Forza Horizon 5 has been out for three months now, and as it is a constantly evolving game I wanted to take a look back at how it has changed since its initial release last year. I am about to hit 75 hours of driving time with the game, and it is worth noting that is literal driving time and every second l spent tinkering with my cars, in menus, paused or in (albeit brief) loading screens for races do not count within this time.
Firstly the car roster has been bolstered by over two dozen new cars, further building on the already impressive 550+ cars in the game when it released. With no sign of slowing down, it seems like the final total will likely end up close to 700 a year from now, but only time will tell on that speculation.
It’s not all positives infuriatingly, as the newly started fourth series has brought back one of the issues I had with Horizon 4, where the lowest sum of credits which can be won in a wheelspin is down to 1000 from the 10,000 Horizon 5 launched with. It’s not a massive problem but it is galling to unlock a wheelspin to be rewarded with a paltry grand which isn’t a great help when saving up for a new car. That said, as race rewards have been significantly improved between Horizon 4 and 5, credits aren’t exactly difficult to come across, but I still find it frustrating that a feature from 4 which irritated everybody can just be patched in post-launch when reviews for the game are already out. Hopefully Playground Games won’t decide to drop this figure any further in future updates!
At time of writing in February, the first expansion can’t be too far off. Aside from the usual rumours that there will be another Hot Wheels centred experience following the success of the one for Horizon 3, Playground Games are giving nothing away to feed speculation of where we will be exploring next. Typically, each expansion to other Horizon games also brought with it a fresh burst of new vehicles to experiment with, and following the high critical acclaim Horizon 5 enjoyed at launch, the stakes have never been higher to deliver with incredible new content through the game’s lifecycle.
It is safe to say that the returning gripe I mentioned earlier, I still absolutely love Forza Horizon 5. In my review I named it the greatest racing game of all time, as well as my game of 2021, and those facts remain true to this day. An indisputably 10 out of 10 game which simply must be played to be believed, which Xbox Game Pass subscribers have no excuse not to play owing to it being offered on the service since the day it launched in November.
What did you think of the Forza Horizon 5 experience? Let me know in the comments and I’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading!
