Forza Horizon 6 Review: Initial D Vibes, Gacha City Radio and the Best Horizon Yet
- Nathan Walters
- Jun 1
- 3 min read
I love Forza Horizon. I’ve sunk hours into every entry going back years, like it’s a part-time job. So when Horizon 6 dropped with a Japan setting, my AE86-shaped brain was already halfway out the door.
For the uninitiated, Horizon is everything you’d expect from a racing game, and quite a few things you wouldn’t. Free roam, thousands of cars, drag races, off-roading, jumps, stunts, mini games. You don’t even have to race if you don’t want to. Between the live events, billboards, mascots, roads driven and general wanderlust, there’s an absurd amount to do before you even get to the actual races.
But let’s start where every Horizon game lives or dies: the soundtrack. The radio stations slap. As always. The returning classics are here, Horizon Wave, Bass Arena and Block Party, all the comfort food stations any Horizon vet will recognise the second the playlist kicks in. But seeing as we’re in Japan this time, Gacha City Radio takes the crown for me. The presenter is EXACTLY what you want and expect (i don’t speak a word of Japanese and somehow that makes it better), the song selection is immaculate, and i swear, drifting through Tokyo streets and scenic mountain passes with the right track on… it’s the closest i’ve come to actually being in Initial D. And yes, before you ask, i do in fact have the AE86. There’s even a cup of water in the car as you do Tofu deliveries, its easter eggs galore.
Graphically, Horizon 6 is doing things i would’ve called sorcery a decade ago. You can see dirt build up on your brake discs, watch them heat up after a hard run and cool down again on the straights. The reflections off the hood, the interior dashboard view, the way light catches the paint at sunset… it’s all just gorgeous. As someone who grew up playing Ridge Racer on a CRT, it’s honestly a bit jarring how far racing games have come. And despite all this visual heavy lifting, the game runs flawlessly on my end. No stuttering, no jankness, no nothing. Playground Games do a smashing job each time, of course, but with Horizon 6 they’ve out-done themselves.
One of the things i love most about this series, and Horizon 6 leans into it harder than ever, is that it’s a game for everyone. You can crank the difficulty to hardcore pro racing, hook up a £10,000 wheel setup with force feedback, switch off every assist, and pretend you’re at Le Mans if that’s your jam. Or you can tweak the driveatars down to easy, leave auto-braking on, follow the racing line, and just vibe in cool cars. Hells, you rarely even have to actually race with how much stuff there is to do in the free roam.
It feels like the days when you were a kid (if you’re roughly my age or older) playing Need for Speed on the PS2, free roaming and listening to Riders on the Storm by Snoop Dogg… except now, there’s actually stuff to do. Mini games on every other roadside, billboards begging to be hit, side events and road completions that pull you off the main route for an hour at a time. Horizon understands that for a lot of us, racing games were never really about the racing. They were about the freedom.
As far as racing games go, Horizon as a series continually sits above the rest in my books, and Horizon 6 is the best one yet. It looks gorgeous, it feels responsive, it has something for everyone, and it’s introduced me to a load of tunes i’ll be hunting down on Spotify.
Reviewed on PC. Tested on an Intel i9-10850K, AMD RX 7900 XTX, 64GB RAM, played at 4K Ultra. Approximately 25 hours played. Review copy downloaded independently via GamePass
