Forza Horizon 5 - Review
While the original Forza Horizon never really grabbed me, I did enjoy some of what they were offering at the time, Horizon 2 though, that caught my interest in a big way and then Horizon 3 added some local flair with an Australian setting, the series could do no wrong for me. But then Horizon 4 released and while it was technically sound, the location was as drab as you can get and I quickly lost interest in playing it more, the reveal of Mexico seemed to draw me back in, the question remained, would a new location be enough?
The short answer is yes, the longer answer requires more of an explanation, regardless a lot of that can be attributed to the world of Mexico that the team at Playground Games have brought to life in the game. If you have played all the games in the series to date, Mexico is the best of all of them combined, it is the sheer size of the Colorado map, contains the history and charm of Southern Europe, the vast array of landscapes from Australia and the seasons from England, all combined to make for one incredible location to drive around. There were times when I was bouncing across the rivers in the jungle area, where I got déjà vu of Australia and in the best way possible, in fact if it wasn’t for the sheer insane number of trees and rivers, it could be argued they were quite similar. The same can be said for when you drive around Playa Azul, one of the coastal towns, with the tight turns and old-world buildings, it easy evokes memories of my time in Horizon 2.
What makes the map so interesting, is not that there are strong ties to other entries in the series, but rather the new location has so many interesting things going for it, all on its own. There are a number of high bridges that you can drive across, or if you are like me, drive off of and if that wasn’t enough there is the top of a volcano, which does get a lot of use in the story, more on that in a bit. While you can drop in and start exploring the world, the game actually does a really great job of taking you places that you might not pay any attention to, such as the many real life Mexican heritage locations and when you visit them via the story, you can get some little facts about them. The world of Forza Horizon 5 is so diverse, there are three types of desert and neither of them are similar enough, that you will get them mixed up, even the parts by the ocean, making it the best map in the series history, but enough of the world, it is time to talk Horizon Festival.
If you hadn’t played Horizon 4, then don’t worry as while this one follows on, in terms of story line, there is actually no direct story continuation, outside of the festival itself heading to Mexico from England. The storyline, if you can call it that, plays out much like Horizon 3, in that you are getting to choose where your adventure will take you next, should you want, you can spend your time upgrading one area until its done, or just cycle through them one level at a time. Much like Horizon 3, each area has upgrades, but rather than just making the festival location bigger, the upgrades here unlock new challenges for you to do, some of these are singular, others are in a series, giving you lots to do and while they are all themed, at least somewhat, to the theme of that location, they are generic enough to not dissuade you from trying them.
Each of the locations of the festival, except the main central location, are themed to a specific type of event, out by the coast, Horizon Apex will have you dealing with road races, whereas on the west coast Horizon Baja is more about the off-road racing. Because each location is themed around a specific discipline, if you don’t care about Street Racing, you can leave that location until last, letting you focus on the ones you want to do first, though I highly suggest Horizon Rush becomes your first, to you can unlock those incredible stunt opportunities. While the locations unlock different racing types, most of them are carries from other games in the series, they can now have additional challenges to go along with them. Some will require you to just complete the races, other all the races in that area, while some of them will be given additional, limited time challenges for you to complete, one stunt jump required me to get a set distance, with a specific car class and being successful will give you a reward of some kind.
I do have issues with a few things here, one is with the way in which the game progresses, at the start it holds your hand quite a bit, before then throwing you into the deep end and then you get bombarded with content, from clothes to cars and just about everything in between, there is a lot of content here. Some items, like the horns can be bought, but most will be provided to you as a reward for completing some objective, and you can use the accolades screen, in order to pin one to your Hud, letting you track your progress at all times. My other main issue is that a lot of the problems I had with progression have carried over from Horizon 4, which as I said at the start I really didn’t like. One such system is the skill system, they are again tied to individual cars, meaning if you unlock the ability to take two hits, before your skill chain breaks at a cost of 25 tokens, that is only applied to that singular car, swap to another car for any reason and you have to buy it for that one again. Past games didn’t have that issue, the skills were, for lack of a better term, driver based and it made more sense, meaning that each time you unlocked one, it worked across all the cars.
If the sheer amount of content, races, stunts and regions to visit is too much, you can always enter the countless number of online modes, I say that, because the game will let you invite friends into any of the races as you load into one. The specific modes, like Horizon Arcade, The Eliminator and Horizon Events are things you can sample solo, but you won’t get the full effect, much like my first Arcade experience here. Playing the game before the servers are full of regular players, meant that for the most part, I was racing on my own, so when I started an arcade, trying to get an insane number of air jumps, solo; well, it was just impossible and more so given that was only the first challenge. Thankfully Xbox did set up some time with the developers to test out some other online features and once we were in the convoy, things got entertaining, mostly because you think when you are playing with members from Playground games, you would be owned, but turns out not all of them are good at driving. For all that is said and done though, if you have played any of the Forza games online, you are getting slightly enhanced versions here, as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Something that did get a fix and that is just thanks to new hardware, is the games presentation, while the menus are still as bloated as ever, the rest of the game looks almost impeccable. Let’s start off with the good, the world as I highlighted above is filled with various locales to discover and each looks a treat. When racing across the portion of the map that is mostly boulders and cactus, you have to be careful, as it is so dense with foliage, that you will smash straight into one of the many boulders. Again, as mentioned before, the jungles of Mexico are so dense with trees, that it can sometimes be hard to see what is around you, but when the light burst through the trees as you drive across a flowing river, you will be impressed. Much like Australia, there are parts of the map that take you to the ocean and here there are two of them, one is white sandy beaches and blue water, the other is even whiter sand and clearer water and both look amazing. The cars as always look a treat, especially in Forzavista, once you get to see them with the ray tracing enabled lighting, seeing them out in the world can look a little meh, but not by much.
Much like Horizon 4, the game does offer seasonal changes, meaning what race might be fun and simple in the wet, can be a pain to do when dry, especially if you take the wrong car with you. Unlike England, where winter meant everything was white, here winter means that white exists, but only up high, whereas down by the coast, you might just get more water on the roads. It isn’t just that things play differently, there is also a visual change and again, not as extreme as England, but still something you will notice, if you thought the jungle or swamp locations were fun in the summer months, just wait until you see them in the winter.
For all the good though, we need to talk the bad and there are a number of issues that I spotted playing the game, first is that the game offers two modes, quality and performance, the latter being the 60fps option. Unless you are someone who lives by the FPS count, this is not worth it, while the game runs fine, there is a lot more pop in of items on the side of the road, that can easily distract you. Even the quality mode, which is locked at 30fps can have issues, but they are broader than those above, the most common that I encountered is cars just vanishing off the road. I don’t mean that they would pull off the road, as if to park or something, no they would simply just vanish as I was driving near them and while not as common, I did spot a few popping in as well. The other issue I have is with the people in the game, both the ones your character interacts with the crowds, for the most part your character is serviceable, given you can make them look anyway you want, most muscular male ever, with a female voice, plus any combination of outfits, they would always looks weird compared to normal folks. The problem is that the crew you deal with look like they are missing a lot of their animations, you very rarely get to see the faces of the people speaking and when you do, its like a horrible dub of an international movie. The crowds that live in the Horizon centres or at the sides of events are as dead now as they always have been, they are jumping up and down to music sure, but that is all they do, meaning if you drive full tilt into the barrier, they do nothing.
One aspect of the presentation that is nailed is the audio, minus a few weird issues, the cars sound great and while the default mix tends to make it harder to hear the music, that is a simple fix. Speaking of the music, there usual radio stations make a return, but this time they are all infused with Mexican music, so if you are a Pulse fan get ready for some Mexican pop, but if you want there is also a dedicated station to the music of the country and for those who like the classics, it might have a new name, but orchestral music is once again present. Something that I thought was nice is that in the settings you can enable Streaming Music, which removes the games radio stations and just lets you enjoy some royalty free tunes, perfect for those who broadcast their gameplay to the world. The weird issues that I encountered were not game breaking in anyway, just weird, like dialogue being repeated or the spoken words not matching the subtitles on the screen, some context, just not the same.
If you are a fan of the Forza Horizon series, Forza Horizon 5 will be even more of a delight for you, the game is the most polished version yet, offering up a lot of racing events, stunts and online modes, in the most incredible map that they have ever provided. A few issues with the games performance mode may be of concern to some, but it still does not detract from the overall remarkable adventure that awaits you in Mexico.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by Xbox Game Studios
The Pros
+Mexico is the best map that they have created, ever, with numerous things to see across it as well
+Being able to undertake races for a single discipline at a time, keeps you from being overwhelmed
The Cons
-The games performance mode does have some issues with keeping things constant
-Skills are again locked to cars, meaning you lose any progress you make when you swap to another
