Forza Horizon 6 Is Every Japanese Driving Fantasy Rolled into One: Hands-On Preview - IGN

There is something magical about being unleashed upon a Forza Horizon map for the first time. I’m restricted from showing you the first few minutes of my hands-on with Forza Horizon 6 in the video above, and I think that’s more than fair enough. I’m hesitant to even describe it, since the carefully curated opening drive of a Horizon game is really something best experienced for yourself, without any spoilers.

I can, however, safely cover anything and everything I did after I’d passed the prologue – and I’ve been doing plenty. Alongside establishing that the preview build was locked to the 30 FPS “Quality” mode – and that the 60 FPS “Performance” mode will be available in the full game at launch – the preview documentation Playground supplied to us explained this preview was good for around an hour of linear play. It would, however, subsequently support as much free roaming as we saw fit. On my first day, I played through that hour, and then another, and then another, until it was suddenly well after midnight. The following morning I dived straight back in and played all day again.

If the preview didn’t have a cutoff time, I can guarantee you I’d still be playing it now. Not bad for build with just a tiny sliver of the 550 cars coming on day one, and barely a handful of actual racing events.

Our Forza Horizon 6 preview contained three race events (a cross country, a road race, and trail race), as well as a smattering of familiar Horizon PR stunts (several of which were drift zones set on what are easily already amongst the best ribbons of switchback-filled roads in the whole series). The races were in service of earning the right to qualify for the Horizon Invitational, which will be our pathway into the Horizon Festival proper in the final game (although the Invitational itself was not part of this preview build). As previously discussed, Forza Horizon 6 is returning to the tiered wristband structure of the original Forza Horizon.

I like the presence of race marshalls and other festival infrastructure at the staging area for races. There’s a level of credibility this sort of thing injects into the atmosphere, which helps the festival itself feel like it’s a big operation run by actual people – and that there’s more to it than just icons, menus, and loading screens.

I will say the initial trio of cars has left me a little curious. That said, I’m not completely sure whether or not the selection itself is reflective of exactly what we’ll see again in the full version of the game next month, or whether this was some kind of compromise for now that’s bespoke to this preview build only. I honestly don’t mind that they come carrying modifications already, before you even slip behind the wheel. That is, it’s probably more authentic that the first Silvia or Celica you’d slide into after landing in Japan would have had some work done from a previous owner. Actual unadulterated, bone-stock survivor cars are arguably far rarer prospects in this context. What has tripped me up, however, is the slightly odd spotlight on the distinctly American GMC Jimmy. As a car dork, that's a bit too random for me – especially when Japan is already home to some of the most iconic off-roaders ever made. There were differences in the cars featured in the footage from Playground you saw during our March IGN First – compared to some of the cars I saw in these situations while visiting the actual studio itself in February – so it is perhaps possible it’s still a placeholde...

For someone who’s spent hundreds of hours in each Forza Horizon dating back to the series 2012 debut, the events themselves felt quite typical of Forza Horizon’s robust and reliable brand of racing. The racing is good, which is what I expected, although I’ll concede I didn’t feel compelled to replay them during my limited time with this build. What truly hooked me was cruising the world.

I just can’t get enough of it.

Luke Reilly's 10 Favourite Open-World Racing Games

Forza Horizon 6’s map is a showstopper. My glimpse of it during our February visit to Playground gave me a hint of the scope and contrast the studio’s vision of Japan was going to offer but, in retrospect, the corridor of the map I was ultimately privy to at that time barely scratched the surface.