Game Synopsis

This year’s Horizon festival takes place in a condensed, fictionalized Mexico that’s larger and features more terrain variation than any past Forza Horizon game. We’re talking dense jungles, towering sand dunes, colorful cities, overgrown runways, Mayan temples, and an active volcano that serves as the highest point in series history. (And yes, there’s an epic driving road to the top.) The game’s basic story, Sees you as an automotive celebrity and the star guest of the Horizon festival. You’ll compete in races across four disciplines (road, dirt, cross-country, and street) while also performing PR stunts (speed traps, drift zones, huge jumps, etc. ), engaging in story missions, and hunting down barn finds.

System Requirements

The game is currently available on STEAM for $79.99 CAD for the standard edition as of this writing. An SSD is recommended for best loading time results.

Gameplay

The gameplay is crisp and more realistic than Microsoft’s last iteration of the game. Cars both handle on different terrains much more realistically (I cannot make a classic muscle car navigate a dirt track and win anymore). Changes in grip between surfaces, say asphalt and concrete are actually being felt now and causing realistic traction losses for just about any car or truck you drive, depending how its configured is how brutal those surface transfers are. The AI for the storyline is very challenging, even on the medium settings, following aggressive racing lines and pushing you and your car to limits to come in first place. There are limits to what you can get away with though, slide off track even a bit with the wrong tires equipped? your car will either lose traction and pull a 180, or in the case of AWD vehicles, slow down substantially if you don’t have the right tire equipped for that terrain. Suspension too stiff or differential and gearing over adjusted? you will notice it and pay the price. Every gain in one race type has a loss in another. Don’t expect to finish this game with one car, and don’t spend all your credits in one place on upgrades or you will pay the ultimate price of being stuck doing one thing until you amount up credits to build another car.

Graphics

Visually stunning and realistic looking, Microsoft and Turn 10 have pushed the bar of visual fidelity once again, each version of forza horizon has seen limits pushed, and Forza Horizon 5 is no exception to this trend. Driving rally tracks through the immense lush jungle they’ve created, along with the ruins will truly make your jaw drop as you kick dirt up driving by. Cityscapes look very real and alive. The sand dunes glisten in the sun as you go roaring through them leaving tire ruts everywhere. The thing that caught my eye the most was the volcano, not only is this a snowy area requiring a pretty powerful off road 4×4 and some heavy modifications, but the view from the top of that mountain is substantial. It shows the true size of the map to you and makes you stop for a moment and think about how much freedom of choice you have in what you do.

Conclusion

Overall, given how smoothly the game plays and how well it plays on a mid-range GPU, it will keep you engaged for hours. There were points where I played 6-8 hours straight without boredom. A wheel and shifter is recommended as well for those who want full immersion, just make sure you don’t install more than a 6 speed transmission in your vehicles. Some improvements in the controls can be made, but that’s up to the fine tuning of each user, not something that’s detrimentally wrong with the game. personally I set the game up to handle as close to real world as I can get it. The game in itself has been an amazing experience over the last few weeks, and even at full price I would not pass this up. Sure, there’s add ons for cars and all that stuff as usual as DLC, but to actually enjoy the game you don’t need them unless your picky about what you drive. Each person will find parts of the game they love and hate, those are decisions each player has to make on their own.

This game has earned its rating. Full Recommendation to purchase and play.