It matches up to the rest of the experience, which feels like the hand of developer Playground Games cranking everything up to eleven - or twelve, given the previous entry already felt like it was breaking the volume dial.ĭespite that feeling of a game that is throwing absolutely everything at you, Forza Horizon 5 is no less friendly. Weather has received a significant boost across the board this time around, in fact. But in this instance, Playground Games keeps finding new tweaks and new ideas, most stunning of which in this game are dust storms and tropical storms which aren’t just visual punctuation, but hazards you can actively drive into or avoid. This is rare by this point a developer is usually phoning it in or straining against a lack of ideas. It’s huge in scale and scope, glittering in its beauty, and still impressive in its ambition despite this being the studio’s fifth outing. Forza Horizon 5 is a more inherently video-gamey expression of that idea, though, where simply seeing these gorgeous environments is arguably as thrilling as power-sliding a supercar around their roads.įorza Horizon 5 doesn’t mess about. Manage cookie settingsĪs graphical fidelity gets better, the concept of ‘digital tourism’ becomes more attractive - something which Xbox has already enjoyed success with in Flight Simulator. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. I imagine it’s brilliant for those who live there just as Horizon 4 was for me, but it’s also magical for those who have never even been there. That in turn changed my perception of the fifth Horizon, which I think does an even better job of representing and channeling the culture of its setting, Mexico. This didn’t really sink in for me until I played Horizon 4, a game set in my home country that therefore spoke to me every subtle detail and winking reference was understood. The world itself is arguably the most prominent character of each game. This is actually probably the thing I’ve come to love most of all about Forza Horizon as a sub-series.

Many things activate this bit of the brain, like over-the-top set-pieces and silly motoring stunts - but an enormous chunk of it is about one thing: the game’s world. Part of all that is how each vehicle literally feels as it cruises around its open world map, but a bigger part of it is that nebulous, difficult-to-describe thing the game activates within you. For my money, this spin-off series has built its reputation and quality around different foundations. But its heart isn’t really about just racing at all.

Forza horizon 5