There is this idea that, for a long-running series to remain as consistently popular as Forza Horizon has been, it needs to diminish itself somewhat with each new entry, gradually losing more and more of its edge in a bid to appeal to the widest possible audience.
I started playing Forza Horizon 6 hoping this won’t hold true; that Playground Games may have found a way to make a fun racing game that’s comfortable turning some people off. After 30-odd hours with the near-final build, it became clear that this was a foolish expectation.
Horizon 6 starts as confidently as each one of those games. The choice of opening song immediately communicates the tone the game is going for; a feeling it promises to make you have. The sight of the main menu’s looping shots of Cool Cars and the less cool people standing around them is iconic at this point, and it’s no less comforting.
The moment you hit ‘play’, you’re immediately thrust into the opening drive across a small part of the game’s new headline location, in this case a mix of downtown Tokyo and its surrounding rural areas. Before you know it, the game has established the vague structure of its particular competition, and you’re offered your first car.
Horizon 6 immediately makes clear that it’s still the car-collecting driving game you know, not a racing game – yes, there’s a difference. I never, at any point, felt like I needed to work on learning the intricacies of a circuit or tune my car to get through a tough race. If you’re too proud to consider simply lowering the difficulty of your AI opponents, you can throw money at the problem instead; pick a recommended car, look for a tune made by another player (though not always available pre-launch), and off you go.
Horizon 6’s world gradually opens up to you, similar to the older games. It’s pretty telling that the comparisons to past Horizon games are unavoidable, given how similar they are in most ways that mater. Though you can drive across 95% of the entire map the moment you get your first car, what’s actually gating your progress here is the new Wristband system, which is really a progress bar you need to fill by playing Qualifiers.
Every race that’s part of the Festival earns you points to push you towards the next Wristband tier. The biggest payouts are earned by winning, but even landing on the podium can be enough in the early tiers. You can supplement your points income through PR Stunts. That’s smashing XP Boards, speed cams, or trying to set a record across speed or drift zones. Festival activities are plentiful, even if they’re predictable. Naturally, the higher the tier, the faster the cars you’ll need.
The other half of Horizon 6’s let’s-find-reasons-to-get-you-to-drive-around-Japan stated mission is Discover Japan, a separate progression track that runs in parallel to the Wristband system. The focus in this one is mainly on showing you more of the world’s ten regions, while introducing the paper-thin characters who will take you through them.
Because of its unusual make-up, Discover Japan ends up being where you’re going to find the more interesting activities. There’s one where you deliver food, another that tasks you with testing the limits of freshly-restored cars, one that sends you on tours as part of a convoy and so on. They’re usually relaxed strolls through stunning locations that don’t ask much of you; racing and shaving seconds off your time is secondary.
They are, predictably, very effective at making good on the fantasy of driving cars you’ll never have the opportunity to drive in the real world, around places you’re not likely to visit. Discover also houses the more interesting race styles, including Touge, and the very exciting street races.
Sometimes, the developer finds clever ways to create analogues of long-standing features within the structure of Discover Japan. Barn Finds, for instance, have been a mainstay in the Horizon series since its inception. As you explore the world, you’ll hear rumours of certain classic cars, abandoned in sheds. Your map will then highlight a fairly sizeable radius where one of the cars in question can be found. Locate the barn and it’s yours.
Discover Japan has Treasure Cars, which instead shows you a photo of the car with certain monuments in the background, and you need to figure out the angle it would’ve been taken from and narrow down that location to find the car. It functions similarly to Barn Finds, though I found it much easier to locate those than barns, simply because the car could be parked anywhere, whereas barns are typically hidden in thick forests that require far more work to nail down.
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Like the events themselves, the menu also starts off filled with locked tiles, which gradually unlock the more you play. This has always been a clever way of preventing the game from overwhelming players. The sheer number of activities, cars, and features is simply staggering. Even as a longtime fan, the time between new Horizon releases is long enough that I am just as happy for the game to lead me by the hand there.
Horizon 6 doesn’t innovate much when it comes to the activities themselves, but Horizon Rush events are a standout new addition. These races take place in makeshift circuits – obstacle courses, really; characterised by their sharp corners, and a slight lack of clarity about where you’re supposed to go next.
Rush races require more precision than anything else I played in the game, and it’s been the only activity that actually got me to understand how my car handles, in part because your car is pre-determined. These are races against the clock that you can’t afford to treat like any other activity.
About as lively and demanding – on hardware, at least – is ray tracing, which brings the world to life in ways simply not found in other driving games of this scale. In the areas with a lot of nature and foliage, you’ll be tricked into thinking someone photoshopped a car from a video game into a real photo.
There’s a wealth of accessibility options, and though I don’t require most of them, there was one that I found useful. You can turn on a proximity radar that shows when other cars are getting close in a 360° radius. It’s incredibly handy when you want to partake in the unsportsmanlike behaviour of blocking trailing cars from passing even when they’re faster than you. It can be tweaked enough that most players will find a use for it – especially when driving in first-person.
Horizon 6 doesn’t do much to change what’s always been frustrating about those games. I’ve won many of my races at the third turn, and I’ve been equally frustrated by others where catching up to lead car(s) felt impossible, no matter what I did. I’ve seen my opponents go from the rowdy rammers of your typical online lobby, to world-class racers who never deviate an inch from the racing line – seemingly on a whim. That unpredictability is, ironically, where much of the challenge in races comes from.
If what you come to Horizon for is a space to live out your fantasies of collecting cars and driving them around stunning, real-world-inspired locations, there is simply no game that does it better. But if you wanted a little more from Forza Horizon 6; a bit of an edge or some rewarding friction, you should look elsewhere.
Reviewed on PC, code provided by publisher.
