for a game that has so many granualar controls for real-deal car nerds, the forza horizon series is still really easy to enjoy
i'm not a fan of most party games. i hate competitiveness, and i don't play enough video games to not embarrass myself in front of friends, so the obvious choices (SSB and other fighting games) are out. because of poor choices on my part, most of the people i know are really good at video games, some going so far as to make them. it's a character flaw for sure, but i prefer not participating rather than risk looking stupid.
because of circumstances, walker and i moved in with his parents for several months in 2021. a year earlier, we'd gotten them an xbox one and some games to help stave off early-pandemic boredom. they didn't get much use out of it because consoles and games are fucking complicated if you're not already used to how they work, but after we moved in, we all started playing together (i.e. shouting instructions at my father-in-law while he tried to figure out how to walk and control the camera at the same time in skyrim). we'd also gotten them forza horizon 3, since an open world driving game is kinda like traveling. we only had one controller between the four of us, but races are short, and we'd just pass it to the next person every so often. walker and i figured out the pain points and opened up the map so his parents could navigate the game more easily. we'd also push a race or two on any family member who happened to drop by.
here's the thing about racing games: driving a car in real life already requires a level of abstraction in understanding the controls. sure, the steering wheel is intuitive, but operating foot pedals to stop and go is something that has to be learned. once it's learned, it becomes automatic. then, controlling a video game car is basically the same level of abstraction. in forza, it's right trigger to accelerate and left trigger to brake, which is a pretty easy mapping for anyone who's driven a real car in real life. what i'm saying is: anyone, regardless of previous video game experience, can play forza because the basic mechanics are so easy to understand. other games require mechanical abstractions that are much less intuitive for the game-naive. as mentioned earlier, right-stick to move camera was a huge barrier for my father-in-law to play skyrim.
this is part of why it's so great to play in mixed groups; anyone can pick it up and know how to play. it's even better if you pass around a single controller since no one's lack of skill keeps them out of the fun. it's super easy to change the difficulty level per race, and the rewind feature helps if you fuck up really bad and end up in the wrong direction. because it's an open world game, you can have plenty of fun outside of races too. last time we had people over, everyone watched as one person dragged a morris minor up the side of a volcano. later, we took turns jumping really nice and really shitty cars off a huge ramp.
a few tips if you want a smoother party experience: