Driving Away from Imperfection, A Review of Forza Horizon 5

There are many different views on racing games. How much of a simulation it should be, how “arcade” they should be, how the progression should be and so many more questions that divide the players of racing games on various platforms. When the player base is this divided, it is hard to understand how entertaining a new game in an old franchise is. When Forza Horizon 5 came out, I was confused because of this. IGN gave it a ten out of ten review, while people were ripping it apart in different subreddits. After two years playing the game, I think I am finally ready to comment on it.

First of all, the game is not a unique experience on its own. If you have played earlier Forza Horizon titles, you are pretty much used to the gameplay loop of Horizon 5 as well. In general, driving through a significantly big open world with a rich list of cars to pick from. The formula for making a Horizon game seems like an easy one. When the open world is interesting enough to explore and the cars feel distinct from one another, it can provide countless hours of entertainment. Horizon 5 unfortunately fails one of these essential elements, the map is not interesting enough. Sure enough, the size of the map has been significantly increased compared to Horizon 4’s map but it feels like the landmarks that usually make the map interesting enough to explore has been almost completely left out or forgotten. Horizon 3 had a very diverse map with the lagoons, the forest and the city. Horizon 4 had the streets of Edinburgh and the romantic hills of the United Kingdom. Horizon 5 seems to try to balance the previous titles’ powerful sides and fails. There are diverse fields but they either feel endless or too small, the city part is built very chaotic, and the historic landmarks are not as explorable as they were in Horizon 4.

Luckily, this issue is sort of fixed with the expansions. Hot Wheels expansion is exactly what it sounds like, exploring the orange tracks of Hot Wheels toys freely, so it is one of the best expansion packs in the entire franchise, but I would say the second expansion manages to beat it. At first glance, Rally Adventure seems like more of the same experience of the base game. But it is not. Having proper and engaging rally races completely changes the play experience all together. Where the night races in the base game feels a little dull with low fidelity markers and regular racing, the game comes alive in the night runs in the rally expansion. The light of the chasing helicopter, and the instructions of your codriver create a really engaging and entertaining experience.

Picking up Horizon 5 at the beginning of its life cycle was a bit frustrating and disappointing, but over the last two years, the developers have managed to address many issues that prevented the game from achieving its IGN score at its release. I might not be able to say it is a straight ten still, but with the two interesting expansions and the endless updates, the game is much more enjoyable now.

Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

Developer: Turn 10 Studios

Platforms: Xbox One S/X, Xbox Series S/X, PC

Release Date: 1^st November 2021

Genres: Racing

PEGI: 3

Featured Picture: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/09/12/forza-horizon-5-event-lab-2/

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Teoman Kars

Passionate about video games with strong narrative, competitive and exciting games and racing games in general. Basically, a literature, music and video game nerd combined into a person.

#arcade racing #racing #Video Games