Speed-style street races, it didn’t feature any traditional rally races. I’m not sure where the demand came from, but the brilliant team at Playground Games has issued a new Rally Pack for the game that may satiate your lust for stripped down cars sloshing through rough point to point courses. It’s an interesting experiment, but is it worth the $20 fee?

Forza Horizon’s new Rally Pack is a detached mode from the open world trappings of the main game. You’re granted a series of new tournaments spread out over a long stretch of newly-built rally course that’s been cut up, reversed, and set in day and night time to constitute the mode’s new tracks. It won’t take you long before you’ve seen everything, but the tracks are challenging. Challenging, or perhaps diabolically difficult, is a good way to describe this pack. These races are as difficult as some of the higher-level races from the campaign. Since you’re placing out of fifty contestants, you’ll still get some form of prize, even if you’re painfully mediocre, but I found myself finishing middle of the pack even after an incredible number of replays.

Because the content is cut from the same cloth as the main game, you’re not going to get the traditional variety of rally environments or events, so there’s no taiga or pack races. This DLC includes five new cars designed for rally, and you can convert some of your existing cars for the events, but the game’s not clear on which ones qualify. (No, I could not convert my Lamborghini Aventador for rally, as bad ass as that would be.) Your co-pilot, the life pulse of any rally event, gives some of the best turn calls I’ve ever heard in a game. It’s also an American doing them, which threw me off.

Sure, you can use your cash and some of your cars to assist you in your these adventures, but this is mostly standalone content. At the end of the day, it’s extremely difficult to recommend this for the asking price when you can get DIRT 3 for around the same price which comes with a relative galaxy of content. I pine for an expanded Forza-branded rally experience and while there’s still some quality stuff here, it’s best to wait until the price drops. (You can also purchase the Forza Horizon Season Pass and get this content and all subsequent DLC for $60.)