Forza Horizon 6 begins like all Forza Horizon games do: making such a massive impression with sheer excitement and scale. Turn 10 and Playground Games have always been so masterful at this. Previewing the diversity of the locale, jumping from car to car to tease what’s coming over the next tens (or hundreds) of hours, all with eye-watering beauty and natural majesty. With this game being the biggest swing at the concept yet, it was important to do it right.
Welcome to Japan. For so long, fans have wanted Forza Horizon to visit Japan in a big way. The tech has finally allowed the developers to realize that dream they’ve shared with us for so long, bringing their fictional Horizon Festival where tons of car enthusiasts, hobbyists, gearheads, tuners, drifters, draggers, and, of course, racers coalesce, some for community and others for glory. It’s like Coachella for cars – Carchella, if you will. With Forza Horizon 6 being well over 100GB no matter the platform, is it worth the size, time, and price expected for entry? Well, since we’re in Japan, let me just say: hai.
Everybody Drives
I’ve been enthralled with the Forza Horizon series since the first game tackled my native Colorado back in 2012. Being a more laid-back and arcade-y alternative to the simulation racing tones of the Forza Motorsport series proper meant more freedom and liberties could be taken with physics, design, and gameplay. It’s still grounded by the Forza ethos: car-first enthusiasm with scientific sport-like dedication. In short, it’s my, and many others’, go-to racing series for good reason.
Let’s get this out of the way: this is a racing game first and foremost. You know what you’re getting into the moment you install and launch this game. For me, the rock-solid feel expected of the Forza name is well intact. There’s weight to all vehicles, deliberate and careful movement pays off, and immense nuance exists between the different car classes, makes, and models. There’s so much to dig into across all things that it is a veritable sandbox of creativity and surgical precision. This is what Forza Horizon has done best for over a decade and it’s what it continues to excel at.
“The barriers to entry are nigh nonexistent, especially if you already have and need accessible-friendly controllers”
If you know what you’re doing, you can manually tune your car in a number of areas like tire pressure, gearing, and braking. I, however, do not know what I’m doing and let the game do the thinking for me. You can make things as complicated or as simple as you want. This means the sim fans can have a ball and those just looking for something more meaty than Mario Kart World can dip their toes in the near-immaculate pools of Forza and all feel catered to.
This goes along with the difficulty and assists you can employ, or not. Make opponents (called Drivatars) more ruthless, drive with manual shifting and optional clutch, or turn off traction control. On the other end of the spectrum, you can flip all those settings in the opposite direction. Others like a visual driving line that tells you when to brake, accelerate, and the suggested driving path can help. Forza Horizon 6 also lets you guarantee story progress regardless of what place you finish in. The barriers to entry are nigh nonexistent, especially if you already have and need accessible-friendly controllers.
You can even have your navigation helper, ANNA, drive the car for you. While this seems generally heretical to the heart of Forza, it’s yet another shining example of the game’s accessibility tools. I even used it while traveling around a couple times so I could write down notes for this very review.
Lay of the Land
No matter how you drive, there’s a bevy of events and tasks to uncover all differently flavored. You have your standard lapped circuits on enclosed tracks and sprint racing from A to B, but there’s many permutations of each. Some races are off-road, others might demand a certain class or genre of car, like rally, 4x4s, or hatchbacks. Every so often, you get to do races that are a little more fantastical than average. Most of these are relegated to Horizon Rush races or set piece events called Showcases. A couple of them outdo previous entries while others feel like retreads with a different backdrop and vehicle.
All of the above is pretty consistent across the Forza Horizon series. What makes the sixth entry stand out? Japan itself, of course.
Japan is a wondrous location for Forza Horizon, painstakingly realized in detail and scale with the series’ biggest map yet, including the largest drivable urban regions. Explorative free-roam drives are awe-inspiring whether you’re sticking to the roads or carving your own path. With different times of day, weather, and seasons to experience, you rarely ever see the same Japan for long. This is how Forza Horizon 6 feels like the most well-implemented game yet. The “more” you get with it doesn’t mean it’s bloated to bursting or empty checklist fodder. You’re sat within this racing sandbox, packed with easy-going activities and rigorous challenges alike, and told to make your own way.
“It’s a great nod to Japanese culture and they’re gamified well within Forza Horizon 6”
There are story activities to do in Forza Horizon 6 that contain the lion’s share of the game’s soul. They divulge history about Japan’s connection to car culture and community, like the fabled Touge races. You hear about the drifting gods that made their names on winding mountain roads and inspired watershed Japanese media like Initial D.
Day Trips through various regions of Japan are enamoring. You can see and learn about Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing, and the history behind Daikoku Parking Area and its importance to Japanese car culture. Naturally, you also get background on the cars being driven which is neat. One of my favorites was a tour through the mountains and foothills of Sotoyama. Driving on its paths carved through snow that dwarfs you and the 1967 Lamborghini Miura you’re in stuns. They’re like curated museum tours with the sound of spinning tires and scent of spent fuel. These were my favorite experiences in Forza Horizon 6 and set a new standard for future games across the genre.
On the more lighthearted side, I love the inclusion of mascots to “collect” (read: drive into). Each of Japan’s 10 regions has a different kawaii food-based mascot to find. This is in addition to the fan favorite XP bonus boards. Mascots are big in Japan. Some cities and towns have their own mascots often with a full suit, lore, and art campaigns for promotional purposes. It’s a great nod to Japanese culture and they’re gamified well enough within Forza Horizon 6 to make them fun to pursuit.
Aural Candy For Your Trip
Another big way that Japan is shown off is through the music. This might be the best overall representation of its chosen locale yet. We get Gacha City Radio, fully dedicated to pop and rock artists from Japan, a first for the series. There are some pretty fresh and amazing tracks on this station, hosted by a DJ that only speaks Japanese. This shows just how uncompromisingly far Turn 10 and Playground Games wanted to go for immersion’s sake.
Other series staple stations are also littered with popular music from other Japanese bands and artists. International faves like BAND-MAID and BABYMETAL rock alongside Western hit-makers and indie darlings like Turnstile, Snõõper, and Poppy. For the hip-hop heads, Japanese artists GAGLE and RIEHATA rap it up with Little Simz, Slick Rick, and Atmosphere. Aside from these genres, driving through Tokyo during rainy nights while listening to evocative synthwave and lo-fi on the Wave station is transcendental.
Horizon’s Got Heart
That’s primarily what Forza Horizon peddles: vibes. Each game has a particular one it’s going for. Many overlap of course, but there’s a certain feel to each one. Horizon 6’s Japan demands inhibition. You must allow yourself to do the things you never could or think you could do in real life. Even the stuff that’s analogous to real life, like being a food delivery driver, carries a sense of whimsy. You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen on your route that turns a mundane gig economy job into a core memory.
It also demands respect. Japan is a prestigious place when it comes to car culture, and Forza Horizon 6 displays it, the cars, and the art of driving all with utmost regard. It’s a beautiful thing. Those feelings translate to the personal experience well. My mouth waters upon being offered a pearl white Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI. My chest tingles when I sit in the Lamborghini Huracán again after years away. And my curiosity piques when I get an exotic hypercar or oddity I’ve never seen in my life. I was even “Built Ford Tough” when using my F-150 Raptor R which managed quite well in dirt races.
The game respects you, too. Every race is an opportunity to learn, a puzzle to solve. It has knowledge checks that expect you to do your best when played on average difficulties. When you figure it all out, you receive a great sense of accomplishment that has you leaning back in your chair and audibly exclaiming once you blur past that finish line.
#FasterTogether
Multiplayer was tough to test in earnest during this prelaunch period. I was able to get into a couple Stunt Parties and have some fun blasting my Ferrari SF90 Stradale through speed traps and zones together among other things. Minor testing of matchmade racing with a couple others was also possible. Pretty solid netplay held up the experience quite well
Historically, Forza Horizon games have had super fun and foundationally strong multiplayer and online with something for everyone. Play hide and seek or take part in battle royale eliminator races. Sometimes, the most fun is roaming together as a convoy and make your own rules. You can set up races so everyone’s in the same car with identical specs for a true battle of skill. Better yet, let people drive whatever they want for maximum showboating. New to this game are head-to-head Togue races that I can’t wait to try out once the game launches and blossoms like sakura flowers in spring.
Chips in the Paint
Quality of life has made great strides in Forza Horizon 6. I love that you no longer pay credits to fast travel or change cars via delivery when free roaming. You can get to practically any node for a race or PR stunt in seconds as long as you’ve driven by it before.
On the other hand, the series still stubbornly holds onto the past with some choices. Not being able to upgrade (or downgrade) your cars before you start an event is still baffling to me. When you start an event, you can change your difficulty settings and assists. You’re allowed to tune your car, but you can’t adjust the parts that affect your car’s class rating. You can even buy a new or recommended car for a specific event before it starts. You must go to a garage to do anything that makes sizable changes to your rides, though. This turns a quick 20 second tweak into a couple minutes of loading.This is especially annoying when you’re retrying tougher races (and there are a few of them). I imagine there’s a technical reason why this isn’t possible and hasn’t been implemented for ease.
“While no matter what platform you play on, Forza Horizon 6 will stun and amaze”
A better way to filter completed events from your map would also be great. It gets incredibly crowded toward the end. If you’ve gotten first place on a festival event, you probably don’t want it cluttering up your map. You can filter your map to show incomplete events, but the problem with that is it includes rival races, a ghost racing mode for each race, so the same event node will show if you haven’t completed that race as a festival event and a rivals race. I also wish the handy What’s Next menu option that recommends things to do next could be customized. Enable it to show only events, PR stunts, or the easier-going discovery tasks to fit the mood.
While no matter what platform you play on, Forza Horizon 6 will stun and amaze. PC seems to have a considerable edge over Xbox Series S which shouldn’t be surprising. Not only is the fidelity potential much better, but less visual oddities are encountered as well. On the Series S, there’s odd shimmery reflection and artifacting that can be seen when looking at foliage with water behind it. You can catch the shimmering on some course maps before entering an event as well. PC did have some reflection weirdness of its own with wet asphalt sometimes going flat and reappearing during races, but it was much less prominent. These are simple issues that don’t detract from the game much. You might not even see them as they could be patched out with the quickness of an R-class car.
A Luxury Experience
Forza Horizon fans, I’ll keep it real with you. Not a whole lot has changed, but if you love the consistently immersive mechanics and good vibes these games go for, you’ll be treated well. The additions with Horizon 6 are measured and purposeful and without bloat. Without giving away much, it’s also a big culmination of the series where every game before it leads to the end of this game. It’s hard to tell where the series can go from here as this actually feels like a sort of end to it. But Xbox is insatiable, and Turn 10 and Playground Games have a lot of creativity and tons of places around the globe to visit.
I really enjoyed my time with Forza Horizon 6 and there’s still so much more to come. More cars, two big expansions, lots of events and themed series, and so on. It feels leaps ahead of the past games in some ways. All the previous Horizon games were already stunning examples of graphical and gameplay excellence at their time of release, but this genuinely feels like we’re on the precipice of a new era for the series. Add in that PlayStation 5 players get to join in on the fun as well later this year and it just feels like a nice victory lap.
Verdict
Forza Horizon 6 is massively impressive in scale, fun, and cultural importance. The series has grown with the times and the technology makes this new entry a pinnacle for arcade racing. There’s not much to get in the way of its enjoyment with tons of accessibility and difficulty options, and you’re hard pressed to find someone unable to Forza their heart out. Not even minor technical issues can blot out the light from the Land of the Rising Sun, but some functional decisions can still be improved on. It still comes with a high recommendation for any racing game fan as long as not having turtle shells and Italian plumbers isn’t a deal-breaker.
Score: 8/10
Review code provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PC and Xbox Series S.
