Forza Horizon 6 review – arcade racing in the homeland of drifting

Xbox’s massively popular open world arcade racer comes to Japan for the first time, in what could be the best racing game of the year.

For the last 20 years, Forza Motorsport has been one of Microsoft’s most compelling reasons to own an Xbox, competing head-to-head with Sony’s Gran Turismo in the serious simulated driving stakes. In 2012, it got a more arcade orientated spin-off, Forza Horizon, and for a good while players benefited from entries of each on alternating years. For Xbox owning petrolheads it was quite an era.

That’s all over now. The Forza Motorsport franchise has been shelved indefinitely, following Microsoft’s widespread developer lay-offs, and the last instalment of Horizon was five years ago. If there is a silver lining, it’s that after the recent release of Forza Horizon 5 on PlayStation 5, the series is no longer exclusive to Xbox Series X/S and PC. Although inexplicably the PlayStation release of Forza Horizon 6 still doesn’t have a release date, even though it’s meant to be this year.

In Forza Horizon 6, the fictional festival of speed continues its world tour, this time taking to the roads of Japan, one of few countries that also drives on the left. You’ll be welcomed by rugged snow slopes, looping cherry blossom strewn country roads, sandy beaches, undulating wheat fields, and a microcosm of recreated Tokyo, complete with Shibuya crossing and the red and white striped Tokyo Tower, whose base you can drive past, with majestic Mount Fuji in the background.

It’s an inspiring setting, offering the requisite variety of surfaces for Horizon’s eclectic collection of racing styles. That overwhelming generosity infuses every part of the game, from the speed with which collectible cars are doled out, to the ability to rewind time whenever you like during races or just tooling around its roads, instantly undoing mistakes, or just letting you retake a series of corners you felt could be slightly improved upon.

The hyperbolic spectacle is just as lavish. Fireworks, coloured smoke trailing fighter jet fly-pasts, the bullet train, low flying cargo aircraft, lasers, hot air balloons, helicopters, a rocket launch, insane ‘PR stunt’ jumps, flying sparks as your lowered sports car clips the asphalt, and splintering crash barriers, trees, and street furniture as you plough through anything except buildings as though they weren’t even there. Wherever you look there’s a visual extravaganza.

To complement that, simply driving around comes with a plethora of rewards. It takes a leaf out of Burnout’s book, patting you on the back for drifts, near misses, being a daredevil, and smashing your way through scenery. As in past outings, those bonuses build into massive combos, only broken by a hard impact with another car, and you’ll find yourself rapidly accruing credits, experience points, and spins on the game’s two wheels of fortune, where you can win cash, new vehicles, novelty car horns, and outfits for your Drivatar.

It’s a non-stop cavalcade of fun and mild silliness, typified by the Horizon Rush events that earn you an upgraded festival wrist band, signifying your progress through its ranks. They take place on obstacle-laden courses full of slow motion jumps, barriers to shatter, and floors to fall through, with a hilariously full-on intensity that would be unthinkable in the serious-minded Gran Turismo.

Your second festival wristband is won in a showcase event where you race against a giant mech, the huge robot pounding and sliding along the road in front of you, occasionally taking to the skies with enormous jump jets. It instantly plasters a smile across your face, which is the case with so much of Forza Horizon 6; a game unconcerned with fastidious simulation, that just really wants you to have a good time.

That’s not to undermine the exceptional quality of its driving model, which remains highly refined, delivering a characteristic feel for every one of its 550 accurately modelled cars. While nuanced and consistent, it’s also flattering, its arcade leanings helping you feel like a racing driver, at least with the default assists turned on.

Naturally all that can be removed, making its events considerably more taxing, an effect that can also be achieved by upping the quality of the Drivatars you race against. Doing that also provides you with greater rewards for each victory, and there’s an impressive variety of race events on offer, all of which can be played solo, in co-op, or competitively. There really is something for all tastes, from messy dirt rallies to precision track races.

The EventLab, which premiered in Horizon’s last outing, makes a return, allowing you to create your own races and events, choosing routes across its miniature version of Japan, as well as the cars that are allowed to compete. New in this instalment is CoLab, that gives you the ability to build events with online friends, sharing your creations with the rest of the Forza community.

The problem with releasing a near perfect game, which Forza Horizon 5 undoubtedly was, is working out where you go next. Its sequel’s landscapes and music are new, there are numerous additions to its car roster, and somewhat weirdly you can now buy houses, but this is a refinement rather than a reinvention, and there’s no escaping the fact that we’ve seen most of this before.

Not for five years though, and if you like driving games, they really don’t get any more exhilarating than this. If you own a Fanatec racing wheel and spend your weekends in iRacing, it’s possible that Horizon’s dedication to joyous spectacle over nerdy gear ratio adjustment (although that is available) may be off-putting. For everyone else, its uproariously entertaining blast of music and motoring will feel like the Saturday night of racing games.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Developer: Playground Games
Release Date: 19th May 2026* (PS5 TBA 2026)
Age Rating: 3

*15th May with Premium Edition

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

Comments


Add as preferred source