Forza Horizon 5

I've handed a controller to friends who haven't touched a racing game since Mario Kart, and within ten minutes they were launching a pickup truck off a sand dune outside a volcanic crater with a grin on their face. That's the magic trick Forza Horizon 5 keeps pulling off. It pitches itself at the exact midpoint between arcade chaos and simulation depth, and it sticks that landing consistently across hundreds of events spread over a Mexican open world that is simply gorgeous to move through. The map is the main character here. Playground Games built a composite of Mexico that packs in dense jungle, active volcanic terrain, Mayan ruins, flowery highlands, and wide desert stretches, and the variety of driving surfaces genuinely changes how races feel. Road racing, dirt and cross-country circuits, PR stunt zones, street scene events, Baja-style rally sections and the absurdly long Goliath circuit all sit on the same map without feeling crammed. The Horizon Adventure mode lets you pick which festival discipline to grow next, so if your crew hates tarmac racing you can just pour points into off-road for a while. Add four-player online co-op across the main expeditions and a live seasonal playlist that rotates fresh challenges every week, and the loop holds up far longer than you would expect. For controller players the handling is immediately readable, with assists tunable from full beginner padding down to something that will punish sloppy corner entry. Wheel and pedal owners get more to think about, though hardcore sim racers should know going in that this is still an arcade-first game. The force feedback has drawn some criticism from the wheel crowd for feeling light on detail compared to dedicated sims, and that is a fair point. The damage model is shallow, and a few cars on the lot are locked behind real-money shortcuts rather than in-game currency, which the community has been vocal about. The game also demands a serious chunk of storage, north of 150 GB, so check your drive before you commit. Online multiplayer is broad but uneven. Ranked PvP sits buried in menus under the name Team Adventures, and the Playground Games party modes, zombie infection, king, and similar, feel like filler compared to the racing itself. The Eliminator battle royale mode is present but largely luck-dependent. Where the online side shines is in casual convoy play: group up with three friends, roam freely, trigger events together, and it becomes one of the better co-op experiences in the racing genre. That Saturday-night couch tournament energy does require everyone to be online though, since there is no split-screen on PC. After three-plus years of post-launch updates, the seasonal content cadence has kept the player base alive and the Steam rating sits at 89% positive across a huge sample. Veterans of Forza Horizon 4 will recognise the structure almost beat for beat, and if that game left you cold this one will too. But for anyone who wants a racing game that doubles as a stress-free open world to share with friends, this remains the clearest benchmark in its category.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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