Forza Horizon 5 Critic Reviews

Forza Horizon 5 accomplishes that which so many franchises try again, and again, but fail to do so: get better with each and every entry. Playground Games and Turn 10 Studio's magnificent display brings about one of the best racing games of all time to Microsoft. Is this 2021's GOTY?

Forza Horizon 5 is indeed the FAST & FURIOUSLY good and if you’re looking for a true next-gen racer, it’s finally arrived! And like Dom Toretto, Forza Horizon 5 lets you live your virtual life at a quarter mile at a time.

Forza Horizon 5 features all the content from the previous game and bumps the fun of this Horizon title. The game looks stunning and the gameplay is the same casual fun of Forza Horizon. The replayability of this game makes it outstanding and deserving of a perfect score.

I went into Forza Horizon 5 expecting a pretty racing game. What I got was an experience, a splendid open-world car exploration simulator with light RPG elements and a trunk full of things to do and see. While I’d like to see Playground try something new or perhaps break free from the existing formula next time, this is a clear candidate for 2021’s best game and a must-play, whether you have Game Pass or not.

Forza Horizon 5 somehow raised an insurmountable bar to new heights. Playground Games continued to show off their prowess with game development and their striving to make a game that is fun for every type of player in every aspect of gameplay. Regardless of if you’re a racing fan or not, if you have Game Pass, Forza Horizon 5 needs to be the next game you play. You never know, it could be the jumping-off point into a new genre that you never knew you’d click with.

In conclusion, play Forza Horizon 5. There has never been a better looking game, and it plays like an absolute dream. It’s full of cars, full of challenge, full of glorious visuals and played out across a world like no other.

It’s always a difficult task to raise the bar on something that’s already top notch, and when it comes to the racing games, due to the natural limits of the genre, the task gets even harder. But thanks to the now more mature than ever PlayGround studio, Forza Horizon 5 crushes its own bar and reaches a whole new level, easily becoming one of the best and most complete racing games of all time, if not THE best.

The people over at Playground Games proved -yet again- that they are capable of delivering the very best arcade racing experience. Forza Horizon 5 is truly a superb game in a league of its own.

I absolutely adore Forza Horizon 5, and while it’s possible to fault it as being a bit more of the same when compared to Forza Horizon 4, I’m not sure that’s actually a bad thing. It’s a more polished experience overall, and while it may be playing it safe just a tad, it’s hard to deny that the game is a technical marvel, and a fantastic show piece for Xbox Series X and 4K displays everywhere. Even if you opt to play in performance mode to hit that sweet 60fps spot, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how great everything looks in motion. So yes, if you’re not already convinced, do yourself a favor and check out Forza Horizon 5 when it launches this week.

Forza Horizon 5 looks phenomenal, plays well and is practically flawless. It is undoubtedly the best entry in the series and has the most detailed open world in any game to date.

Let’s be clear for a moment: Forza Horizon has always been good. From the moment it burst onto the scene in 2012 as a spin-off to the core, more po-faced Forza Motorsport series, it established itself as a fun, thrilling, and subversively moreish alternative thread for racing on Xbox. It was in many ways the spiritual, open-world successor to Project Gotham Racing, and in turn traced its roots back to arcade racing royalty like OutRun. This is a tough lineage to stand up to, but Horizon 5 takes all that history and experience and runs with it, incrementally upgrading this series into must-play brilliance. It’s an achievement of a game.

Forza Horizon 5 is a marvel of a game and a standout title on the Xbox Series X. It’s a near-perfect racing and exploration game that looks stunning, plays like a dream, and just begs to be played over and over again.

Forza Horizon 5 is the roadtrip holiday I’ve really needed after two years in and out of COVID-induced lockdowns. It brings me great solace to be behind the wheel, covering hundreds of kilometers of distance across an awe-inspiring piece of Earth. And even when I’m careening through the mud on a cross-country race, crashing into strangers on the internet, my mind is in an untroubled, fulfilling place. In 2021, Forza Horizon 5 is where I want to be.

The best arcade races nowadays. But it is becoming clear that it's getting harder and harder to move the successful formula forward.

Forza Horizon 5 proves that even the best games can get better. An unparalleled driving experience that also happens to be a graphical showcase like no other.

Forza Horizon 5 is a visual spectacle and a masterpiece, providing plenty to do and tons of fun to be had around every corner.

Forza Horizon 5 is the best game in the series and the best Xbox Series X/S game to date. Its flawless racing and wealth of activities are backed up by a gorgeous setting and a fantastic new progression system which encourages players to focus on the features they enjoy most. Utterly essential.

Beautiful, vast, creative, varied, and exciting, Forza Horizon 5 is an incredible game that will have you hooning around Mexico for months. There's an amazing sense of variety to everything about this game, and the smart Accolades system should have many achievement hunters hooked as they explore the full extent of what this remarkable racer has to offer. Fantastic handling, interesting events, and a wonderful history-spanning selection of cars makes for an amazing experience — arguably the best game in the series to date, and inarguably the best game in the series to DOOT. See you in Mexico, amigos...

Forza Horizon 5 is a deep and nuanced car nirvana for revheads and auto geeks to endlessly collect, tinker, and experiment. It’s also an extremely accessible buffet of racing spectacle open to everyone, from Deluxe Edition diehards to Game Pass nomads – no matter their driving skill or mechanical knowledge. It’s an occasionally goofy but always earnest Valentine to Mexico’s world-famous culture, and a romantic ode to the magic of road-tripping through postcard-perfect vacation vistas. It’s a long haul, MMO-inspired racer that’s exploding with more races, activities, and event types than can comfortably fit on some parts of the map – and yet it still always feels relaxed rather than daunting. It never locks you into something you don’t want to do and steadily rewards you for however you choose to play it. It looks beautiful, it sounds magnificent, and it is glorious to play. Yes, Forza Horizon 5 is a lot of things. Above all, however, it is the result of a racing studio at the peak of its craft and the best open-world racing game I’ve ever played.

Forza Horizon 5 is a stunning and beautifully crafted entry in the series that's full of memorable races, creativity, and fantastic additions.