#Forza 5 review series

It is good fun and delivered with the kind of sterile but well-natured charm that underpins the festival. Nighttime sprints to the city of Guanajuato or, more outlandishly, a downhill tear down the side of that active volcano after hunting out hot spring lakes for geological survey. There is a gentle narrative throughline serving up Forza Horizon 5вЂ™s biggest set-pieces to further expand the festival too. It is not completely without structure, with you able to delve into the Festival Playlist for some direction. And it is brilliant at each type of driving discipline, so noone will feel short-changed. But Forza is insistent that you do you, with the only friction to worry about between tire and tarmac. Personally I am a sucker for the wilder off-road and cross-country stuff, which is particularly exhilarating in Forza Horizon 5 hurling Jeeps through the jungles and sweeping Cosworths through the cacti. That might just be tearing around the open-world itself, hunting out hidden cars and PR stunts, or it might be taking part in the more structured tournament races. It is bewildering at first and can feel unstructured and scattergun, particularly when the game is throwing XP and rewards at you with so much abandon it's hard to keep track of it all.Д«ut IвЂ™m not sure the idea of Forza Horizon is that you complete all of its distractions (unless you are a particular die-hard player) but instead cut about choosing your favourite bits, building your garage as you see fit and drilling into the type of driving you are most interested in. You can barely drive a few yards without something to take part in or smash through. There is a bewildering amount of stuff that populates the map: traditional races, cross-country sprints, off-road adventures, speed traps, jumps, multiplayer challenges, weekly events. Forza takes its racing and cars very seriously -with painstaking attention to torque, road conditions and more tuning options than you can shake a gearstick at- but its raison dвЂ™etre is unbridled, uncomplicated driving joy. Its drive-by representation of Mexican culture is tourist board approved, too, with exactly the positive stereotyping you might expect from a package holiday.ДЄnd thatвЂ™s entirely the point. The game will cycle between Spring and Summer, the former kicking up spectacular dust storms and the latter thundering tropical rain in between the otherwise gorgeous blue sky. It is a treat to look at and -as in all of the Forza games- the map is densely packed and quick to trade terrain and climate, allowing you to whizz through each in one whistlestop joyride. Sprawling dunes pocked with cacti, luscious humid jungles with fabulous swamps to splash through, tight colourful towns, Mayan ruins, even the shimmering peak of an active volcano. This time we are in Mexico, which has allowed the developer to build its most diverse vehicular playground.

Jumping between each game has merit in itself, even if the festival setup -with its ludicrous amount of events, enormous car catalogue and queasily cool radio stations- remains constant. This comes almost entirely down to location, Forza Horizon trotting across the globe from the US, to Europe, to Australia, to the UK each with a significantly different feel in terms of road layout, weather and vistas. Ever since the first Horizon brought a street-racing festival to the mountains of Colorado in 2012, the question has been, well: how do you top that? And, impressively, Playground has always had the answer.ДЄlthough now it feels less about bettering the previous game and more about keeping each new entry fresh enough to complement what has gone before. Regardless of its positioning, there is no sense of the Leamington developer taking its foot off the pedal with Forza Horizon 5. This latest edition now finds itself as flagbearer for MicrosoftвЂ™s Game Pass subscription service, sitting happily alongside the imminent Halo Infinite as a forceful, if familiar, double-whammy of cars and guns that should keep Xbox players happy this Christmas.

#Forza 5 review series

It has been fascinating watching Playground GamesвЂ™ absurdly consistent Forza Horizon series become an Xbox flagship, overtaking its more serious source Forza Motorsport with joyously raucous open-world driving holidays.