Forza Horizon 5 Review: A Vibrant Mexican Adventure
I think it came as a surprise to many that in 2019 we didn’t see the release of a new Forza Motorsport game, or in 2020 for that matter, after nearly a decade of annual Forza releases. Even more surprising, was the reveal of a new Forza Motorsport game last year, and yet out of the blue, Playground Games surprised us with a brand new and long-awaited Forza Horizon before it.
It’s been a strange couple years for the Forza franchise, with Turn 10 hard at work on a Forza Motorsport reboot and Playground dedicated to supporting Forza Horizon. Many, I included, didn’t expect to get a new Forza Horizon game for years, yet the studio was quietly working on one in the background for the past three years.
Playground Games have effectively had an extra year of development time invested into their next Horizon game – the longest so far -- and the result is arguably one of the best, most polished Forza Horizon experiences to date.
Welcome to Mexico
Forza Horizon 5 takes the festival experience to the vibrant locale of Mexico, jam-packed with incredible vistas to see, fun stories to experience, barn finds to discover and colourful scenery to get lost in as you progress your way to becoming a Horizon Superstar.
The map of Mexico is one of biggest, most diverse and graphically stunning worlds Playground Games have made for a Horizon game, and I’d go as far to say the best looking open-world racer to date. Different to Sepia-filtered depictions you see in other forms of entertainment, Mexico is lush and filled with detail, so much that I often found myself making comparisons to a Rockstar game world and one I couldn’t stop pausing to pose for photo mode shots.
Forza Horizon 5 also features the return of seasons introduced in Forza Horizon 4, but with a more appropriate twist. Dust storms and torrential rain storms will occur from week to week, making each season different to the last. While I’ve yet to experience these all during the review period, missions will give a taste of how this new dynamic weather storms will be like when that season rolls around.
Its clear Playground took a lot of inspiration from games like Burnout Paradise and Horizon 4’s LEGO Champions DLC when crafting the map (something I’d been preaching for the studio to do ever since its release), with tons of fun and unique POI’s dotted around the map - both in plain sight and hidden away for adventurers to discover- including a football stadium, Mayan ruins, an abandoned airplane graveyard, golf course resorts, canyon switchback roads, multiple race tracks and so, so much more.
Throughout your Horizon adventure you’ll find yourself racing around small Mexican towns, launching yourself off a towering active Volcano, screaming down beautiful coastal and getting down and dirty in a tropical jungle just to name a few - a substantial improvement over Forza Horizon 4’s often dull, British countryside.
Not only that, but this approach to map design applies to the events in ways that make racing feel much more thrilling with everything to take in around you and in the background. Nothing beats darting around a small circuit in the middle of the day with a huge volcano in the back drop as the sun glare hits your rear windscreen, or screaming down a straight in the dusk of night with red smoke illuminating the path ahead as you drive downhill towards a brightly lit stadium.
As for performance, Forza Horizon 5 is both an artistic and technical masterpiece with a world its scale and the photorealistic visual fidelity levels its pushing. I’ve been playing on PC running an RTX 2070 Super and Ryzen 5 3600 with 16GB RAM, played on an SSD at ULTRA settings, and has been one of the most polished, flawlessly smooth experiences I’ve had with a game all year.
While I don’t yet have an Xbox Series X to put it through its paces, I’m confident that this will end up being the Xbox Series X title that proves just how capable this next-gen machine is for some time, at least until we get a next gen Forza Motorsport. Honestly, it’s so damn good!
Admittingly there were some issues, at one point the vegetation in a farmland area turned into static looking mesh, and sometimes I encountered frame drops when entering dense areas such as cities or through a Horizon festival, however this were all before a day one patch which should rough out these edges.
Progressive Overload
If you're a keen follower of mine, you may remember a certain 'unpopular opinion' tweet I made earlier in the year, discussing Forza Horizon's progression compared to other racing games. While I still stand by that tweet, Playground have certainly made great strides to improve the progression in Forza Horizon 5, with the result being a far more structured Horizon experience.
The Horizon Adventure campaign experience is structured much similar to old-school racers, but in Horizon terms its much like LEGO Champions DLC’s House building progression but in a full-game format. You'll still be earning an overwhelmingly unnecessary amount of credits, WheelSpins and cars as you play like any other Forza, that element of the progression remains unchanged, but the manor of how you do has - Introducing Accolades: a brand-new, challenge-based progression system replacing the old Fame system that rewards you for everything you do in game, and I mean EVERYTHING.
Each Accolade is split into multiple categories which are rewarded to you for winning events, owning cars, visiting new areas, taking certain pics in photo mode, completing a Festival Playlist etc. Earning enough accolades will let you unlock a new Horizon Adventure Chapter from one of the six different racing disciplines, from road racing and street racing to Baja and dirt racing, as you progress to becoming part of the Horizon Hall of Fame. These new chapters will consist of new Horizon Stories, new Showcase events and new long-form events like the infamous Goliath race related to each discipline, unlocking a ton of content for you to complete that will keep you busy for tens of hours after completing the main adventure.
This Accolade system is a fantastic new addition that rewards players no matter their playstyle, whether you’re someone who solely enjoys racing, or taking virtual photography, or creating detailed vehicle liveries, the accolade system acknowledges that and rewards you for playing how you want to play. These rewards consist of XP gains, credits, wheelspins and even new clothes and cars. One of my biggest complaints with the progression in Forza Horizon 4 was that you were awarded cars and credits for doing nothing (seriously… I have over 700 cars and 40m credits), but here with the Accolade system, it feels like there’s genuine meaning to these unlocks and makes it feel all the more rewarding to unlock a reward car, not just because it was handed to you for free, but because you *earned* it by completing objectives.
More categories of Accolades will unlock as you progress through the game, with an extra category once ‘completing’ the Horizon Campaign as you enter the Hall of Fame where your accolade scores are ranked on a leaderboard. It feels like Playground have put a huge emphasis on this unlock system as part of the endgame for Forza Horizon 5, which as an achievement hunter will certainly have me invested to complete as many accolades as possible, but this may vary for certain players. Still, there’s great incentive for completing them even if most will come naturally, and I’m glad Playground introduced such a fun and rewarding challenge system for players that enjoy a grind.
Gotta Collect ‘Em All
Forza games are known for their large roster of cars, and Forza Horizon 5 certainly is no exception. At launch, there are over 500 vehicles in the game including the all-new Mercedes Benz AMG One, Ford Bronco and the 2020 GR Supra (with a bodykit too!). While I’ve never seen much reason for a large majority of the cars in a Horizon game, Playground makes it more incentivising to collect, earn and purchase all these cars with their brand-new Car Collection system.
The Car Collection is an almost Christmas advent calendar style menu showcasing all the cars in the game from each manufacturer, with images highlighting the vehicles you own and ones you’re still to collect. Collecting all vehicles from a certain manufacturer will give you a bonus such as accolade points, credits or clothes, making it all the more worthwhile to build up your collection. Fans of the franchise often call Forza Horizon a car collecting game more than anything, and I’m glad to see Playground make it all the more rewarding for players that do, while also adding meaning to the bazillions of cars earned from wheelspins – even if you’ll never use them, they add a reason behind your collection.
When it came to cars in Forza Horizon 4, one of the worst aspects to them was their undeniably poor engine sounds. Playground has drastically improved in that area with Forza Horizon 5, introducing a brand-new Audible upgrade system for vehicle customization that uniquely modifies vehicle audio. Akin to Need for Speed Heat, each performance mod you place on your car will overall modify the sound it produces, either greatly or in a minor way.
Chuck on some race cams and values and hear your engine up, or apply a new exhaust and listen as raw music is played and backfire is literally shooting flames. Some cars still have an electronic sounding engine tone to them, but in a game featuring over 500 cars, the difference between car sounds in Horizon 4 and 5 is a night and day improvement.
Strangely, while new customization options have been added to cars such as GR Supra and Corvette C8, some appear to have been removed with Forza Horizon 5. In particular, the rocket bunny kit for the S15 Silvia is gone. Perhaps it could be added in future updates though its most likely been removed due to licensing, which is bizarre to see such bodykits being omitted with a much greater customization focus this time around.
Conclusion
Forza Horizon 5 at its core is very much a Horizon game, built up of all the crucial elements from the last four entries. If you’ve played Forza Horizon 4 over the past three years then you know exactly what to expect from 5: hundreds of cars to purchase and collectibles to find, weekly Seasonal Festival tasks to grind through, dozens of activities and events to compete in, a custom event builder to create your own courses, fun and exciting multiplayer modes and much more, all accompanied by electrifying soundtrack ranging from DnB to classics to even Lil Nas X!
Forza Horizon 5 might not be an “all-new revolution” for the long running open world franchise after such a long wait between entries, but its an iterative evolution that, personally, has seen it improve tremendously in almost every aspect over the previous. From its rewarding progression loop, campaign structure, map design and more, Forza Horizon 5 is a diverse and adventurous tour guide of Mexico, and has addressed every single thing I criticized about Forza Horizon 4. I'm absolutely in love with what the Playground team have crafted, and if we can expect the same amount of live-service support as Forza Horizon 4 did, I can’t wait to see what additions and improvements come over the next few years.
Forza Horizon 5 launches on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC on November 9th, or four days earlier on November 5th for Premium Edition owners, with Xbox Game Pass subscribers able to play on day one. You can also check out our Barn Find locations guide to help you find all 14 barn find locations scattered across Mexico.
For any and all of our Forza Horizon 5 content, including news, guides and any future announcements, be sure to check out our dedicated Forza Horizon 5 tab on our Games page.