Yazar 
Forza Horizon 6 (PC)
Especially if you love racing games, this is absolutely a game you should not miss. Because it is the most refined, most fun and biggest racing game you can currently find on the market. With the pure driving joy it offers, its unique Japan atmosphere and its never-ending pool of content, it is an indisputable leader.
Racing games, especially in recent years, have been in a serious search for identity. On one side are simulation games where you have to fine-tune every corner and every braking point down to the millisecond and the millimeter; on the other are pure arcade games where you ignore the laws of physics, use nitro and turn the whole city upside down. But right in the middle of these two extremes sits a perfectly balanced series — one that both makes you feel the weight of the car and lets you enjoy tearing through fields at 300 km/h, smashing trees and everything around you: Forza Horizon.
When Playground Games took us to the dusty, hot roads of Mexico with the series’ fifth game, we felt that the formula had slowly reached its peak but had also started to repeat itself. The development team clearly must have heard these criticisms, because in Forza Horizon 6 we leave behind Mexico’s lifeless, hot deserts and head to a vibrant, glittering, colorful Japan. I spent dozens of hours on Japan’s neon-lit streets and its mountain roads adorned with cherry blossoms. Now I’ll give a thorough evaluation of Forza Horizon 6, the most comprehensive game in the series.
A Living, Breathing Visual Masterpiece
One of the things I pay the most attention to in an open-world game is that the world does not feel like a backdrop sitting in the background. Forza Horizon 6‘s Japan is definitely one of the most fascinating, varied and “living” racing maps I have seen to date. Forza Horizon 5 in particular had felt very empty to me in this sense. The carelessly designed map, the lack of big cities and a Mexico made up almost entirely of off-road terrain may have seemed impressive when you first entered it, but afterward it lost its effect. Japan has always had a certain allure in that sense, and the game uses it beautifully.
Of course, this is not a one-to-one scaled real map of Japan. It is more of a slightly more compact map featuring the country’s most iconic locations. And by compact I definitely do not mean it in a bad way; because the map is so large and rich that while you are speeding under the neon lights of Shibuya Crossing, you can suddenly find yourself beneath the sakura trees or in Tateyama Kurobe. While doing some races, I often caught myself saying, “What a beautiful view!”
Visually, Forza games have always delivered satisfying results. Forza Horizon 6 is no exception in this regard. Once again we have a very good-looking game that pushes the limits of the generation. I experienced the game on PC, and I can say they did a really great job on optimization. Even if you think your computer won’t be able to run such a good-looking game, you can give it a chance. Because the development team has genuinely made an extremely well-optimized game.
The level of detail offered by a game running this well is also quite high. Cherry blossoms scattering in the car’s wind, and trees or boards breaking dynamically, increase the believability of the game’s world. Traffic density, although quite low by Japanese standards, has increased considerably compared to the previous games. Making the map feel more crowded and full has been a wonderful improvement.
The Sweet Feeling of Starting from Scratch
One of my favorite features of Forza Horizon 6 is the return of the wristband logic from the first game. Because this mechanic tells the rise-from-scratch story much better. In the other games we became the king of the festival and could drive high-quality cars very quickly. This undermined the enjoyment we got later when we drove a lower-class car.
Forza Horizon 6 is quite successful when it comes to gradual progression. We start the game as an ordinary tourist who has just arrived in Japan with little money in their pocket. The game starts you off with low-class cars and, once you have become well experienced, gives you a wristband by having you run a big event race. This wristband both lets you race with higher-class cars and unlocks new races. This doesn’t mean you can’t unlock an S2-class car and roam around Japan right at the start of the game. Of course you can roam, but to enter the game’s story races with that car, you’ll need to collect wristbands.
What’s more, this time the game isn’t limited to just the Horizon Festival events. The game also features a completely new progression branch called Discover Japan. This part steers you a bit away from racing and lets you explore Japan’s culture and nature. Buying the discounted cars found on the roadside, and photographing temples or beautiful sights worth seeing, have become a good source of motivation for exploring the open world. And since wandering around the game’s world is quite enjoyable anyway, these tasks don’t feel like a burden but rather an element of fun.
Driving Dynamics
Now let’s come to the driving mechanics, the real heart of a racing game. Forza Horizon 6 preserves the series’ famous balance between arcade and simulation. Personally, since I generally spend a lot of time in online races, I play with some assists turned on. But I can say that when you turn off assists like TCS, ABS and ESP, the game offers a quite realistic experience too. You can feel a front-wheel-drive car understeering through a corner, or the urge of a rear-wheel-drive car to spin out of control when you touch the gas. Here, some might again criticize the fact that the cars don’t take much damage. But I’m sure people who genuinely love the Horizon series don’t have such an expectation. Indeed, the game offers gameplay that is quite satisfying and enjoyable in terms of feel.
One of the nicest features in terms of content is the Touge races. Held on narrow mountain roads as if straight out of Initial D, these races are both much harder and much more enjoyable. This is a tough game mode where you battle just a single opponent rather than racing against a crowded army of enemies and a Bowie Knife 99. The modes besides these generally consist of content we’re familiar with and know from the other games as well. Personally, I mostly experienced the Horizon Play! mode, where we can play against online players. Here you can both learn the meta cars and fill your garage with them, and take part in races where everyone is on equal terms. If I were to offer a small criticism, I should say the races can become repetitive within a short time. Racing on a track you know is of course a different pleasure, but on such a large map the speed at which the races become repetitive honestly felt a bit too much for me.
Showcase, another famous race type of the series, was for some reason I don’t understand quite heavily criticized on social media. In the Forza Horizon series, you generally unlock a big Showcase race after your character has progressed a bit in the story, and the aim here isn’t directly to race against opponents. As the story requires, it’s a completely entertainment-focused mode in which you race against big or absurd things and can entertain the people who have come to the racing festival held in that country. Specifically for Forza Horizon 6, a Showcase race in which we race against a Mecha belonging to Japanese culture received a lot of criticism before the game came out. But since it’s an element belonging to the culture and the game doesn’t aim for realism, it didn’t really bother me.
Creating Your Own World
Forza Horizon 6 constantly offers you something new to do. For example, the garage system is a feature newly added to the series and is almost like a new life-simulation add-on. You no longer just buy ready-made houses and display your vehicles in them. You can buy your own massive plot of land and display anything you can think of there, decorating your land freely. Some players have even already started designing iconic race tracks on their own land.
Also, the ability to put stickers on the car’s windshield has finally been added. This way you don’t just make your cars resemble the iconic cars from the Cars series with paint alone — you can make exact replicas of them directly. Of course, even though such a comprehensive customization option has been added, since it’s a new feature it can be a bit clunky and frustrating. Personally, apart from what the game’s tutorial section shows, I didn’t really get into this garage-customization business. Placing objects is hard; even if you make millimeter-precise adjustments, you later look and find your objects flying around. So it feels like an idea that was decided on later. I’m sure the necessary adjustments regarding this area will be made in the future, but right now it hasn’t reached its full potential.
On the other hand, the game has a very large catalog of 550 vehicles. Although progression may seem a bit slow and to require patience at first, as you complete races and level up you can obtain plenty of nice cars through the wheelspin rewards. There’s already a few-hours patience threshold in the Horizon series anyway. Once that threshold is passed, you don’t have much trouble with money. In this game the situation continues the same way. The series carries on without breaking the things it knows work well.
I won’t touch on the story at all, because the game can be said to have no story. Almost every scenario part in the series feels as if it was forced in just so there would be a story, even a fake one. For instance, the side characters who help us are overly positive and react too much; this kills the illusion and feels a bit artificial. The radio hosts can sometimes be the icing on this cake too. Although what plays on the radios is very nice music suited to the Japan theme, the unnecessary host chatter that comes in between is annoying.
Unrivaled at the Top
Playground Games has taken its already near-flawless, safe formula and adapted it to one of the most beautiful maps in the world. From the outside, the game may look almost the same as the previous games. But it’s hard to understand the difference, especially with racing games, without experiencing them firsthand. So, while the game is conveniently also available on Xbox Game Pass, you can experience it directly from there. Depending on whether or not you like it, you can then buy the game.
The criticisms I have for Forza Horizon 6 are quite limited. The Forza Horizon series has been much loved for many years anyway — a series I greatly enjoy and one that’s always at the top. Especially if you love racing games, this is definitely a game you shouldn’t miss. Because it’s the most refined, most fun and biggest racing game you can currently find on the market. With the pure driving joy it offers, its unique Japan atmosphere and its never-ending pool of content, it’s an indisputable leader. If you can convince a few of your friends to play too, I’m sure the fun of the convoys and races you do together will be something else entirely.
Click here to read the other articles by Poyraz Akyol.
For more, you can follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.
Yorumlar