Forza Horizon 5
Although Forza Horizon 5 is made according to the same recipe as the previous parts, it should be clear that this is the best and certainly the most extensive version to date. The game offers players a lot of options, so it will probably take you weeks to see and try all facets of the game. Partly due to the arrival of the Events Lab, players have more opportunities to show their creativity, in this case by building their own tracks. That element often returns in the rest of the game. Forza Horizon 5 has a nice list of cars, although the ease with which you collect those cars is not without risk. It is made very easy for players, and that can ensure that obtaining the umpteenth fast car doesn’t feel so special anymore. That doesn’t have to spoil the fun. Rather the opposite is true; because every car has its own style and feels different, it pays to try a lot. Like its predecessors, Forza Horizon 5 is at its best when played online. Almost everything can be played in co-op or against each other and forming an online ‘convoy’ also provides bonus points. All in all, Forza Horizon 5 is a very nice racing game with an equally nice setting, because the Mexico that you find in the game is versatile and above all very beautiful.
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Gaming is a pastime that can be experienced in many ways. Sometimes you feel like a challenge or competition and you start a difficult game like Dark Souls or Hades; other times you just want to do a little building in Planet Zoo or tend your garden in Animal Crossing. You can make the same distinction within the racing genre. Anyone who starts up Assetto Corsa, iRacing or rFactor will enter it in a different way than someone who will play a Need for Speed game or Forza. One game focuses on realism and is satisfying when you manage to keep a fast car on the track, while the other is more focused on relaxation. For us, Forza Horizon, and especially the second part, stands alone within the latter category. Rarely have we had such a wonderful holiday feeling in a game as when we could tour the southern France of Forza Horizon 2. In the years since, Horizon Festival has settled in Australia and England and now, for the fifth part in the series, it is Mexico’s turn.
Anyone who often reads reviews about games from long-running series often encounters the same questions. After all, it is inherent in making successive parts that there is a challenge in the field of development and innovation. The Forza Horizon formula has not really changed over the years, but it has expanded considerably. The festival is always central. Horizon is a car party that lands somewhere and where all kinds of racers pull off spectacular stunts, drive races and have a good time together. For you as a player, this involves exploring the game world and collecting an impressive collection of cars with which you can race offline and online. All kinds of extra elements have been added over the years around that basis. For example, the online game component has expanded considerably, more different types of races and cars have been added and changing seasons were introduced, so that the same game world took on a completely different character from time to time.
Forza Horizon 5 builds on that foundation and adds some new elements here and there. An important iron in that fire is the Events Lab in which players can put together all kinds of races and minigames. The possibilities are almost limitless. It’s one of the things the makers highlight when we ask them what makes Forza Horizon 5 different from the previous games in the series. More than ever, the emphasis in this game is on what players can make themselves. Event Lab offers an extensive toolset in which all kinds of games with all kinds of rules can be made. Outside of that, however, you also encounter enough influence from others. For example, in many races it is possible to put together your own version. You can just race the ride devised by the creators and collect your credits, skill scores and experience points, but you can also drive someone else’s route or create your own. The pinnacle of these kinds of challenges is the Super 7: this is a series of seven challenges created by other gamers that, when you’ve completed them all, rewards you with a brand new car.
Those cars remain central to Forza Horizon 5. The series started out as a love letter to cars, in the form of a game. That vision of development studio Turn10 is still embraced by Playground Games today. This is perhaps most noticeable in Forza Vista, where gamers can view their cars up close and at their best. Optima forma in this case means: razor-sharp and with ray tracing, which is not used in Forza Horizon 5 outside of this mode. In any case, it ensures that the cars in Forza Vista are indeed dazzlingly beautiful.
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