In almost a decade, the Forza Horizon series has seen a lot of growth to bring it to where it is today. From a story centred around a festival tournament to having that festival be the backdrop for everything that happens, it’s safe to say that these days, the Horizon Festival is more about driving experiences than racing ones. Though there’s still plenty of races to enjoy.
Packing up the festival from the cosy, quaint UK and bringing it to Mexico for the first next-gen Horizon experience was certainly an interesting move, but one that definitely works. The world is full of diversity, with deserts, jungles, canyons, farmland, and more forming to create a cohesive landmass full of verticality – including that massive mountain that you can take a car up from any side if you fancy a bit of an off-road challenge (with some great winding roads if you’d rather not).
Dotted around are various towns and villages, with the largest of those being a great rendition of Guanajuato. The tightly packed city that’s pretty maze-like offers a lot to see while driving around it, again with the same kind of verticality that’s around the rest of the world.
Each Forza Horizon game has had its own progression systems in place. So how is this one like? Combining the expansion aspects of Horizon 3 with the objective-based collectathon that was the progression of Horizon 4’s LEGO Speed Champions expansion, everything you do can net you accolade points, which build to unlock the next chapter of expansion. Each time you get to a new chapter, you can either open up another base or expand one you’ve already opened.
To open a festival site, you’ll be going on an expedition – which are less open than what I hoped they would be, but still offer up some fun. One will task you to head up the giant mountain during volcanic activity, with another seeing you storming around hills in a parade float. Upon completing one, the rest of the events tied to that Festival site unlock. For instance, Horizon Baja sees all the cross-country events open up. Upgrading it will then open up a showcase, a new story, and the final event.
Stories are the same as they appeared in Horizon 4, but with a few changes. You still have a singular objective to aim for and get rated out of three stars for how well you do. Once you’ve completed one, the icon will move to be near the next challenge, which cuts out the driving to the start destination that plagued the Horizon 4 stories.
Some of these stories also have multiple choices to select from, so you can choose whether to take on a rally course or rack up a load of skills in a VW Beetle. Whichever choice you go for, the other will still be open to play at any point throughout the story or even after it’s complete. This also means that stories aren’t locked to being ten chapters, with some having as few as three.
There’s a great range of tracks here, with a number of circuits and marathons that will take you all around this world. They’re all open choice this time, so you can tackle them with any vehicle you want. The game will then tailor the opponents to the class and category of vehicle you chose. It creates a fair balance of allowing players to experience all these races in what they’re comfortable with – unlike stories and showcases where the vehicle is locked per event.
The accolades do hold optional challenges across all race types (and PR stunts) so for someone who wants to test their control of vehicles they aren’t used to, those are a good way to do so. The Festival Playlists also offer such challenges. Unlike in Horizon 4, where only certain events had you limited to what you could choose, all the events have such limitations this time.
What that does mean is you might miss out on a few owing to not having the correct vehicle and little funds to buy what you need. For those who don’t know, the Festival Playlists are seasonal events tied to the seasonal rotation of the game. Each season lasts a week, with a number of challenges to complete in order to get reward cars. Some of these cars will be rare, such as those only obtainable through wheelspins, while others will be more common. The good thing is that not all the challenges have to be completed to get the highest reward, so it’s okay to miss a few things.
The Horizon series excels at being a driving game. A game to just mess about with cars. And now there’s more options for those who like to tune them, with up to 10-speed gearbox options, more tyre options, and some crazy engine upgrades with certain vehicles. As before, this one has all the information on what changing each part of the vehicle will affect, so even novices to tuning can feel like they have some idea of what they want to achieve should they take a look.
Creativity also includes the livery editor, but this one is more difficult to get into. While there’s a lot of options to place shapes onto the vehicle, and layer and modify them how you want, it takes great skill to make anything beyond basic. If you take a look at what others have shared, the detail that some go to is insane, with Sonic the Hedgehog faces, intricate artwork, and more that would have taken hours to fine-tune and get right.
But it’s okay, since you can just search for a livery and it’s possible that someone has made it. Then you can download it to apply to your car, and perhaps even give a bit of kudos to the person who created it. The same goes for custom races as well, and it is here that things get a bit more interesting.
Super 7 was the start of Horizon 4 introducing custom props into races. It was its own dedicated challenge mode, but it was a start. Now, all of that has been implemented into the custom races, meaning you can create bridges over roads and rivers, implement jumps where none exist, and even go crazy in having a dinosaur invasion. There’re also barriers, meaning you can now guide racers in the right direction. They might not be as solid as those in official races, but they’re good enough. Especially when there’s a prop limit to contend with.
The Online activities of The Eliminator – Horizon’s battle royale mode, Horizon Tours – that pit a team of players against the highest difficulty of AI drivers, and Horizon Arcade – minigame events that task players to work together to achieve the target set are enjoyable affairs, too. Regular online racing depends on how much racing etiquette abuse you can put up, with bashing others out of the way usually being seen with them. Fortunately, you can convoy up with friends and all join the same races to avoid such (or enjoy the chaos such brings knowing you can laugh about it over voice chat).
There’s a lot of content to start with in this game. Over 550 vehicles, over 60 races, a lot of PR stunts (now with trailblazers that were introduced in Horizon 4’s expansions), and around 10 stories. And that is just to start. As with Horizon 4, players can expect new stories to be added, new vehicles to mess around in, and perhaps additional races and other events, too.
With it being on Game Pass, you can’t really say no to trying it out for yourself. Except for that massive download size, of course. For anyone who loves driving around, messing about in cars, or getting to some serious racing, I can easily give this a recommendation to you. The music has a great range of styles on offer, so you can enjoy whatever radio station you prefer while enjoying the delights of Horizon Mexico.
Images Taken From:
Forza Horizon 5 (Original Screenshots)
