Forza made me reconsider a lot of things. I think I am like many people that actively play games, in the sense that Forza and most other "car game" franchises are nothing more than a thing to roll your eyes at when they spend 20 minutes at e3 on it. I was under the impression that there was a pretty niche specific subsect of people who played these types of games and it was incredibly catered to them, probably the same way most people like at something like fighting games. But, upon picking up an Xbox, not enjoying Halo Infinite, and hearing from people who's opinion I respect say this was fun from a "ignore the perspectives and explore the open world" approach, I gave it a shot. I don't usually enjoy open worlds regardless, but I'm open to them and generally like playing all the big triple A releases.

What followed was mildly brain shattering for me. The type of fun I had with this game was not unlike my experience with Breath of the Wild. I went in with an open and hopeful mind but ultimately not expecting it to be "my thing", then I'm wandering around this open world with a smile on my face passively enjoying the simple act of traversal, and before I know it I'm a dozen hours in doing all the little objectives. And in this case, it's not like I learned that I'm one of those niche racing game people all this time, it's that this is so in line with the type of games the sort of "core group of gamers" like me like. And I started thinking how much more relevant this genre used to be; Gran Turismo was the highest selling and one of the best rated games on the PS1, Need For Speed used to be relevant, stuff like GTA used to be a lot more focused on the driving aspect, and even cartoony stuff like Crazy Taxi and F Zero were acclaimed and relevant. But at some point, they drifted out of our cultural consciousness. But this game is fun.

Another thing it gave me perspective on was the "easy mode" in games debate. Because while I've always been able to conceptually understand "some people don't want to play something like Celeste for the challenge, they just want to see the levels and experience the story, so let them turn on no damage and infinite dashes" I couldn't fully empathize, I couldn't imagine being in that situation. But here I am, turning on auto-braking and most of the baby mode settings to get the most out of this game for myself. I could just drive around the beautiful Mexico landscapes.

And with that, let me actually talk about the game itself. It really feels like a game that wants nothing more than for you to have fun, whatever form that comes in. For me, it was originally wandering around, just driving and going fast. It's extremely generous with crashes and offroad driving, you can plow through objects as large as thin trees with no issue. Beyond that, there's a wide range of objectives to play and challenge yourself in. Personally, I found races annoying and frustrating, braking on turns has always felt annoying and unintuitive to me and direct competition on restricted courses directly took away from the more relaxed fun I was having. But missions with objectives like clearing a large distance in a certain amount of time, often encouraging cutting through large swathes of wildland instead of roads, was right up my alley. And while unnecessary to just exploring the open world, the objectives are a great idea because they help unlock the next big story beats. You get to choose which ones sound the coolest, and then play them. They're quick and usually pretty cool. Driving through a volcano, fixing up an old car and doing tricks in it, and so on, were all really neat and fun.

Overall, despite the impact this games had on me, it's not an insane 5/5 experience. Honestly, without the impact it probably drops atleast half a star, if not a full one. But regardless it's still a beautiful world taking advantage of the intuitive fun of driving fast, with a lot of content and love for the player built on top.