Most importantly, how can he praise FH2 for it's almost Arcadey feel and radical jumps, then turn around and moan at The Club for having nitrous boosts? A lynchpin of the classical open world racer. *Salute*
Well, speaking as someone who likes these games that straddle sim and arcade, I absolutely hate games like Burnout and the recent NFS games that I classify as Point and Boost. The reason I preferred PGR and the NFS: Shift games is because they lacked the boost mechanics. And if FH2 had it, I would hate it there, too.
But I'm not saying the Burnout, NFS, or even Driveclub are bad games. They are clearly well designed games that many people love. They just aren't what I would spend my money on.
I'm far less interested in open world than the guy in this video is. It absolutely works in FH2 (much better than the first game, IMO), and it might be my favorite racer of all time. But PGR and Shift were not open world. They were arcade racers that tried to be sim games that were very forgiving, but more than anything, made driving feel visceral and intense. There has still never been a racer with a better cockpit cam than the Shift games.
I much prefer Horizon to Forza, but I think the work turn 10 ha done on assists has made Forza possible to play much more like classic PGR than Horizon, in my opinion. For me, Forza proper and Forza Horizon co-exist perfectly.
From what I've played of Driveclub, which is not much, it is a good driving game, but definitely not thrilling. It might have felt better if I had gotten into the scorechasing that the game thrives on, but it didn't make me want to keep racing in the way the other games I mention here do. There are hours that I spend in those games just driving and not worrying about checking off any lists or making progress.