I've been a big fan of car games for a long time. I remember playing Colin McCrae rally games with my uncle on my PS1 and having the time of my life. I remember going through the golden age of racing games when Forza Motorsport 3 and 4 were released or when I would spend hours upong hours playing and collecting cars in Gran Turismo 4. I remember when NFS really started to become mainstream after NFS Underground 2. Man those were the days huh? Why is MicrosoftWord03 focusing so much on nostalgia? You may be asking yourself. Well it's so that my point can hit even harder.

I don't think there is a gaming genre that has taken a bigger hit over the years like racing games have. As the videogame industry grows, studios and projects start getting pressured into creating bigger games that have more stuff and are more profitable above all. To me it's such a shame that soul and passion (the very motor of a successful game ironically) get pushed to the side in the name of profit. In the name of making your game as accessible and bland as possible. It's ok for your game to say something. It's ok that some people will not like it - and I know I am talking about an open world racing game, by nature it would seem like it doesn't have much to say by design - but I would disagree.

Sometimes the message is encoded within the encasing. Sometimes the aesthetics are the message. Sometimes player freedom is the message. you get what I mean? It's not necessary for a game to have a huge story line and one million rpg features for it to speak to players. Car appreciation speaks to millions of people around the world and it's truly heart breaking that Forza throws even that to the trash - all in the name of profit.

I know many games and game genres have fallen prey to these practices, but something as pure, free and simple as driving games (especially open world) have never felt so clinical and sterile like they do in Forza Horizon 5. There's not much else to say. This game is a politically correct, culturally neutered blob of corporate appropriation and i think that sucks. A husk of what a great racing series used to be.

In any case:

2.5 crashed and forgotten barn finds out of 5

🚗🚗

This game gets a lot of flak from people and I feel that's undeserved.

Mechanic-wise, I believe this is simply the best driving experience I have got out of any racing game. The cars control just realistic enough to make the driving experience engaging yet just arcade enough to make the simulated driving fun as hell. Don't get me wrong, realistic driving is fun, but if I want realistic driving I am simply just going to go out and drive my actual car. I want to be able to drive 200 mph on a grassland in a video game because that's the only place where such a feat is possible.

I have invested hundreds of hours into playing this game - way more than I did any other video games. The game is just a great, fun driving simulator like no others. Aside from all the official racing events, there are also tons of community creations that are absolutely gorgeous. There's also the festival playlist that allows you to unlock exclusive cool cars. The festival playlist is basically what's keeping me from returning to the game every week at this point and I really like its implementation, though I am aware some would disagree as festival playlists make some cars unattainable if you miss them. However, this only becomes an issue if you are going for 100% car collection like I am doing. And even if you are doing that, they might always return in the future and you can also snipe in auction house if you want. Suffice to say, there's always more content available if you want them.

This would have been the perfect modern racing game for me, if not for the stupid plotlines and monetization. I could get past the turd that is the "plot" to Horizon 5 since that is not what I am looking for in a racing game. What gets me the most is the monetization: I already paid a fucking premium for the game itself and now you want me to spend all this money buying all these DLC car packs you have released? Them fucking cars are literally built into the game already and I have to pay extra for it? I know there are still many other cars available but I have to say I am really disappointed in the crazily predatory monetization strategy they have here. The monetization is why I didn't rate the game a 5 star.

If you are looking for a racing game, buy this game as this is pretty much as good as it will get in the present day and age. You will get tons of fun out of it.

When your backlog is running dry and you can’t commit to one of those long, story-rich games because Elden Ring DLC is on the horizon, you might find yourself in this hypothetical situation with a friend. You both decide to download Microsoft Flight Simulator, play for a few hours, fly over your old stomping grounds, and then realize you could just be doing the same thing in Google Earth.

As you fly your helicopter over North Korea, you have an epiphany: you know what’s cooler than planes? Cars. You begin to clap your feet as a rush of nostalgia flows through you, remembering how fun Forza Horizon games are. You click download, and the rest is history.

Now, I’m not saying this is what happened to me, but boy am I having a fun time driving off cliffs and rewinding!

A lot of people will say “Forza Horizon isn’t as good as it used to be” but I disagree. A lot of that talk comes from nostalgia and that’s fine, but to say FH5 is bad or boring is absurd, Forza Horizon 5 has a lot to offer, PlayGround games has added a lot and the most out of all the horizon games. It’s an arcade racing game so don’t complain and compare it to simulator racing games, you do what you want especially with the EventLab. My biggest complaint is the map, it’s beautiful yes, but it does feel empty half the time, too much wilderness and desert and the rally DLC didn’t help at all even tho everyone wanted a city-like DLC, the base map is big enough to have a large city and a lot of people have been asking for that since FH3. Another complaint is the lack of customization to cars, I will give them credit tho because they have given us a bit more compared to the previous games.