The games from the Forza Horizon series have found a winning formula. Unlike sports titles that people criticize for being identical year after year, Forza largely avoids such criticism because it doesn’t come out every year. However, when you play each subsequent Forza in a series, you notice how they all follow the same mold. In the last decade, the series has conquered the genre of arcade rides, and in this dominance, there is no need to come up with new ideas. It’s enough to move the festival to another location, add some little things and there’s a reason for a repeat run that will be enjoyed by millions of players.
| Initial price | Reviewed version | Reviewer copy |
| 70€ | PC | Provided by publisher |
So it is with Forza Horizon 6, which means this should be an easy review to do. I can minimally modify the thought from the review for Forza Horizon 5 and write: everything that I praised in the fifth part, I can also praise in the sixth part, and everything that I objected to for that game, I don’t like in this new one either. However, the new Forza is €10 more expensive than the previous one, and the same tricks used for the sixth time are now slowly starting to look worn out.
The opening plot actually promises a different approach. We don’t start the six as a driver who is guaranteed to appear at the festival, but first we have to qualify for it. Even better: we came to Japan without pennies and a car to drive the qualifications with. In the very introduction, the game alludes that we can earn money by delivering food around Tokyo, and I immediately thought that it was an unexpected way to start a Forza game. However, it turns out that doing the so-called Raku Raku food deliveries is an optional set of missions, and not having a car is solved by the game giving you not one vehicle, but three at once. Like, choose the car you want to drive, but don’t worry – all three cars are yours!
This is where the famous Oprah Show begins, in which cars are given away with a fist and a hat. Not only did I get three cars for free for the three qualifying races, but I also got three new cars after those qualifications. Then the game informed me that it was giving me an extra car as a thank you for playing Forza Horizon 5. On top of that, I got a reward for just qualifying for the festival, spun the wheel of fortune, and voila – here’s another car to give away. I thought to myself that it would be correct to buy at least one car out of the eight that they gave me for my eyes. So I buy the first vehicle I see and guess what, seriously try to guess what happens. Of course the game for buying the first car rewards me with another car! After barely 30 minutes of playing, I had ten cars in the garage… even though I didn’t have a garage at all!
I know, I know – it’s that kind of game, and I guess the new generations of players love that dopamine rush when someone gives them stuff without having to work hard for it. Fortunately, it is the worst in the beginning, because later the amount of donated cars starts to decrease. However, it still bothers me that in FH games, the furious vehicle can be reached without any effort, practically within the first hour of playing. There is simply no sense of progression towards higher categories of vehicles, there is no such thing as upgrading the car for some important race. Whenever something is important in Forza, the game itself chooses what you drive.
If anything, at least Forza’s sense of directed racing is still top-notch. Tracks and races take place in various environments and in different conditions. Everything is always arranged so that you notice attractive sights while driving: an impressive mountain in the distance, a rain-drenched city, etc. Whether it’s street racing or off-road competitions, Forza Horizon 6 makes the most of its map in interesting ways. And besides, there are spectacular showcase races that are scripted, but still impressive and come in handy to break up the monotony. One of these has you racing against a giant mech – when was the last time you did that in other driving games?
Japan is the main star of Forza Horizon 6 and Playground Games, as usual, has surpassed itself in creating an interesting map. They weren’t lying when they said that Tokyo is the biggest city we’ve seen in FH games so far – you definitely get the impression that you’re in a city environment, and not just in a slightly larger settlement. Of course, there is no question of any kind of authenticity, especially not in the traffic segment, but in the context of a Forza, you can feel the difference compared to previous maps. Just drive through the urban parts of the map where you will see a wonderful network of overpasses, or on winding mountain roads where you can easily land if you go too fast.
Players are treated like tourists in FH6, and a good part of the activity is put under the motto “Discover Japan”. There are missions where you get to hear short tidbits about Japan, then you go through a drifting school and stuff like that. Unlike Mexico in the top five, here the location is more pronounced through local, Japanese music, so the atmosphere of Japan in Forza Horizon 6 is overall well affected. However, you are probably more interested in how it drives in Japan than the atmosphere.
And the driving model is identical to the previous games. This means a good sense of speed and almost non-existent physics when destroying things. If you didn’t like the fact that the fences, posts and trees in Forza are as solid as styrofoam, you won’t change your impression even in the sixth. Likewise, the AI settings when racing against computer opponents still feel like they are designed to artificially keep the tension of the race. The influence of the draft is sometimes non-existent, and opponents who drive the entire race without a mistake somehow leave a chance for you to overtake them in the last corner. It’s comforting that you have plenty of difficulty settings to choose from, but I think the most fun racing is found when playing against other players.
Like all Forza so far, this one has a lot of content that can be played in various ways. If this is your first Forza game, it will all be new to you and you won’t mind complaining about the lack of novelty. However, if you only “extend your driver’s license” in the six, I have to admit that apart from a fresh place to drive, I don’t see anything new that I would describe as significant. One of the selling points is the return of seasons that change the map, but for some reason in 15 hours of playing the map only changed once, I didn’t notice any difference or see when the next season was supposed to occur. Maybe it’s a bug and maybe he just missed an important part of the game, but I can’t comment on the changes of seasons in Forza Horizon 6 at all.
Then let’s see other news… From now on it is possible to arrange houses and garages by buying a bunch of things and then stacking them so that others can visit them. I know some players will appreciate this, but I don’t really feel like playing garage decorator in a racing game. It seems to me that this feature is designed to keep players playing after they have collected all the cars, as an additional segment to spend virtual money. It’s optional, so I have no reason to protest, or as my colleague Dominik would say – it’s certainly a good thing when you can put a dinosaur in the garage (to guard the cars). However, if my interiors were to be arranged, I would play The Sims, not Forza.
The rest of the novelties are smaller, so I will just list them so that you can judge for yourself whether they are even worth the news.
- Touge races are a new type of 1v1 showdown on unlit, narrow and winding roads
- Spec Racing Championship is a new multiplayer mode in which everyone drives the same car with the same performance through a series of three races
- Car Meets serves as a gathering place for players whose cars you can view in the parking lot and download their visuals – and that’s pretty much it.
- The LINK skills system in multiplayer brings connected scoring with other players, for example, if you drift close to another player, both you and he get additional skill points
- on the in-game billboards you can see your achievements in multiplayer
- an autodrive option has been introduced for free driving, so you can tell the car to drive itself and then scroll through TikTok
To be honest, it’s not exactly a news list. We have been waiting for the new Forza for almost five years, it costs more than the previous one, and it brings less novelty than the sports games that come out every year. But on the other hand, the main novelty is the new map and everything in the game revolves around it.
On the technical side, Forza Horizon 6 is an impressive game, just like the last three parts. In addition to the visual appeal through the directed and romanticized shots of Japan, the game boasts a wealth of details, effective destruction of the environment, realistic lighting… I think we can finally say that the impressive depiction of Japan from the decade-old Driveclub has been surpassed.
The game looks equally good when using classic rasterization and when using raytracing. In some parts of the game (eg in Tokyo) better reflections are clearly visible with raytracing on, but even without it the game looks great. It’s a bit strange, with raytracing, my mirrors were active only with the camera from the cabin, while in all other versions they were black, which is probably a bug that will be fixed quickly. Other than that, I didn’t notice any other anomalies nor were there any crashes in the PC version.
I would say the game is pretty well optimized. With the combination of GeForce RTX 4070 and AMD Ryzen 9700X, I got a stable 60 fps at 1440p resolution with Extreme details without raytracing, while even with enabled raytracing on ultra details it was possible to play at 60 fps with the DLSS Quality setting. On consoles, there are also options to play in 30 and 60 fps, even on the Xbox Series S model.
That’s what Forza Horizon 6 is like for you – another foreign country, another familiar routine. If you expected just that and nothing more, there’s no doubt that the Japanese chapter of Forza will keep you occupied for quite some time. If you were hoping that exotic Japan might bring something different from the festival format that we used in the previous five games, that obviously didn’t happen.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem because Forza Horizon 6, despite the lack of novelty, is still the most entertaining and the most comprehensive open-world arcade racing game. But if you’ve spent the last ten years with Forza, chances are that you might feel a little tired of the material with this part in particular. The effort of the developers to deliver a fun game is visible, but it is also visible that they are trying to push the same formula for the sixth time. So even though this is the richest and most diverse Forza to date, it is difficult to continuously experience it as such. That’s why players who have just started driving this series or haven’t gotten to know it yet will find more fun in the six.