Forza Horizon 6

2026-06-12
It’s lovely to see a game celebrate cars so thoroughly in 2026. A world where I’m one of a handful of people I know who still drive stick. A game that feels like a love letter to the Mitsu Evo, a car my dad still has, a car I still love. A car that in our real world was killed like so many other things by SUVs and trucks. Which in the language du jour should be called “carslop”. “I want the big round box,” says the stupid American, slobbering over the preposterously ugly X6. Teslas, round shapeless turds, slide silently on the highway.

I’m ranting about the current state of things but Forza Horizon is a vacation. Yes, like most vacations, it has a few too many chatty cunts listening to the worst music on earth--if I hear “I wanna wake up where you are” one more time I will cave my own head in with a tire iron. But once you learn to drown it out--or mute it if you’re smart--your senses can focus on the endless parade of beautiful, shapely, shiny vehicles that take off into the sunset at speeds ranging from charmingly slow to eyesocket slapping fast. And every race spits the car back out cleansed and born again, returned to its polished showroom sheen--a car you never have to wash.

Every shape and form is present. Body positivity is for the morally bankrupt--I posit that we should all be gargantuan, glistening, muscled meat orbs, like Graham the car crash man, and anything less is settling for weakness--but with cars I embrace them all. I slowly rotate them around taking in every curve and protrusion, bumpers, turn indicators, spoilers. I gently open the door to reveal the interior lovingly sculpted by the army of employees at Playground Games.

The exteriors are perfect, obviously, but it's the interiors, man. The interiors. I step into the exact model of M3 I own and the stainless steel trim on the dash is exactly as it is when I walk downstairs into my garage. Every button on the steering wheel and console is in its right place. In a stroke of luck, the second wheelspin of the game hands me a Mitsubishi Evo VIII--my dad's exact car--and lo and behold this perfection is no fluke: the interior is a pixel perfect match. And settling into first person mode I stare transfixed at an interior I’d normally have to book a 3 hour flight down to Texas to go see.

First person is my preferred mode but you have to move the camera outside the car to hear it. And you’ll want to because the foley artists at Playground Games are doing god's work. The sound of that classic '05 M3, an absurdly rally-tuned Focus, any--just any--fucking Lamborghini. It is like a choir of angels to my ears. It might be the best sounding game I've ever heard in my life. All with its music turned off.

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I t-bone the person in first place as they go into a turn. The last thing they hear is the Windows XP shutdown noise--my custom car horn--and the last thing they see is a license plate that reads "KUCK" before it's hidden by the smoke of my tires burning as I disappear into the distance. I am number one.

Like every other Forza Horizon game, rubber-on-asphalt races are delightful. The simulation is tunable to anyone's taste--mine sits a ratchet or two down from full sim--and on pavement it sings. You can feel the difference in traction and torque between different cars and that classic progression from 4-cylinder shitter to 12-cylinder car-Satan is ambrosia.

And once again, off-road and the more theatrical set-piece tracks are fine. They're fun spectacles but they feel floaty and too easy. You spend too much time in the air and there’s no sense of grappling with traction--the core battle between accelerating, braking, and turning in any race. No they’re all popcorn and bubblegum, tasty but nothing to sink your teeth into.

The one exception: I have seen the face of god, and it is a Ford Fiesta RS taking every turn in the dirt sideways at speeds higher than my Triumph Speed Triple tops out at. A terrifying, screeching little goblin on wheels, perpetually redlined, producing gobs of torque, able to turn every mistake into an opportunity to stunt. It is the only time the off-road in this game is fun, and it is the most fun thing in the world. I finished one race a full minute ahead of the competition--the AI legitimately got DNFs. Didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen. Demon car.

But whatever your favored race format you will contend with the AI. These drivers got mean since Mexico--cutting you off, rear-ending you into turns, side-swiping. As a Boston driver, I respect it. Just enough chaos to stay engaged.

But after winning every race at Highly Skilled and getting bored I bumped it to Expert. Then the mask came off. The front car disappears over the horizon no matter how perfectly I drive. I’m hitting the line perfectly, throwing in the occasional cheesed corner to cut off a rival, finally overtaking the leader on a straightaway, and his car--up till that point not able to catch up in a straightaway--simply went faster at the finish line to win. Another race I rammed a car onto a ramp on the highway, putting a wall between us, and continued going 100+ mph. 2 seconds later he showed up behind me also going 100+, meaning this motherfucker literally drove through the wall like the Juggernaut or he teleported. Sure whatever dude. The rubber-banding actively destroys the simmy-ness of the whole thing. I don't mind needing to cheese--I mind racing cars mine can mathematically never beat.

And then there’s the night. Half the street stuff--Street Races, Touge--happens in the dark with no way to change it; only Road Racing gets the sun. Playground Games builds the most gorgeous rendition of Japan, stuffs it with the most lovingly detailed cars I’ve ever seen, and then sits me in the one seat where I can’t see a goddamn one of them, squinting at flares and tail lights. I don’t like driving at night in real life, and I sure as hell didn’t come here to chase a pair of tail lights through the dark.

But I don’t care about the AI cheating. I don’t care about the mostly terrible music (though UWANOSORA obviously rips). I don’t care that the game makes you do the mediocre off-road races to progress. I don’t even really care that this is the same ol’ Horizon only shinier with a change of scenery.

Nah man, all I need is to see a lovingly crafted interior of some obscure Japanese two-seater I’ll never see in real life. To hear the roar of a Huracan breaking the sound barrier or the screech of a Fiesta RS going horizontal around a bend. To know that even if we may have mostly killed cars in our world--as a funnel for passion, creativity, and mechanical ingenuity, as a piece of our culture, by homogenizing, electrifying, and overcomplicating them--that they still exist in this one. I’m on vacation after all.