Forza Horizon 5 review: open world full of racing, is it too much?

In five editions spread across a decade, Forza Horizon’s most distinctive quality isn’t the high-fidelity visuals, a vast fleet of stylish cars, or immersive handling and acceleration. It’s the strange sense of place that I get from the environment. It’s a fictional representation of a real place, and in some cases, I never set foot in the country that inspired it. But no other runner has ever made me feel that my mental memory of a sunset on a highway, a forested retreat, or the precisely planted rows of a tree farm that pass like a thousand dictionary pages was anything more than a vivid memory.

Mexico, scene of Forza Horizon 5, is both a near-return to the series’ origins and the best open-world racing execution to date. Can Horizon was established in Colorado, and much of that state was created from what was once Mexico, after all. The arid canyons, the mountain roads above the tree line, and the rolling farmlands feel like a reunion with what Playground Games did so brilliantly, and did with an Xbox 360, nine years ago. Forza Horizon 5 is the best game in the series and a reminder of how good all of the above was. The key is knowing how to navigate the game’s extensive offerings, without drowning or being distracted by its weight.

Forza Horizon 5 instantly stuns with its jungles, swamps and beaches. All of this terrain significantly differentiates the action, sometimes within a series of races run with the same vehicle three times. Road racing can mean a lot of technical corners that require something practical, like a rally car; Or it could be on the highway, where you can take advantage of the sheer speed of a Koenigsegg, Pagani, or Bugatti hypercar.

But whichever way you choose to drive, driving in Forza Horizon 5 they supported me. The range of control and the freedom to delegate it, from a modest set of options and settings, is better here than in any other arcade or action-style racing game. In terms of usability to pick up and play, it is also better than any motorsport simulation that I play. (And the visual feedback, at 60 frames per second, is fluid and responsive enough to provide a sense of momentum without movement.) This was clear in the preview, where I found out that the races are better if I turned off the traction and stability assist.

A lighter focus is key when driving Forza Horizon 5. Only when I used the “arcade” steering did I feel like I was fighting a vehicle that was constantly trying to re-focus, as is typical in Need for Speed ​​and similar series. Standard and sim steering, even with stability assist turned on, still had enough play for me to start and continue drifts.

Driving any event cleanly and finishing it successfully, even if it’s a high-speed dive through the La Gran Caldera alluvial fan, is pretty easy. (There’s always the rewind feature, but only perfectionists should need it.) Forza Horizon 5However, in AI, which is fired hard, is where the real work lies. And unfortunately, the critical pieces I was looking for were often drowned out in a user interface and an experience that can justly be described as information overload.

Just start with the game map, which after just an hour of play already looks like the bulletin board of an overworked police detective – so many clues, where do I start? How about Las Alfueras, a point-to-point street racing event? That’s fine, but “street racing” can be deceptive because of the portion of the route that takes place on a two-lane country road. The recommended vehicle type and event performance ranking would give me a clue as to what to prepare for, but I would only learn those details once I drove to and participated in the event. Knowing those things would save me a bit of time selecting the right car and making sure it’s tuned and up-to-date before entering the race. When attacking such a large map, it is disappointing how much information is thrown at me and how little it helps me make a decision.

Nothing limits the vehicle that I can participate in in any race, but the better the car, the more enthusiastic the AI ​​competition will be against it. Then if I don’t know about the last tire setup or set I put on this trip, it’s another trip through the menus to find out. Serious racers may not mind this kind of work, but it necessarily conflicts with the play-and-play spirit that pervades. Forza Horizon 5main game loop.

Even then, the only way to really plan a race, especially against beefier AIs, is to run it a few times, understand the terrain and width of the course, and determine whether to prioritize acceleration and cornering, or pure speed to defend. against the pack in a long straight.

I don’t care about shakedown racing, but I am also very involved in racing games and ready to put hours into the task of achieving a flawless race. You should see how obsessed I am with practice, qualification, and setup in other motorsport games. The fact that I was casually wrong in races with high strategic demands seems inconsistent with Forza Horizon 5The overall laid-back tone, and especially with a map dotted with endless things to try and enjoy rapid fire.

And the map is full of detail, which is exciting, but it can kill my ability to focus. This is a bit like arguing about presenting a buffet full of delicious food. While there is a lot of value in Forza Horizon 5On the map, I feel constantly poked with mentions and suggestions, from all directions, as if two teenagers were blowing up my DMs. There’s the “New!” flag in an event, in a different series than what I’m looking for. On the way to the next stage of a story-driven expedition, a voice on the game radio interrupts with a “skill song” where my open world hooning is now worth double XP. Press X to go to the map now!

Finally, woe is me, if I cross the territory of an active Horizon Arcade event, it will automatically enter me, with its objectives and route overriding whatever it is doing. If there is a way to opt out of Arcade events until I really want to participate, I can’t find it. The minigames aren’t bad, but I’d really like to get closer Forza Horizon 5offerings with more purpose. Unfortunately, the game rarely allows me to do that.

In this way, the game’s Stories and Expeditions, the most important narrative experiences, that draw on the unique environment and themes of Mexico, can be lost in the confusion. These tours provide players with new hideouts and hubs, or offer vehicles, brilliant customization, and other cool things to unlock. But it took me a lot of willpower to go through all five stages, in a row, of an early expedition. It was a maze of distractions: a couple of level-ups led to a couple of wheel spins, which rewarded me with a great car (the 2019 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera), which, I mean, is not going to be painted or tuned by itself. I can appreciate that Playground Games leaves me a lot of room to take care of things on my schedule. But getting on the wrong side of unstructured play and then messing it up with interruptions can leave the whole game feeling clueless and disconnected.

Forza Horizon 5The two largest suites for user-generated content, the paint and livery editor and the new event lab, don’t offer much guidance either. For vehicle cosmetics, this is not a big deal, especially if you have experience with the customization tools from previous Forzas. I still had to grope through a few menus to achieve the effect I was looking for or understand what all my options meant, for example painting the wheels on my Maserati GTS.

The event lab does not have a tutorial, although it is simple enough to create and share something in it. That said, the only surface-level options I could see were placing control points, and I had no guidance on where the control points should go (before a turn? After?) Or no visibility of how wide or narrow had made them (although that may have been a flaw). The event lab really puts the “yourself” into the do-it-yourself and the polish, consistency, and challenge of a standard. Forza Horizon 5 Career is difficult to achieve with so little instruction.

I would think that much of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is at stake in my review: the need to test as much of this game as I can while writing on a deadline. Left to my own devices, I’ll probably be more deliberate about running into the main branches of the event tree and avoiding side distractions or unstructured jitters in the customization suites. The game has characters, tells stories, presents everything as part of an overall race, but its goals have no real imperative for them. So there should be no fear of getting lost Forza Horizon 5, especially since it’s on Xbox Game Pass on day one.

Even now, though, I can feel my shoulders and chest shrug at the thought of everything. Forza Horizon 5, and the difference between everything I have, with a V sound, and everything I I have – Sound F – to do. It is the difference between opportunities and obligations. The only area where Forza Horizon 5 stumbling is when I get so much of the first that they become the second.

Forza Horizon 5 is scheduled to be released on November 9 on Windows PERSONAL COMPUTER, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, with early access available starting November 5. The game was reviewed using a pre-launch download code provided by Microsoft. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.