Forza Horizon 6 review

The AAA industry should carefully study how Playground Games made Forza Horizon 6 a game for everyone. Sure, you might not like driving games, but my cheesy response: Expand your horizons. If there's ever a driving game to dip your toe in, it's this one. Forza Horizon 6 is breezy, but thoughtful. It's like being on a cruise. It's the largest meticulously planned party that will last long after the party's over—no sickness.

Isn’t it the same as the past games? It’s similar, but now subordinate activities like photography or discovering landmarks are equal to the Horizon Festival events. These activities are chronicled under Discover Japan. Photography, discovering landmarks, smashing cute food mascots, and even collecting cars earn credits, experience, and houses. I’ve rarely taken photos in these titles, and never wanted to collect every car, but I couldn’t resist the vanity of showing off my stamp card—proof of how much I’ve discovered. If I didn’t feel like racing, I still could progress.

Don’t miss the Day Trips. They’re Horizon 6's way of sharing cultural insights, similar to Horizon 5. You're given a car, join an AI convoy, and drive while listening to your tour guide announce interesting factoids. Using Auto-Drive made it feel like a real tour. I could easily focus on the trivia and stop to take pictures. This isn't high-speed gameplay. You're meant to enjoy the sights and absorb the information. You’ll participate in races after each tour, but they’re simple. I’m glad Playground continued with including cultural insights, and didn’t cave to broader, disingenuous conversations around cultural relevancy in video games.

Japan is a layup when it comes to exploring its culture, but Playground showed their commitment going deep into people, cars, and art in their marketing. They didn’t have to do that. Day Trips respects Japan's appreciation for moments of serenity and connection, and the information is insightful. I don’t think they could have done this any better. Whatever country the Horizon Festival visits next, I have more trust that Playground will add meaningful gameplay that shares respectful glimpses into that country’s heritage.

Street Racing feels closer to Need for Speed: Underground, and includes traffic which should make it more exciting, but the streets are almost empty. I counted four cars per race, on average. It's cool to race at night, but it’s boring without traffic. I’m sure Playground could explain it away by saying the races are deep into the night, but even with that hypothetical excuse, they should just add more traffic.

Quick aside: Horizon 6 has plenty of traffic during the day. Annoyingly so, really. The AI drivers are infuriating, but Playground said their day-one patch will fix it. I hope so.

Togue Races are new to Forza Horizon, inspired by real Togue racing in Japan. Think Initial D. These are nail-biting races. One mistake can cost you. Your heart beats the whole time. Even on the easiest difficulty the AI makes it close, but they always ease off the gas at the end. There's a lot of drifting, so it's not my favorite type of race, but it's fun. Togue and Street Racing might feel out of place being sequestered into Discovering Japan, especially since everything else isn't competitive, but each race includes an intro that gives context to the history of the road you're going to drive.

You'll also discover parked cars around the world that are for sale at discounted prices. They're preloaded with parts and tunes that make them ready for different types of races. It's not uncommon to find cars built for drag races next to a drag strip, for example. It's like getting a Macy's coupon: you find one frequently. It's a comparatively better way to build your car collection than endlessly grinding races and milestones.

I’ve mostly talked about what surrounds the racing because it’s the most significant change to Forza Horizon and one I hope will continue if there are more games. But the Horizon Festival features new events that build on the social functions Playground’s been building.

Expected race types return, and they're a delightful variety of skill, speed, and picturesque scenery. There's no time to enjoy the sights in an R-class; the joy is hurling a wheeled rocket through tight chicanes and open straights. In slower vehicles, it's a good time to enjoy the sights. Just watch where you're going.

Tucked in pockets around the map are new Time Attack circuits. They're addictive. These are shared-world tracks, meaning you don't load into them. Just drive on the track, and the timer starts. You can see others hotlapping, too—ghosted so you don't crash. It feels like you’re in a living world. The chance of seeing a top leaderboard driver running their hot laps makes it feel like a place to gather. I wouldn't recommend running these in a convoy, though—cars aren’t ghosted.

Playground Games also created official shared-world drag racing areas. Enter a gate, and once the light turns green, you're racing. Times only apply to the car class you're driving (same as time attack), but hopping in and out at any time feels like a dance circle.

The festival starts a little rocky, though. Typically, you're a seasoned driver aiming to be the best—like no one ever was. In Horizon 6, you're a tourist, invited by your native Japanese friend, Mei Hasegawa. She's extremely generous, your tour guide, and full of that cringey Horizon positivity. (I'll take that over negativity, but it could feel less forced).

Being a tourist gives us a new perspective on what happens before we're able to race in a Horizon Festival: You test yourself with a few races, and, once you've won enough, you're invited in. No surprise to us, we're good at this racing thing.

During the opening sequence, we're presented with Horizon franchise alumni. I don't know why. I don't remember them. I didn't know they mattered. It's odd that we should suddenly care. It feels like a high school reunion of people you hardly knew. Maybe Playground Games is preparing a throughline with its characters, but I doubt we'll see region-specific characters like Mei again after this event, nor should we. Most of their appearances are limited to just their names.

Besides Mei Hasegawa, the characters exist simply to convey information or be there so Mei's not talking to herself. Apparently, your presence isn't enough. When the characters act human, like cracking jokes with each other, it's awkward. 

And this is the worst Horizon custom character creator I can remember. The 3D models look like wax statues gone terribly wrong, and the profile pictures look very unnatural.

The premise is important, though. Joining the Horizon Festival as a tourist means you're here for the ride. It's all fun because you can choose how involved you want to be. The game is built on this subtle foundation, and that's how Horizon 6 takes all the pressure off.

Wristbands are back, and the progression system functions like Pokémon—collect cars, win races, and take on the major event to earn the next wristband. Each color corresponds to a car class. Races are restricted to that car class until you've earned enough Horizon Points to participate in a Rush or Showdown event to graduate to the next wristband.

Bringing wristbands back was the right choice. I used the same car in Forza Horizon 5 almost the entire time. I missed out on driving a lot of fun cars. Now I'm forced to try something, and I'm more appreciative. Horizon 6 reminds us that great cars and fun come at all speeds. Besides, the restriction is minimal. You can drive any class in the open world. You're also free to participate in any of the world events in any class you choose, and those earn points towards your next wristband, too, though in much smaller quantities.

The trouble with the Horizon Festival is that there aren't enough races to finish maxing out your wristband, forcing you to engage in all the small-earnings activities. It's like if an RPG ran out of main missions before the final boss, so you grind side-quests to level up. It's exhausting. The PR stunts are fun, but not when it’s the only thing left to do. PR stunts have always been good for a random distraction, not as a substitute for a main quest's experience. It's possible most people sprinkle in PR stunts along the way, but I'd contest that there still won't be enough races.

Outside of the wristbands and new world events, the festival remains the same. Cross-country, dirt, and road races return, leading to the gargantuan races I won't spoil. But if you've played the Horizon franchise, you know what you can look forward to. And they're worth it.

What I discovered, besides Japan, was how painfully bad the creation tools are. Horizon community: What have y'all been putting up with? With all the cool things I see in each game, I figured the creation tools were great. Whatever Playground does with the next Horizon (assuming there will be another), fixing creation tools must be a priority, particularly now that they've made non-racing so prominent.

Take the camera controls. Shutter speed and aperture are measured on a scale from 0 to 100. What does that mean? And how do they not affect how much light is in the photo? For a game that prides itself on car culture and high levels of detail, photography feels underappreciated. Car photography is a huge part of car culture. There's even a Discovery Japan mission entirely focused on photography. You can tune the PSI in your tires, adjust gear ratios, change downforce, but F-stops and fractions are too much, apparently. Playground might as well have labeled shutter speed as Blur and aperture as Depth of Field, because neither affects how much light enters the lens. That's exclusively handled through Exposure.

You're also extremely limited in the camera's altitude. 13.1 ft. off the ground is the highest you can go. If you wanted to take some cool aerial blur photos of cars racing around Tokyo Tower at night, you're out of luck. You'll still be able to shoot some cool pictures, but your imagination will be severely limited by what feels like unnecessary constraints.

Creating tracks is just as frustrating. I applaud every creator who's been making tracks in each game. Y'all have the patience of a monk. The only way to create a track is to drive the route. That isn't a problem in and of itself, but if you forget what route you wanted to take, you can only rewind so much. So if you get to a certain point, there's no way to rewind further—at least that I could find.  Why can't I just drag a route on the world map, test it, and if it sucks, redraw it until I get it right? This wouldn't be as big of a problem if I could rewind infinitely, but I would still enjoy less burdensome tools.

Designing garages is just as annoying. I wanted to set a panel against the back wall of the garage, and I'm tapping, scooting, twisting, and shoving it so it's not clipping into the wall. Why isn't there a snapping option? The precision camera is good, but it's not good enough for every minute detail. I don't know how anyone has the patience to mess with that, especially with a controller. I imagine it's more tolerable on PC, but no snapping tools at all? If there are, I didn't see them, which is a menu problem—a problem Forza Horizon has always suffered from.

Had I known the tools were this bad, I would have said something in my review for Forza Horizon 5. But Playground did a good job encouraging me to explore everything in this game, so I noticed it. Please, Playground, improve the tools.

Playground Games collapsed Horizon’s suite of multiplayer options into Horizon Play. That now includes their Horizon Racing, Togue Showdowns, Drift racing, Hide & Seek, The Eliminator, and the new Spec Racing. In Spec Racing, everyone is given the same random car, and you run a 3-race championship. Who's the best driver of that car? Even though it's competitive, it's low stakes. Yes, the best drivers will win, but stick everyone with a D-class car and the only difference might be whether you're using a manual clutch. It's a fun way to drive different cars, race against new people, and make more friends.