Survival of the fastest
Forza Horizon 4 takes cars down a proverbial, treacherous road, where one wrong move spells loss and defeat. Playground Games turns its racing sandbox into a battle royale.
Dubbed "Eliminator", this battle royale lives up to genre standards while adding its own Forza Horizon racing twists. Each player starts in a red Mini Cooper, a level 1 car that is neither fast nor flashy. There are random car drops on the map that contain new, higher quality cars. Designated by plumes of turquoise smoke, players seek them out to move into something more capable. Think of it as completely unarmed skydiving before finding armor and a weapon.
The game starts with a maximum of 72 players, and they are all eliminated one by one through head-to-head races. When you're near another person, you right-click to start a run. There is no option to decline the race; if someone starts it, you have to go. Forza Horizon 4 sets a waypoint within the distance that you both need to run to. Whoever finishes last is done. The winner can either jump into the other player's car or upgrade their current car by adding the loser's vehicle to their score.
Interestingly (and perhaps counterintuitively), camping seems like a semi-viable strategy. If you have a car you're happy with, you don't need to participate in risky races. You can hide and hope no one finds you. However, the minimap shows nearby players, meaning someone can find you and start a run while you're parked.
Like other battle royales, Eliminator directs players into smaller and smaller locations via an ever-closing wall. Because there is no health to monitor, Forza Horizon 4 uses a "timeout" meter that gradually fills up the further you are outside the wall. Complete it completely and you're out. Also, entering the wall does not reset the counter; returning to the outside causes it to continue filling up where it left off.
Once the field has been reduced to 10 players, Eliminator switches to a crazy winner-all dash. This final race is how Forza Horizon 4's battle royale ends matches. It's a bit different from methodically removing people one by one, but a "final circle" is probably hard to reconcile in a game that depends on cars going fast and far. Eliminator can't really rely on the super slow cat-and-mouse loop that other Battle Royale endgames facilitate.
Eliminator will be added to Forza Horizon 4 tomorrow as a free update. Diehard tankers may not like the popular video game modes that creep into their racing games. However, they will probably feel compelled to at least give it a shot. That's because Toyota returns to Forza tomorrow, and the 1998 Supra is stuck behind early progression in the new Eliminator tree.
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