It’s a new year, and we have a new Forza Horizon installment on the…well, horizon.
For more than a decade, the Forza Horizon series offered gamers more of a sandbox flavor to the otherwise ultra-realistic racing sims that are Forza Motorsport and its arch-nemesis, Gran Turismo. I had to do a bit of a double take when I saw the “6” behind the series name, since I fondly remember playing the original Forza Horizon and whiling away the hours blasting around Colorado (represent!). But we are indeed on the sixth installment in the 14-year series, with this one headed to Japan.
And there’s absolutely no doubt about it: The game looks stunning.
Not that graphics are the go-to selling point for most big name games these days, but man have we come a long way, even since the Xbox 360. It’s always been a sweet escape, because even if you can’t afford some of these cars in real life like, say, the Toyota GR GT, you can at least get some satisfaction that your digital experience is more absolutely realistic than it ever has been.
There’s far more to the game than the GR GT Prototype, of course. Being the hotness of the moment, though, developer Playground Games is all too keen to blast its access to Toyota’s six-figure (presumably) supercar from an early point in the game’s lifespan. Forza Horizon 6 also promises Japan’s map size will be “five times larger than anything we’ve built before”. Here’s hoping there’s plenty of fun stuff to fill all that space, but again, the visuals and sound should at least appeal to the senses.
The game’s latest teaser below hits most of the key notes, as you’d expect.
One of the greatest things about the Horizon series, naturally, is that there’s more room to breathe to just have fun and not have the sort of grind-a-thon of your Forza Motorsports or your Gran Turismo 7s. In all, the last installment offered up an absolute ocean of drivable vehicles, totaling more than 900. If Playground Games is promising 5x the map, I’d expect the range of vehicles in FH6 to be as immense, if not tipping over 1,000. There’s no full car list yet, but you know that is coming the moment this game drops.
Speaking of which, Forza Horizon 6 releases May 19 for Xbox and PC, with pre-orders open now. If you want a sense of the hype, it’s already number 2 on Steam’s bestseller list, despite the fact that it won’t be here for another four months. PlayStation 5 players, you will be able to get it as well, though it’s not coming over on Sony’s console until later this year.
