Most players probably won’t spend their first several hours in Forza Horizon 6 hurling a twin-turbo rear-wheel-drive Cadillac XTS limousine through Japan like blood pressure medicine slamming through the small intestine. But they should consider it. There might not be a better car to illustrate what makes FH6 a great driving game—unfettered ridiculousness. The engine-swapped Caddy limo is audibly offensive and mechanically stupid, but it’s also fun as hell to drift past a Lexus LFA on the touge with. And like the newest open-world Forza game that launches on May 19 (or May 15 for those who pre-ordered the Premium Edition), it’s super easy to get into.
The first 20 minutes of FH6 are as cliché as they can get. The game starts as you speed down a cherry-blossom-covered road in Japan in a Nissan GT-R NISMO, racing wheel-to-wheel against a Honda NSX beneath strings of carp-shaped windsocks through a small village, only to meet a Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed train at the exact moment you make the turn. Just like in previous Horizon titles, the intro plays like a teaser trailer, this time ending behind the wheel of the Toyota GR GT as you arrive at the Horizon Festival while jets fly overhead. It’s a healthy appetizer for the gorgeous depiction of Japan, but very few moments after the prologue are as rapidly full of trains, planes, and cherry blossoms.
It Takes a Village
Instead, FH6 spreads its mountains of content thinly across its version of Japan. Most of the time you’re racing, but there are plenty of distractions along the way. While the Festival is the heart of the campaign, where players compete in smaller events to earn an invite to the big show, I’d argue that’s not really the most fun way to play. Beyond the touge lies an economy built around shared tunes, garage layouts, paint jobs, and auction-house bidding. If enough people like and download your stuff, your bank will swell with credits.
We even participated in a community event that felt more like a street takeover, as we joined a group of lifted Ford F-250s to cause as much destruction and property damage as possible near Shibuya Crossing. And if there are two things my custom limo can’t do, it’s speak Japanese or apologize.
Playground Games
With more than 550 cars available at launch, winning races is only one way to collect them. You can follow a dirt road to a hidden barn and discover an abandoned Toyota 2000GT. You can unlock cars and decals by smashing through some 200 roadside mascots shaped like edamame, ramen, and other Japanese foods. There are side missions built around food delivery, used-car shopping, and helping characters expand their garages. It’s certainly more interesting than punching trees or harvesting carrots, which are popular in other open-world games.
Big New World
The new Time Attack events are kind of addictive too. Some of the best fun in FH6 comes from those more road-course-like challenges, which are surprisingly difficult and genuinely exciting to drive. What gets me is that despite the world of Forza being this open, chaotic circus, the Time Attack course disrupts playtime by making hundredths of a second matter. And my favorite part about these is that at the end of a lap, the leaderboard appears on a real billboard at the track instead of as a UI overlay.
Playground Games
Not everything feels so immersive, however. NPC traffic deserves a patch. Cars corner awkwardly, often without visibly turning their front wheels, giving them the weird, dead-eyed movement of horses on a mall carousel. Traffic is also far too sparse, especially in Tokyo, where the roads should feel jammed with black Toyota Alphard taxi vans. That said, it’s refreshing not to see the usual video-game traffic slurry of Ford Transit Connects, Crown Victorias, and Volkswagen Beetles driving to nowhere. In FH6, traffic includes cars such as the Honda e, which you can actually buy, modify, and drive yourself. Granted, it’s still a little strange to see so many Jeep Wrangler Rubicons crawling through downtown Tokyo.
Better Than Horizon 5?
Both Forza Horizon games are fun to look at, but there’s no denying Japan has an advantage over the arid-desert in FH5’s Mexico. It’s not that one has better graphics than the other, but the new game has better variety. Japan gives FH6 more opportunities to show off, with its snow caps, bigger cities, and bamboo forests. Some things, however, seem identical. I couldn’t tell the difference between photo modes, though FH6 adds a drone and auto-drive feature that make staged shots with friends easier to pull off.
Playground Games
Customization is a similar mix of new and old. The preview trailer showed a Miata with turbos mounted where its pop-up headlights should be, which we expected to be some wild new customization option. It isn’t. That level of modification doesn’t exist across the board; it’s just a special car. Many cars still rely on familiar wheels and body kits carried over from previous games, and some details remain oddly limited. Even after upgrading the exhaust on a car, the mufflers can still look stock. Peek underneath your ride as it soars off a ramp, and instead of mechanical detail, you’ll find a flat black abyss.
Playground Games
The UI, however, is a genuine improvement over FH5. There’s now a “What’s Next” page, which answers the question most players were asking while drowning in FH5’s seasonal menus. At least for now, FH6 doesn’t immediately shove you toward an event that requires DLC. It gives you a choice of activities and makes it clearer which ones are tied directly to the campaign. For longtime Forza players, that’s a godsend. Thank you, Playground Games, for making the mountain of content easier to digest.
Ranking Up
The progression of the campaign is delightfully “play at your own pace” rather than a roadblock. While we were unable to compete in every event with the Caddy limo, because some events must be completed with a predetermined car, we could just as easily upgrade its performance to keep it competitive for the more difficult races. Thankfully, completing the story doesn’t force you to give up the car you just spent over 100,000 credits upgrading. As you complete Festivals, you earn a new wristband. There are seven total, but we never felt like we were missing out by not dedicating every moment to the story.
Playground Games
Outside of the campaign are smaller challenges to progress through. My personal favorite is Yuji’s Auto. It’s similar to the “Menu Books” in Gran Turismo 7, except it’s actually entertaining. Yuji, the local wrench, offers a technical background and history of the cars he’s purchased and upgraded. You’re essentially helping a friend with a ride to their next Facebook Marketplace purchase, and you must return to their garage without damaging it. Successfully do that, and you’re rewarded with an upgraded version of the car, which you then race and get an instant taste of what better brakes, suspension, and turbos can do. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but it feels like a nod to Wangan Midnight, the Japanese anime about high-speed Tokyo expressway racing, and its legendary “Tuner from Hell,” Jun Kitami.
What’s Old is Old, Again
The radio and dialogue are less of a throwback to Japanese car culture and more of a reminder that Playground Games is based in England. For a game this visually committed to Japan, it is a bit jarring to keep hearing things like “let’s get cracking” instead of a more local flavor. The radio hosts and characters you meet are sometimes way too bubbly and try too hard to sound like car enthusiasts. I suppose the same is true for meet-ups in real life, but thankfully, there’s a solution to this pain: the slider for voice volume goes down, while engine burble and exhaust bark from the big-block Caddy limo go way up. There is a Japanese radio station with a Japanese-speaking host, but the other channels sound too much like an infomercial for Cadbury Eggs.
FH6 still runs on ForzaTech, an engine that has been around long enough to qualify for historic plates. And it shows. The interior camera view and steering-wheel movement are dull and robotic. The handling physics of individual cars is less about exactly replicating how a Caddy limo handles and more about how much tire smoke comes out while sliding it. Although it’s difficult to feel a major difference from the last game, a new “Simulation” steering mode has been added, which lessens some of the dull, understeer-prone feel. It’s great that Forza continues to use years of cars and content as a foundation for new stuff, but even its newest game looks old at times.
Playground Games
This garage layout was created by MissCoffeeholic.
The new garage editor is another dangerous time sink. Players can build elaborate shop spaces, share them, and earn credits when other players download their layouts. There are already Jurassic Park-themed garages and shrines to Nissan Silvias from others reviewing the game, and I can’t imagine what will be available to download the week after launch. The estate editor brings that same freedom to your surrounding property, where you can build full-on racetracks for you and your friends to enjoy.
Playground Games trusts it has built a Japan worth exploring. That’s risky, because sometimes the freedom to do whatever accidentally ends up being overwhelming and boring, but Forza Horizon 6 makes a strong case for letting players build their own adventure. And to their credit, they’ve done a much better job this time plating all the insane things to do in the game. Did I mention the Caddy limo is capable of short bursts of flight?
Playground Games
That said, FH6 isn’t without some obvious imperfections. The traffic needs help, the dialogue would do well to tone it down a notch, and we wish the entire game could be as over the top as its first few moments. Still, the latest Horizon installment is difficult to stop playing. It understands car enthusiasts to a fault. It knows not all of us are interested in setting the best lap times as much as we’re into decorating cars with Dino Nugget wheels.
The result is one of the most fun virtual drives we’ve had in a long time. FH6 will feel familiar to returning players, but the improvements and new content also make the Horizon Festival a fun place to party. Especially if you show up in a limo.
Playground Games
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Austin Irwin has worked for Car and Driver for over 10 years in various roles. He’s steadily worked his way from an entry-level data entry position into driving vehicles for photography and video, and is now reviewing and testing cars. What will he do next? Who knows, but he better be fast.