Forza Horizon 6 Review

It'll always seem a little odd that it took the Forza Horizon series until the sixth game to find its way to Japan.Few countries on Earth command the same level of renown as Japan when it comes to automobile culture, the home of drifting, Daikoku PA, and one of the few cars to ever get Dominic Toretto out of a Dodge.Regardless of how you slice it, a stopover in Japan certainly feels long overdue.However, after playing Forza Horizon 6 for the last week, I can't help but be glad developer Playground Games waited.For mine, that's primarily thanks to the astounding step -up in map quality.It goes beyond just being the biggest or the most beautiful, which it is, no doubt.

Crucially, it's also the most credible and car -friendly, and I can't understate how much richness and believability this adds to the world itself.Every corner of the map feels like a place I can pause or park, meaning everywhere I arrive feels like a destination.And when everywhere is a destination, the journeys are almost limitless.From moment to moment, particularly while participating in races, it's fair enough to say that Forza Horizon 6 resembles past games in the series in a number of obvious ways.At its core, it offers more or less the same brand of class -based racing as its predecessors.The time it ticks down, you mash the throttle and then fight your way to the front of the pack.

It's still great racing, and I will say, I feel like I've caught the AI making more impressive, pervasive adjustments than I recall them executing in the past.Broadly speaking, however, the racing itself remains similar.On a gamepad, it all feels quite familiar too.The handling is still a successful blend of simulation -inspired elements, with a tangible sense of weight and grip, with smooth and approachable steering controls.For anyone unfamiliar with the feel of Forza Horizon, it's by no means a punishing and impenetrable driving simulator that'll fling you off the road for the mildest misjudgment.However, it's also not a point -and -squirt, pure -blood arcade racer like Burnout Paradise, either.

That said, on a wheel, it does feel like there's a very welcome increase in the amount of front -end grip, and less of that slightly skatey feel that's been present in past games.This is good news, whether you're negotiating the many many kinks and hairpin turns that characterize Forza Horizon 6's greatest stretches of road, it's impossible to choose just one because there are so many highlights this time around, or needing that responsiveness to avoid traffic on the freeway that loops around a huge portion of the map.It's at this point you might be wondering whether Forza Horizon 6 is just Forza Horizon 5 on a new map, but to claim so would be far too reductive, totally ignoring what has changed.Forza Horizon 6 arrives with an adjusted and more satisfying approach to its campaign progression, one that straddles a middle ground between the curated structure of the original and the unbridled freedom embraced by Forza Horizon 5.It's brought with it numerous boosts to car graphics and audio, resulting in the best looking and sounding cars in the long history of the series.There's been a massive increase in what's possible with the user -generated content creation tools, and we can now customise garages,

construct wild private racetracks on our personal estates deep in the Japanese countryside, and even build in multiplayer anywhere around the open world.Toge racing, open world, car meets, the implementation of a customisation feature that long time Forza players have literally been waiting 20 years for, the list of tweaks and improvements squeezed into Forza Horizon 6 is long.But before I circle back on some of these elements, allow me to explain what it is about the map itself that has me embedded in it like a tick on a hound dog.The style of Forza Horizon 6's riff on Japan should come as no surprise to those familiar with the series' history of pilfering a pile of picturesque segments of a country that otherwise have no business being directly next to each other and placing them directly next to each other.It takes a distilled and shrunken version of Tokyo City and surrounds it with rolling hills, open farmland, soggy fields, dense forests, sharp mountains, quaint villages, rural race circuits, and, overlooking it all, sweeping highlands and the Japan Alps.The blend of natural beauty and engineering spectacle is just outstanding, from the way low sun lights the patchy snow and lush fields on the fringe of the alpine region, down to the snaking multi -level ramps and freeways that loom over Tokyo's dense metro and industrial areas.

It makes no geographical sense, but it's also not attempting to.This isn't really Japan as much as it is a Japanese -themed amusement park for cars.It's supposed to look fabulous and be extremely engaging to move through, and damn if it isn't both those things in spades.Its most gorgeous Forza Horizon 6 is a total showstopper.Maybe that's gazing over the Tokyo skyline from the highest point on the map, or perhaps it's emerging from a tunnel to see the wilderness unfolding in front of you, with the freeway flanked by looming mountains carpeted in dense forest and snowy peaks rising behind them.No Forza Horizon map has nailed the sense of both natural and man -made scale quite as successfully as this one.

The fact that it accomplishes this with zero crashes and no stuttering ever is as commendable as ever.But it goes far beyond the postcard -friendly vistas, because I also find myself entranced by the smaller nuances.I'm now a week into my campaign, and I'm still consistently finding myself pausing to bust out the camera and pore over the more subtle details on display.Maybe that's the flaking paint of the concrete pylons of a tunnel that's become overgrown with vegetation to better blend into its natural surroundings.Maybe that's distinctions in the actual road surfaces themselves, from the grooved sections within tunnels to the corrugated asphalt that forms the narrow route to your large estate property to the north of the map.Maybe it's all the idiosyncratic coloured road markings stenciled on the freeways, alleys, backroads and mountain passes, where the warning paint is already scarred with the burnt rubber of bold drifters that have come before you.

Maybe it's the fact that every single parking lot I've discovered around the map, and there are many, many more than I've been able to keep track of, appears to be entirely bespoke to its location, whether that's the enormous multi -level Tokyo Drift -style one by the docks, a modest lot tucked away beneath an overpass, or just a few spots lining the front of a konbini.I would have loved to have seen a full spectrum of underground parking lots,and on that one specific note, it's arguable that Test Drive Unlimited's Solar Crown, which is based in the similarly dense Hong Kong and has many underground polished concrete parking garages complete with working boom gates, has Forza Horizon 6 slightly beat.Like Solar Crown, however, Forza Horizon 6 does feature petrol stations.They're not interactive, but they are realistically everywhere all over Japan.There's only ever been one in the whole Horizon series before.

A single outback petrol station servicing Australia's entire eastern seaboard back in Forza Horizon 3.What I love particularly is just how car -adjacent the presence of so many places to actually pause, park and pretend to fill up a car makes Forza Horizon 6's map feel.It isn't just a slab of land with some roads draped across it to drive up and down.All of these considerations make Japan feel like a world built to host cars.It doesn't just have places you can race them, drag them, and drift them.It has places you can park them, places you can pause and photograph them, places you can meet and hang out with friends around them.

Japan is a world that respects the car.Of course, Japan is also a world that respects the bicycle.But the car does not respect the bicycle.It is the natural order of things for cars to disrespect the bicycle.And Forza Horizon 6 allows that too.The cars look fantastic.

But specifically, they look more seated in the world than ever before.That's especially true in frosty weather, where they become encrusted in a rough sheen of ice and water vapor floats from the exhaust as they belch hot gas directly into the frigid air.I love the long -awaited ability to place decals on glass in the livery editor.I'm not one for ostentatious and complex vinyls on my street cars, but I do love the subtle sense of ownership imbued by the simple act of being able to create and place a couple of stickers on my rear glass.Carsound is the best it's ever been in the series.The highlight is easily the incredible and noticeably improved echoing that you get in tight spaces and tunnels, something I'm enjoying constantly thanks to the frankly antisocial and orally irresponsible amount of downshifting I'm doing in tunnels.

But there are understated improvements elsewhere too, like the faint squeak of performance brakes that have copped some punishment.I do enjoy that Forza Horizon 6 brings back the curated wristband structure of the 2012 original, and I think the overall sense of progression is considerably better because of it.With a special sealed off section of the map that's exclusively available only after you've reached the top rank of the Horizon Festival, this campaign has a really overt crescendo, more so than previous games.It works well here and it's nice to have a clear endgame and a final goal.Each wristband graduation culminates with a large -scale event which is either a traditional showcase race or a new rush event.Only two showcases may sound low, but I would argue that the rush events, which are basically giant obstacle races, remain pretty showcase adjacent.

That is, they still involve aircraft zooming around the vicinity in some capacity, you're just not racing them specifically.Showcases are just on more straightforward routes, which is smart considering it gives us a lot more time to actuallylook at, say, a giant mech stomping towards Tokyo.That one may just be the wildest showcase in the series to date.Overall, the tighter career structure only temporarily infringes on the freedom afforded to customise races that players of Forza Horizon 5 should be accustomed to.That is, while a race will initially have a set class and car theme locked, after this has been completed you can use the custom options to race it on subsequent occasions in any other car from your garage.

It's an effective compromise between a more traditional approach and the totally malleable nature of Forza Horizon 5.Playground Games did make something of the decision to have your player character arrive at the Horizon Festival as a tourist in Japan rather than an existing festival superstar, although your identity as a tourist doesn't really seem to inform much.

Make yourself at home.Whatever you need, just ask.

You're still immediately presented with a trio of pre -modified cars to start with, and while it seems like you're choosing one, you're actually gifted all three.Part of me does wonder whether using Forza Horizon 6's new aftermarket car system, where cars for sale are positioned around the world to drive up to view and purchase in real time, could have been a more immersive option.Perhaps we could have headed out to cruise Tokyo in a borrowed car to find one of our own to buy and modify.Or maybe it would have been need to have needed to take a road trip to one of the permanent racetracks on the map to say meet a local getting rid of an old project car or clapped out track day gem.The race and drift circuits on the map are oozing with grassroots motorsport charm and I love visiting them.However this is a pretty minor complaint considering how quickly and regularly you begin to accumulate cars.

Playground hasscaled back the wheelspin prize mechanic to be far less common, which is smart because I think it had gotten overused.However, credits still arrive at a decent clip and there are more hidden cars than ever before, with the most barn finds to date and nine additional treasure cars on top of them.The clues to find treasure cars are uncovered by simply driving around the map, which is just one of the many ways Forza Horizon 6 incentivizes exploring at your own pace.Technically, Forza Horizon 6 has not skipped a beat, and it runs like a titan.Aesthetically, it's the best -looking and best -sounding game Playground has produced to date, set in the most wonderfully realised map it's ever crafted, full of dense, authentic details and stunning driving roads.

It's rewarding to explore, the campaign is well -paced with a great payoff, and I simply cannot stop playing.I'll always concede Forza Horizon 3 may forever be my favourite open -world racer, because who doesn't love driving around their own backyard?But make no mistake, Forza Horizon 6 is unequivocally the best.The new standard in open -world racing is here, and it's a goddamn masterpiece.

Reviews Director Tom Marks here with Luke Reilly, our resident racing game reviewer and longtime Forza Horizon reviewer.Luke, you have reviewed every Horizon game for IGN since the first one in 2012, which is I love, love, love that sort of like consistency across the board.You review basically every racing game except for like Mario Kart for us.You are aabsolute racing aficionado and you have given our second 10 of 2026 right off hot, hot on the heels of mixtape just last week.The thing I want to dig into first, Luke, you also gave Forza Horizon 5 a 10 at the end of 2021.

That was our game of the year that year as well.So the question, I guess, is can you Forza Horizon 1 and 2 you gave a 9, 3 you gave a 9 .5, and 4 a 9 .6, and then it's been 10 -10.So, this is obviously a series you love and have held in high regard pretty much its entire time.So, like, what does a game have to do to stay that high score?How does a game like that stay a 10 from one iteration to the next for you?

I think, you know, with on our side of the fence in the media, when, you know, critics apply applying scores to games and, you know, It's like, there's so much baggage that comes with, where do you go from here?You know, if you give a game a 10, it's like, well, are you painting yourself into a corner?It's like, if you ever give it a lower score, are you saying it's worse?It's like, well, of course not, because you have to reset the bar each and every sort of time, each and every year, each and every generation.It's like, otherwise, you paint yourself into this corner where it's like, well, we gave Tony Hawk's Pro Skater two a 10, And you gave this other skate game, which is incredible, a nine.Are you saying it's worse than Tony?

It's like, no, like, don't be silly.But in this case, I couldn't think of any other reason to not give it a 10 out of 10 in this instance, because it's just so incredible at what it does.And it is just a clinic in open world racing.And a lot of it comes from just how incredible the map is.It's not until you're really in it and you immerse yourself in it that you realise justdripping with authenticity this map is as a place, and as a place for cars.

Setting it in Japan probably comes with a lot of pressure on the part of Playground Games, because people have wanted this location for so long.And it is such a globally recognized car culture and place.just visually, so they would have been under a lot of pressure to really get it right, but this map is just fantastic.It is just so fantastic to drive around, it's so fantastic to be in, it's so fantastic to explore, it's just a really interesting place to be.

This is the first time we've had a conversation at the end of one of your reviews for a racing game, and like I mentioned at the top, You are our racing game guy.I think a lot of people know you as IGN's racing game reviewer and kind of know your expertise in that genre.And I want to know, I've been dying to ask you this question on camera for a long time now.Why do you like racing games so much?What is it about it?What is it about the driving?

Like, what is it about this genre that has gotten under your skin in such a substantial way?

It stems from the fact that I just love cars.And it's always been a passion of mine ever since I was a kid.And yeah, my dad had cool cars, my uncles had cool cars.Growing up, I wasn't a Lego guy, I didn't have GI Joes, I just had Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels.And so that was my thing.And it's always remained that way.

So yeah, I'm just a big car dork.

Fair enough.

Just a massive, just a massive car nerd.And I, and I'm not, and the funny thing is about car culture is that it's like sports right?super tribal but broadly speaking my taste in cars is really eclectic like I like all kinds of stuff and that's a lot of the reason why something like Forza and it's not just Forza Horizon 6 it's it's really it's really all the forces back to the to the beginning they've always spoke to me perhaps more than any other racing game because of their really considered approach to car curation and how they really make an effort to be super global about the representation when it comes to that.All of my favorite games from the past, certainly from the 90s, were racing games.I've played them ever since.

I have hundreds.What's your taste there?What types of racing games are your kind of peak thing?What's your comfort food in that regard?And then what are just some of your favorites that you'd put on the Mount Rushmore for the genre?

I certainly lean simulation.or at least Simcade, which is a word that I kind of hate, and I never use it in writing.But it's as a kind of a catch -all term that people who will be watching this will understand.That's where I'm at.I love real cars, so real licensed cars are a big thing for me.Oh, man.

And in terms of the Mount Rushmore racing games, that is brutal.But I think first and foremost, it is Forza Horizon 3.At the time, that felt like a game that was extracted from my own brain.And it felt almost as if that I'd kind of just like willed this game into existence.Just a game, an open world game full of cars that I loved in a place that I lived in.And I didn't ever think that would happen.

Ah, far out.Driver San Francisco, that game ages like a fire.wine because that game was so remarkably insane.Such a ridiculous idea.On the Venn diagram of like racing slash driving slash action games, it's a bit of an odd one.But it is very much a driving game and it has a huge racing component.

But tell me another game where the way to win a race is to possess the souls of the traffic cars in your way and use them to crash into your opponents.It's just ridiculous.And crikey, the other two, I mean, it's hard.It's so difficult.It's such a difficult question.There's Race Driver 3 back on the PS2.

There's the original Gran Turismo, which just blew me away at the time.In late 1997 in Japan, and it came out in 1998 in the West, right?Comparatively speaking, if you take, say, Need for Speed 2, which was released in early 1997, that game had nine cars in it.When the original Gran Turismo came out, it had 150.That's just me trying to explain to, say, younger viewers or people who only got on board sort of the racing genre later on.It was such a big deal.

It was so revolutionary.Um, so influential.Um, so I think that has to, that has to go there as well.It's tough, Tom.

That's fair.That's fair.I, I, it's a, it's an impossible question to choose your children like that.Well, Luke, thank you so much for finally chatting with me about your, your racing game history and, and your preferences there.It's so good to, to dig into that with you and dig into, you know, the big old number on this review.If you want another racing game review from Luke, Screamer is, he reviewed that one.

of months ago, a very different kind of racing game, but a good one nonetheless.And if you want the other 10 we recently gave, I promise we don't plan this, they just, this is the way the cards fell this time.Mixtape, we reviewed that last week and gave it a 10, so got some back -to -back big numbers there.And for everything else, stick with IGN.