Continuing their world tour of music and cars,
Playground Games lands in Mexico,
bringing us to another outstanding location to explore and race across.
Forza Horizon 5 is stunning, packed with exciting things to do,
and offering a driving adventure
that anyone can confidently hop into and have fun with.
While there are many elements that fans will instantly recognize,
the biggest change comes with the Horizon Adventure,
which serves as the new progression system.
Not only is it structurally different from the wristbands of old,
but there’s a greater emphasis on context and storytelling
with characters that essentially serve as tour guides
and events that highlight various aspects of Mexican culture.
You need tickets to unlock Adventure events,
and you get tickets by earning accolades, which you’re given for doing pretty much anything.
In fact, the accolades screen doubles as a checklist
cataloging absolutely every aspect of Forza Horizon 5.
Whether it’s playing online, taking photos, getting drift scores, or even buying cars,
every activity you partake in is rewarded in one way or another.
Once you have enough accolades to get an adventure ticket though,
the most important missions for you to take care of are the expeditions.
Each of these story-based events sends you to a specific region of the map
where you may engage in a scavenger hunt in the jungle
or smash steam vents atop the volcano.
Once your task is done, a new Horizon Outpost is established,
unlocking an entire discipline of events
such as street racing or cross-country races.
The expeditions are fun, and it’s a pretty cool setup.
However, one oddity is that most of the game’s ramps
won’t appear on the map until you complete the PR stunt expedition.
This makes it confusing if you happen across a collectible with no way to reach it,
and it can be pretty funny if you spot other players using a ramp you can’t see.
Beyond the expeditions, adventure tickets also get you access to the ultimate races,
showcase events, and many of the game’s story missions.
Some of these story paths can go for a dozen missions or so,
and they include racing a set of luchadores,
taking photos of statues for an archaeologist,
and serving as a test driver gathering data in various conditions.
The most interesting one involves recovering a VW Beetle
that once belonged to a character’s grandfather.
You learn a bit about the vehicle’s place in Mexican car culture
and get to see it in all sorts of different permutations
as she modifies it for various events.
While there is a fair amount of chatter as you drive,
the narratives for story missions aren’t super involved or intrusive, but
they help to establish a sense of context and purpose for what you’re doing.
Horizon’s signature showcase events, which have you racing a train,
motorcycles or monster trucks,
can feel a bit shallow as the behind-the-scenes magic
always has you winning by a nose, but
they serve as bombastic benchmarks along your journey.
The audacity of these events is expanded on with some more fun ideas as well,
such as taking one of the monster trucks through an arena of bowling pins
or barreling through the countryside in a high-powered parade float in one of the new expeditions.
Other events also feature dust storms and hurricanes,
which are visually impressive at first glance,
but likewise feel lacking in terms of gameplay
as there are no falling trees, collapsing buildings,
or heavy winds or currents affecting handling.
There are tons of things to do outside of the adventure,
but what’s included here is pretty meaty.
Even if you just stick to the critical path,
there’s a fulfilling and comprehensive mix of what Horizon’s all about.
While taking photos and hitting speed traps is all well and good,
you might want to do some racing while you’re at the festival as well.
As in past games, there are four major disciplines - road racing,
dirt, street, and cross-country - with dozens of races associated with each,
including both lap-based circuits as well as point-to-point courses.
Whether you like skirting across farmland, navigating mountain switchbacks,
or flipping the lights on through city tunnels, there’s a little bit of everything here.
Track designs are all strong, but the pinnacle are the extra long runs
that unlock during the adventure, such as the Goliath and the Gauntlet.
These take you clear across the map, and last over ten minutes.
Forza Horizon 5 does a fantastic job of allowing anyone to jump in and play,
including a number of difficulty settings and driving assists to fiddle with,
allowing you to tailor the experience to your liking.
Players of any skill level can feel comfortable,
yet cars still have recognizable differences in handling, weight, and performance
that make them satisfying to drive.
However, if you’re an experienced racer looking for a fair challenge,
finding the sweet spot where you’re not blowing past the competition in the first 30 seconds or vice-versa
can take a bit of digging.
So much of your performance is really tied to picking the right car.
With more than 500 cars, there’s a wide variety of vehicles,
split into different classes and categories, but
sometimes you’ll pick a car that fits a race’s requirements
only to find it gets left in the dust at the starting line.
You can restart and quickly choose a tuning setup from the community to lift the stats,
but it just feels like the AI difficulty could be tailored a little closer
to the car you want to drive
rather than having the player swap cars until they find one that’s competitive.
Throughout the first weeks of launch, Forza Horizon 5’s biggest pain has been with online connectivity.
While it’s not a big hindrance if you’re just tearing through the campaign,
nearly every aspect of online play has been impacted -
annoying disconnect messages pop up while in the open world,
you can randomly get booted in the middle of a race,
positional data doesn’t always sync up correctly,
and events can start with too few players or uneven teams.
When things work, online can be a great time though,
with a lot of different ways to play.
You can form a convoy with friends, hanging out in the same area
or doing your own thing before starting up a race together.
You can matchmake in a random series of events in open racing.
Playground games offer fun arena-based mayhem like zombies, king, and flag rush.
Rivals allows you to pick any course you want
and challenge ghosts on the leaderboard,
and signing up for a Horizon Tour
lets you join a team of drivers to battle against a team of AI.
Two of the more distinct forms of multiplayer are Horizon Arcade and The Eliminator.
Horizon Arcade events are all based on a cumulative group effort,
working together to fill up a massive goal,
whether that means adding up everyone’s jump distance, tallying runs through a speed trap,
or searching the jungle and smashing piñatas.
With a large group, it’s brilliant since there’s a collective energy as you cross each other’s paths.
But if it’s just you and someone else, the bar barely moves, the timer goes forever,
and any effort is miserable and pointless.
The way you enter an arcade session doesn’t help, since they appear randomly on the map,
and you have to be in a particular zone when the countdown reaches zero,
making it hard to know when they’re even happening.
Meanwhile, The Eliminator fares better as you can join whenever,
and sessions start as soon as there are enough players.
The Eliminator is Forza’s version of battle royale.
Everyone begins with a Beetle and starts the hunt for better cars and competitors,
challenging other players to race until a final mad dash at the end.
It’s absolutely luck-based, depending on which cars you find,
but it’s always fun to hop in for a few rounds.
In addition to all of that, there are two forms of player-created content as well.
Super7 has you run through a series of quick challenges designed by other players.
Meanwhile, the Event Lab allows players to create their own courses
by picking a starting line, driving to set a path,
and dropping in checkpoints and props.
Some truly wild early examples
show that it can go way beyond simply tracing existing routes,
as long ramps, half-pipes, smashable targets, and all sorts of other devices
make room for players to set up tracks and objectives unlike anything in the campaign.
It will be interesting to see what else people think up, so
hopefully Playground can keep more creative endeavors rising to the top.
Rounding things out are Horizon’s seasonal events.
While Mexico’s seasons aren’t as distinct as Forza Horizon 4
blanketing the UK in snow and letting you zoom over frozen lakes,
there are still notable differences in weather patterns,
water levels, vegetation, mud, and more.
Each season lasts a week, and brings a specific playlist of objectives along with it.
You may need to smash 100 cacti, set higher speed trap times,
join specific races,
or go on the hunt for treasure chests.
Completing seasonal objectives nets you rare cars as well as Forzathon points,
although along with other online woes,
the shop where you spend those points is currently offline.
Looking ahead, the storm season sounds quite fun,
and we’re particularly looking forward to seeing the upcoming holiday decorations in action.
The strongest aspect of Forza Horizon 5 is its open world.
Driving across Mexico is not only gorgeous, running rock-solid in performance mode,
but it’s incredibly fun as the world has been meticulously crafted for you to bound over hills,
crash through jungles, and slide down the sides of a volcano.
You can get lost wandering for long periods of time without even doing any events.
Simple objectives like tracking which roads you’ve driven on
and looking for old cars in hidden barns
keep you exploring every inch of the colossal map.
Perhaps the biggest things to get obsessed with are the bonus boards.
The rewards they provide aren’t particularly special,
but there’s an allure to seeking out and smashing each one.
While most boards are placed just off the road or in a driveway,
a fair number of them are hidden down distant gullies or perched on rooftops and other out of reach places,
requiring you to find the best angle to launch yourself into them.
There’s a lot to be said for the environments themselves too.
Following a railroad track through the canyons
or exploring one of several famous ruins feels worthwhile,
whether or not you happen across any rewards in their vicinity.
After four previous tours, there’s certainly a feeling of familiarity
that can lessen its impact at times, and hopefully the online issues will stabilize soon.
Forza Horizon 5 is less of a leap forward than its predecessor, for sure, but
that doesn’t stop it from delivering an impeccably crafted world
with a staggering number of fantastic things to do
and jaw-dropping places to see.
As much as it’s a racing game, it’s also a driving adventure.
It balances chaos and precision, exploration and speed,
and it gets our wholehearted recommendation for anyone who wants to get behind the wheel.
Final score: 9 out of 10.
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