Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels (DLC) PC/XBOX LIVE Key

Forget tarmac and dirt. The Hot Wheels expansion swaps FH5's sprawling Mexican landscape for a sky-high theme park built from life-sized orange plastic track. There are four distinct biomes to tear through: Giant's Canyon, the volcanic Ice Cauldron, the lush Forest Falls, and the Horizon Nexus hub floating above the clouds. Within those zones you will find loop-the-loops, corkscrews, rings of fire, water flumes, Magnet Tracks that flip you upside-down, Ice Tracks that send you sliding, Rumble Tracks that rattle your fillings out, and Speed Boost arches that will push even slower B-class cars past speeds that should be illegal. A new G-Forza HUD reticle rolls with your car's orientation so you always know which way is actually down, which is more useful than it sounds when you are inverted on a vertical hairpin. Progression works through the Hot Wheels Academy, where you start as a Rookie with B-class machinery and grind medals through races, PR stunts, and unique challenges to unlock faster car classes and eventually reach Legend status. It is a tighter, more linear loop than the base game's pick-and-choose festival structure, which some players will find refreshing and others will find restrictive. The ten unlockable cars include iconic Hot Wheels replicas scaled up to life-size, with fan favourites like the Deora II, COPO Camaro, Baja Bone Shaker, and Brabham BT62 on the roster. A five-part Horizon Story walks you through the real history of the Hot Wheels brand, though reviewers noted the narrative loses steam after the first couple of chapters and starts feeling more like brand advertising than genuine storytelling. The EventLab Creation Kit is where long-term value lives. Over 80 snap-together Hot Wheels track and stunt pieces let you build custom courses anywhere on the map, including back on the base game's Mexico, and creations using Hot Wheels props can even be shared with players who do not own the DLC. Building something genuinely impressive takes time and patience, but the toolset is deep. Online racing on Hot Wheels Park disables player-to-player collisions by default, a sensible call given how narrow and fast these tracks get. The entire expansion is playable in co-op from the very start, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes a Saturday night session work. The two real criticisms that keep coming up: first, the freedom to just drive off the road and smash through countryside is almost entirely gone here. You are on the track, full stop, and fast travel fills the gap. Second, veterans of the FH3 Hot Wheels expansion may feel the concept is familiar enough that the novelty wears off faster. Neither issue is a dealbreaker, but if you came to Horizon for open-world exploration rather than scored track racing, this DLC leans hard in a different direction. Performance on PC holds a solid 60fps on typical hardware; older console hardware targets 30fps and was occasionally reported to crash, so Xbox Series X is clearly the better console experience. If you have ever pulled an all-nighter with a Hot Wheels set as a kid, this expansion is going to hit differently. It is chaotic, spectacularly fast, and packed with enough stunt variety to keep a group of friends arguing over who got the cleanest loop exit for hours. Gamepad players will find the Stunt Steering assist a genuinely helpful accessibility option for the more extreme banked sections. Wheel and pedal setups work fine but offer no real advantage on these arcade-physics tracks, so your Xbox pad is the right tool here.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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