As the sixth game in a very popular series (one that, I should point out, is published by Xbox and thus part of a wider boycott movement), and a game that’s been out for a little while now, Forza Horizon 6 has already been covered and reviewed to death, so you don’t need me to sit here and blab on about the specifics of car handling or how stable performance is on a certain Nvidia card. What I do want to talk about are two things in particular: one thing that pleasantly surprised me, and one thing that is so deeply annoying that it’s keeping me from playing the game as often as I’d otherwise like to.
First, the good stuff: Japan! Given the last few games in the series, and the track record of other Western studios trying the same thing, if you’d asked me whether Playground Games were going to be able to pull off setting a game in Japan without embarrassing themselves I’d have bet against them. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to make every race take place under gently-falling cherry blossoms, to cobble together a soundtrack featuring shamisen twangs over some beats, for the in-game radio hosts to butcher some Japanese terms so badly it’d be borderline racist.
Instead, Playground did their homework, got some help and the result is a game that, in visual terms at least, is one of the most authentic virtual tourism experiences outside of the Yakuza series. Its world is a snowglobe caricature of Japan rather than a direct facsimile, sure, but each themed stage looks amazing, and instead of going for the low-hanging blossoms doesn’t shy away from depicting what are some of Japan’s actual driving callsigns, like brutal, towering concrete freeways. Its recreation of Tokyo streets and the occasional, actual landmark (like Shibuya Crossing) are also fantastic. Good job!
Sadly, a lot of that good work is immediately and continually undone by the game world that’s been placed atop it. Forza Horizon 6 is, like its predecessors, a game not content with simply letting you drive, and so it centres an absurd, fictional festival as its focus. This ‘Horizon Festival’ is the framework through which the entire game is presented to you, affecting everything from cutscenes to radio stations to the events you’re taking part in. It is inescapable, and it is insufferable.
To be exposed to the Horizon Festival is to imagine a world where Glastonbury is being sponsored by Disney Plus. It’s a Linkedin post’s summary of Fast & Furious. It’s Tokyo Drift as described by an insurance company’s Super Bowl halftime commercial. It’s an AI’s best approximation of a culture ruled by energy drinks.
Every single character in this game, and there are many, from radio DJs to your player character’s friends, is deeply annoying. Every radio station is full of physically painful ‘banter’, every cutscene treats Japan like some kind of cultural pilgrimage instead of just a country you’re visiting to drive a car around. As PC Gamer’s review says, “this series does not have characters, only delivery mechanisms for insipid chat.”
In an effort to preserve my sanity, and to continue enjoying a driving game that’s really fucking good at driving, I’ve started playing Forza Horizon 6 with as much of this crap turned off as I can toggle. I’m clearly not alone in my annoyances, either; some websites have entire blogs dedicated solely to muting the game’s in-car dialogue.
It’s incredible to me that all this guff can be both so bad and yet deemed so integral to the experience at the same time. I have fonder feelings towards Gran Turismo 7’s setting; Gran Turismo 7’s characters are static profile pictures, and its game world is a menu screen.
This is a driving game! You don’t need any of this shit! There are times in Forza Horizon 6 when the driving is so good it almost stopped me in my (sorry) tracks: the way you can slide a car’s wheels out on a dirt rally track and hear gravel pinging off your door, the lurch of a supercar blasting off the line and sending your viewpoint temporarily across the horizon, the overplayed (complimentary) trick the game constantly pulls where it shoots you off a ramp or cliff and has you flying across a track like a man in a wingsuit. It’s all so damn good, then some asshole comes on the radio three seconds later and snaps me right out of my feelgood zone.
I get that this is not the hill to fight the “games are for adults” argument on, but beyond the immediate personal embarrassment of having to listen to Forza Horizon 6’s shit over and over is the realisation that so many people involved in its development signed off on this garbage, all of them adults, all of them making a game aimed at adults, and it really annoys me. There’s a fantastic driving game here with some S-tier visuals and sound work, and the participation of some of the world’s most prestigious luxury automakers, and instead of taking any of that seriously, taking part in the Horizon Festival feels like going to a track day hosted by Mr. Beast.
Thankfully, like I’ve said, you can turn at least some of this stuff off. Because there is one hell of a driving game here to enjoy, so long as you’re left in peace to enjoy it.
