MeinMMO editor Dariusz has played Forza Horizon 6 for over 40 hours and found: The racing game gives him a feeling that he usually only knows from GTA.
Suddenly it was 3:00 AM, in the middle of the night. Actually, I wanted to go to sleep 2.5 hours ago, but somehow my buddy Jacob and I brutally talked ourselves into the night. Just now we were playing “our last mission” before going to bed, and then we suddenly reminisced about school memories, and I told how a classmate tried to pick a classroom lock with a fork.
“Dude, it’s 3 o’clock. We wanted to be off 2 hours ago,” I said, interrupting our late-night deep talk. “I’m just aimlessly driving around the whole time.”
I’ve had several evenings like this in my life, with different friends, but often in the same game: GTA Online. The action game has accompanied me for many hours when I actually haven’t really played, but stayed in the game nonetheless. Whether during deep talks, podcasts, listening to music, or watching a series: I love to occasionally just drive around and do nothing.
Forza Horizon 6 is the first game since GTA 5 that perfectly fulfills this need.
So when I say I played FH6 like GTA, I’m not thinking about flying motorcycles and rocket cars, but about cruising. I noticed while playing that I was lost in thought several times and drove around without doing anything meaningful. Like back in GTA.
A setting that invites you to cruise
Of course, it is also possible in the predecessors to just turn off your head and drive around aimlessly, but neither Forza Horizon 4 nor 5 gave me this feeling. And that starts with the setting and continues with the driving behavior:
- The map of Forza Horizon 4 was nice and I also like the setting, but the roads lacked the gameplay flow that the highways of the fictional state of San Andreas convey to me.
- I never felt at home in England and can’t even name any distinctive points on the map today.
- In Forza Horizon 5 – I might be making myself unpopular here – cruising didn’t feel like a relaxed drive but like the way to a jungle safari.
- I have very little connection to Mexico and unfortunately never found the setting particularly exciting.
It’s different in the Japan of FH6.
I’m speeding through the Shibuya Crossing in the middle of the night with my Skyline, which I have seen dozens of times in “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift,” and admire the colorful neon lights of the billboards. Then I zoom past the Tokyo Tower in broad daylight, its red glowing particularly bright in the sunlight, and a few minutes later I realize I’ve already driven all the way to Mount Haruna. And every time I drive out of the city westward and Mount Fuji reappears in a clearing, I think: “Wow, that looks amazing.”
The feeling of “just cruising a bit through Japan” is reinforced by the driving behavior. In Forza Horizon 6 I feel like the cars tend to oversteer. This makes the game not feel realistic, rather the opposite, but it is even more fun for me to just drive around.
In the predecessor, too many vehicles were prone to understeering for me. This made even nimble sports cars feel somehow cumbersome – and I simply prefer to accidentally drift instead of shooting through the corner with the agility of a cruise ship.
Please let me know in the comments as soon as you have played yourself whether I’m imagining the stronger oversteer of the cars in Forza Horizon 6 or if you feel the same way.
More Forza, with the familiar strengths …
I really have a lot of fun with Forza Horizon 6 and when this article goes live, I can finally talk about my impressions and convince my friends to buy the game despite the hefty price tag of 70 euros, so we can speed through Japan together.
There are many things that speak for the game. One of the main arguments: more Forza Horizon.
There are the familiar races, action-packed story events, open-world activities like speed traps and drift zones, etc. I also experienced cool interactions with completely random players during the testing phase, including a kind of mini-tuning meet in a parking lot and drag races with bizarre vehicles. Still, after over 40 hours, I still have plenty to do, because every Forza fan knows:
After the story, it really begins, the car collecting begins!
The vehicle fleet offers 392 different vehicles at release – a typically large selection that I certainly haven’t been able to test in full yet. But I find the selection good. There’s everything I wanted – even though true car enthusiasts might have a few models in mind that are missing.
When it comes to the sound of the cars, opinions are notoriously divided. I don’t find it bad, and you can tell they try to be close to the respective original – although some engines’ roughness is missing. Forza feels tamer at times than reality.
Moreover, despite the incredibly beautiful graphics, the game has a really solid performance. I got about 70 FPS at 1440p on “Ultra” settings on my PC with an RTX 3070. That’s good, because my system isn’t the newest.
Dariusz’s gaming setup:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 GAMING X CPU:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core-Processor, 3593 MHz, 8 core(s), 16 logical processor(s)
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
Nevertheless, I also have a lot to criticize.
… and the annoying weaknesses of the predecessors
The story is, as usual, not deep, and the characters are irrelevant – to an extent that the dialogues annoy me because they talk about my music. The German dubbing of the spoken texts is particularly horrendous, which is why I now have to learn how tuning terms and components are called in English. Because with changing the voiceover language, the menu language also changes.
My biggest criticism, however, are the 9 different difficulty levels and the associated behavior of the NPCs.
It’s almost impossible to find a fixed difficulty level to stick to. One race I win easily on “Expert” (Level 7 out of 9) with several seconds ahead, and according to Forza, I’m supposed to switch up a level. The next one I lose clearly even on “Above Average” (Level 5 out of 9) and end up only in 6th or 7th place.
My driving ability plays no role in this. No matter how well I drive, the leading vehicles are much faster and make no mistakes. If I lower the difficulty, they still make no mistakes, but drive slower. Alternatively, I can change or tune my car, then I win even at the higher level. I just have to drive faster, not better.
It’s often not a proper difficulty setting, but the choice of whether you want to drive with an untuned stock vehicle or a highly tuned tuning beast.
I’m being completely honest: I wouldn’t even mind if I could choose between the cars variably in the race menu since I have almost 400 to choose from. However, to tune the car, I have to finish the race, travel to the garage, buy performance tuning, and travel back to the race.
If the improved vehicle still isn’t enough for victory, then I’m just out of luck. Then I have to finish the race again and choose another vehicle – and perhaps tune it back in the garage again.
At least: The fast travels are now free at any time.
One last criticism: No, there’s no crazy visual tuning in line with Japanese car culture. FH6 largely has the same options as the predecessor. So don’t expect too much there.
How does Forza Horizon 6 drive with a wheel?
For a few hours, I also tested Forza Horizon 6 with a wheel and pedals, specifically the MOZA R5 Racing Set (R5 DD Wheelbase, ES Wheel, and SR-P Lite Pedals). It worked very well in principle: plugged it in, started the game, assigned buttons (unfortunately, there were no presets), and then it was ready to go.
Driving with the wheel is definitely fun, but it was also frustrating. It’s a cool experience while cruising, but in races, it was almost unplayable for me as a wheel newbie. As if it wasn’t already hard enough to control the oversteering vehicles with the wheel, NPCs constantly drove into my side and spun me out.
Against a PIT maneuver, there’s not much I can do; I’m just too bad.
I have to sit down again and try to get more out of the force feedback. It was definitely too weak for me and would have helped to recognize spinning or blocking tires and similar things faster and respond accordingly while driving.
In general, I will continue to reach for the controller. It’s simpler and overall more comfortable in Forza Horizon – especially since I could easily use my 8Bitdo Ultimate and wasn’t forced to use an Xbox controller.
I will occasionally take out the wheel, especially when I want to drive through Japan in a relaxed way.
Conclusion: A great racing game, but not perfect
Forza Horizon 6 is one of those games that I will definitely play for many more hours after the testing phase. It delivers exactly what I expect from the series – even if that also includes the well-known weaknesses. However, with the new setting and what I perceive to be the changed driving behavior, I have more fun than in the predecessor and really enjoy cruising through Japan and switching off my mind.
While I would have liked to see more of the classic street races in general and find it a pity that there are so few significant innovations or improvements to old weaknesses, when I look at the overall picture, I did have a good time.
Forza Horizon 6 has become part of my evening routine in recent days. After work, I played for a few hours, then went to Overwatch with friends, and finally played Forza Horizon for half an hour to unwind – because even though the NPCs are among the weaknesses of the game, they are still better than our random mates in Blizzard’s shooter.
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