Forza Horizon 6 review: "A sublime racing engine supercharges this stunning, Japan-set open world, but can sometimes feel a bit too safe"

With Microsoft finally admitting your TV is not an Xbox, the time is absolutely right for Forza Horizon 6 to demonstrate what the Xbox brand always stood for: kick-ass gaming on a kick-ass console (and PC, alright). And for the most part, Forza Horizon 6 absolutely delivers that. This sleek, Japan-set open world arguably makes for the most 'AAA' racing game ever made, even pipping Gran Turismo 7 in terms of technical prowess. Playing on my Xbox Series X, I'd go so far as to say I've never seen a better racing game engine. While I have some reservations about elements of its play, which we'll get to, fundamentally this is a product that would fit nicely into anyone's game library. It's the best Forza Horizon game, and a quite remarkable feat of software production.

The most important part of any driving game is how the car moves, and Forza Horizon 6 is almost too smooth. Drive a real car after playing this for a few hours and you will conclude that the game is very little like real driving. Off-road, there are moments where it feels like the sublime early rally stages in Gran Turismo 3, with the car's wheels rolling convincingly over smoothly undulating dirt roads. But on tarmac, everything feels a little too sanitized. The closest modern comparison of feel would be Dirt 5: glorious trackside vegetation, plenty of physics objects to disturb, but all a bit 'nice' and inoffensive compared to the genre's best.

On default settings, the car handling actually owes more to 1995's Sega Rally than Forza Motorsport, as turning into a slide doesn't correct you – it immediately starts turning your whole car towards the direction you pressed. Even on 'Simulation' steering, correcting a slide doesn't feel right here. Now, I'm personally all for a driving game that knows it's a video game and eschews realism in favour of playability, but I am tired of hitting walls on the exit of corners because I tried to straighten up. The game therefore sits somewhere between arcade and simulation and never truly convinces on either front.

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Rooting out

Since Forza Horizon 2, we've been able to straightline it through a field without worry, smashing through fences and armco barriers as if they're made of balsa wood. It was novel back then but, by this sixth entry, I can't help but feel the flimsiness is hurting the game. Even at low speed in a Mini Cooper, 90% of the trees here are no barrier at all. Heading straight for a forest of scary, towering timber? Don't sweat it. Just floor it and cut a swathe through the whole thing. I understand that destruction of physics objects is part of the skill system, and therefore a game in itself, but when I'm driving around one of the most convincing open worlds ever made, I can't help wishing it reacted more realistically. The same goes for traffic collisions too. They are, quite frankly, rubbish.

Nonetheless, developer Playground Games has perfected its skill system here. With the next race entry some 6km away, you start E-drifting by pulling the handbrake, grazing the rear of your car along the barrier, knocking individual segments off the flyover and down into the exquisitely-modelled valley below. You 'thread the needle' by passing through oncoming traffic – some civilian, others a mix of AI or real-world drivers, depending on your Game Pass subscription status. Keep the combo going and you win skill points to spend on your car's own skill tree, allowing you to level up your favorite ride. I did it all the way in several cars, including my Ferrari F50 which unlocked another, even better Ferrari F50. How cool is that?

While you're doing this, you might notice a rival racer with a camera icon above their Gamertag/Drivatar name. This means you can take a photo by pushing up on the d-pad, adding the car to the fictional Festival promo material, and essentially filling out an automotive Pokedex. Gotta snap 'em all. While you're at it, you can photograph tourist attractions in Japan, all the while boosting your Festival XP.

Forza Horizon 6 is superbly paced for the first 20 hours or so, as you complete races and smash bonus boards in free roam. As you fill stages of your progress bar, you get to take part in Horizon Rush events, which are familiar, one-off showpieces. The irony is not lost on me that the few times you don't get to choose your vehicle the game is at its best, as the experience becomes expertly curated, designed around fixed parameters – something games of this scale don't normally deliver.

The race against the giant mech is the clear standout, though the first Rush event is a superb test of pure driving skill. Sadly, these special events peak too soon, diminishing in spectacle until the last one is arguably only going to excite longtime fans. And even then they may feel disappointed.

A marathon, not a sprint

Trouble is, the XP bar you have to fill up in order to win the Golden Wristband (still only around 50% of full completion) takes much longer to fill than the others, and after 20 hours you may run out of things you really want to do. Having completed the vast majority of the Horizon Festival races, I was left to try to beat speed traps, ace danger sign jumps, take photos, and hunt bonus boards for a few hours before I could finally declare myself a Horizon Legend, which sounds varied and fun but started to grate. If you prefer to play games quickly to finish them and move on, the pacing in Forza Horizon 6 might frustrate you. But, without time constraints, you could easily spend weeks immersing yourself in this virtual Japan and deep diving into the side content before you ever get near Legends Island.

Case in point: your Home. After a while you get the opportunity to buy a property to act as your base of operations, but it's so much more than that. You get acres and acres of open land in which to build your dream track, able to go wild like it's your very own life-size Hot Wheels. You can share your creation with the world, download other people's, and you even gain credits when people play or like your creation. Someone's already made Mario Circuit from Super Mario Kart on the SNES, which got a Like from me. The potential for further gameplay here is essentially unlimited.

Then there's the online integration. Forza Horizon 6 is wonderful and feature-rich without inviting the world to play with you, and there's a dedicated 'Solo' mode where you don't need an active online subscription to play. But, when I did go online, loads of additional gameplay flowed in, refreshing and expanding the experience. There are races restricted to single vehicles, group activities like hunting petrol pump characters, and loads more. You can challenge anyone you meet in free roam to a quick race, or ask them to join you. There's even preset chat options mapped to the d-pad (which I bet gets translated into different languages like Phantasy Star Online did back in the day).

All this and I haven't even mentioned the 'Discover Japan' side of the single-player mode. This takes you on tourist trips to special locations, explaining the island's history and letting you try some classic cars on the way. There are expeditions to pick up rare cars and give them to your modding friend Yuji, who soups them up. He also deals with barn finds. There is quite a lot of dialogue between the characters, and while the script is solid enough, it doesn't quite hit home. It's all very family-friendly while also trying to channel modding culture cool, which doesn't quite gel. Similarly, the characters don't look anywhere near as convincing as the cars. It's funny to see your car cross the line in a blaze of pyrotechnic glory, only to glimpse your avatar's emotionless mug through the windshield.

I have to talk about the visuals in general, however, as they are exceptional. We've seen several great open world locations over the past few years, but Forza Horizon 6's recreation of Japan is simply superlative. Some of the views you get over the Danger Sign jumps are incredible. You feel a mile up in the air, looking down over a forest of 3D trees stretching away to the ocean in the distance.

On Xbox Series X, it does all of this at 4K, 30fps by default, or alternatively 'performance' mode uses lower, dynamic resolution scaling and slightly reduced effects to maintain a rock solid 60fps, which I would recommend. It's glorious. And all this with dynamic weather, day/night transitions, and even calendar-locked seasons too (unless you race online where you might get an early glimpse of another season).

Turn on, tune in

The festival radio stations offer a mix of rock, J-pop, dance music, and more. A few tracks do start to repeat and may jar if you don't like them, but a quick push of right on the d-pad cycles stations so there's always something cool to listen to. The quality of the audio is arguably just as impressive as the visual quality. It sounds super-deluxe.

Difficulty is often an area of concern in Forza, but Forza Horizon 6 recognizes when you're winning too easily and offers to raise the difficulty level in exchange for higher winnings. Even so, I did find some events way harder than others, particularly earlier buggy races where everyone else seemed to have twice as much grip as me. But then you will win by a mile on the next dirt race. That said – at last – this is a Forza game where one driver never dashes off into an unassailable lead. Imagine that! I only saw it once, and even then I was able to catch them. Amazing scenes.

I can't think of another racing game besides the previous Forza Horizon where there was so much to do, and never so convincingly. Every element feels polished. Rewinding the action works well, Photo Mode is glorious as always, some cars are ludicrously fast… you even see actual people in the Tokyo streets thanks to clever partitioning which means you can never crash into them. Oh, and for that matter, I've never seen so many people on-screen as there are at the Horizon festival itself. There are hundreds, if not a thousand people enjoying the music.

There's no faulting the software here. The problems are just design decisions that don't quite sit right. You've surely heard games described as 'vanilla', implying they're bland or unexciting. In ice-cream flavours, chocolate is better, amarena cherry cheesecake flavour is best. We know this. Forza Horizon 6 is like a premium tub of super-deluxe, Madagascan vanilla ice cream, made with real Jersey cream; it's delicious and absolutely worth the extra money, but it's still vanilla.

If there was a bit of personality on show from the rival drivers, more action in the racing to make it less of a procession, a little more resistance in the trackside obstacles and Flatout 4-style deformation tech for the crashes, this would likely be the best racing game ever made. As it is, while it plays the racing too safe to be essential for racing game aficionados, even they will undoubtedly take much enjoyment from the sheer high quality of this game. It is amazing.

Take a look at our best racing games list for more high-speed thrills!