Racing Through Japan: The Definitive Forza Horizon 6 Xbox Series S Review
The festival is back, and this time round it’s all in Japan, and I don’t have to tell you how gorgeous this place looks. Forza Horizon 6 oozes atmosphere and discovery, dropping you into a stunning open world populated with real-world player ghosts and AI drivers using your actual friends’ list gamertags. From the high-speed opening sequence down to the smallest backroad, the game feels incredibly addictive because you are nearly always checking something off or grabbing rewards. It’s a massive, beautiful playground built for exploration, even if it tries a bit too hard to force you into its story.
QUICK NAV: [Specs] [Gameplay] [Performance] [Settings]
Forza Horizon 6 Xbox Series S Review
- Developer: Playground Games
- Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
- Official Store Link: Xbox Store UK
- Gamerscore: 1000G available to earn.
- Download Size: Full digital download required.
- Loyalty Rewards: Special gift cars unlocked for owning or playing previous titles in the franchise.
Forza Horizon 6 Xbox Series S Review
The open world racing gameplay here is brilliant, and drifting is very easy to pull off, looks great, and feels fantastic. You start by picking your first ride from a selection of 3 classic cars and giving it a custom number plate before hitting the streets. Progression is tied to the Horizon adventure chapter, which is the main story that you unlock by doing events and earning accolade points. The accolade points chart will auto-complete as you do objectives, keeping you in a constant loop of unlocking stuff. You can tackle race events in solo, Co-op, PVP, rivals, or custom route creation, using a big colourful Festival map to pick territories that act as specific racing disciplines like street racing or off-road. The collection journal acts as your master book for tracking world discovery, and you even collect stamps by exploring, while the map fills in with rumours of car locations. There are many event types to choose from, from drag races to sprints, and you can even end up racing against a Gundam. For a more relaxed vibe, auto drive allows you to set a destination and then turn it on, letting you switch to cinematic mode for cool camera shots and flyovers while the game drives for you. If you prefer old school, you can just get a traditional racing line. All the classic music radio channels are back, ranging from rock to drum and bass, alongside new ones from Japan to keep it authentic. Plus, you can find car meet-ups where you park, show off your interior, and rev your engine for other players.
There is a ton of customisation outside the car, too, like finding and buying estates which become your home for fast travel and car management. This time round, you can rename your estate, give it a description and tags, make a poster for it, and do actual work on it, like clearing away debris, old bits of broken slabs, tools, and machines, before building it up into your own custom space. There is also a full garage editor where you can place cars, decorate the space, and share it so players can visit. When buying rides, you can download other players’ custom skins or upload your own, and you can share tuning and level creation codes using simple sharing codes. Photography is a massive deal here; you earn EXP for taking shots of every car in the game, and thank goodness, there is a camera image above cars you haven’t shot yet to make tracking easy. You also get wheelspins and super wheelspins for random rewards, find free fast travel tokens, and hit speed trap zone events to score 1 to 3 stars on the leaderboards. Seasons are back with weather changes and events based on real-world timings across Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. My absolute favourite part of the game is how you get a pop-up as you collect mascots or discover roads showing the person on your friends list closest to you, whether you are above or below them. It’s just enough of a competitive nudge to keep you going. You can also drop gift cars in special barns to send to anyone, new players, or community contributors with custom messages. However, when doing a championship, you don’t go straight to the next event; the game tries to get you to do something else, which will reset your championship progress, and it is weirdly hard to see where the other specific events within your championship are actually located on the map.
Forza Horizon 6 Xbox Series S Review: Performance & Fidelity
- Graphics Mode: Choose between a dedicated Performance mode or Quality mode.
- Visual Fidelity: Features amazing graphics that bring Japan to life, though it gets disorientating when you are in the dark and triggers a cutscene that flashes to glorious sunshine before dumping you back into the dark.
- Optimisation: Loading times are very impressive on the Xbox Series S, and the performance in general is highly optimised.
- Technical Oddity: Some game settings require the game to be restarted, which is a new one for me outside of PC gaming.
- Online Stability: Features seamless online integration, where you see other real-world players exploring, acting as ghosts so they cannot grief you.
Settings, Customisation & Control Details
- Difficulty Presets: Offers 9 distinct difficulties and adjustable race settings that can be tweaked before each individual event.
- Driving Assists: Fully customizable driving assist presets, including braking, steering, traction control, stability control, shifting, driving line, rewind, and tyre wear damage that affects your bonus credit multiplier.
- Controller Customisation: Invert axis settings, sensitivity sliders, deadzone adjustments, button rebinding, gear behaviour changes, and acceleration sensitivity sliders.
- Colorblind Support: Includes full colorblind support alongside dedicated adjustment sliders for Deuteranopia, Protanopia, and Tritanopia.
- Accessibility Audio: Features full-screen reader support for navigating menus.
- Subtitles: Toggleable subtitles on/off with options to adjust the text size, keyword highlighting, and text background opacity.
- Avatar Editor: Create your driver avatar with full prosthetic options and gender identity choices.
- Camera Angles: Six different driving views, including a highly detailed interior dashboard view.
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Forza Horizon 6 Xbox Series S Review
Summary
What Makes Forza Horizon 6 Worth Playing?
The handling of each car is unique and is still as tight and responsive as ever, making the minute-to-minute driving an absolute blast. The world looks gorgeous and is packed with things to do, like tracking down treasure cars, smashing hidden mascots that pop up on your map, and tackling the festival party—a lightweight, optional social event where you knock out time trials or skills with zero competitive stress. You also get a helpful rewind feature to fix mistakes on the fly, and you can fast travel to any discovered road instantly without it costing you a single credit. Earning EXP levels your car up to grant points for car buffs that handily carry over to any other ride in your garage, and the slick, clean UI uses excellent progress bars that make keeping track of your massive collection journal simple at a glance.
The Biggest Frustrations In Forza Horizon 6
I have never been into any of the Horizon story stuff, and this game hasn’t done enough to change my mind. The in-game cutscenes and character interactions feature great voice work, but your character is fully voiced and a part of the proceedings, which leads to a lot of unskippable cutscenes that get right on my nerves. You cannot skip most of this story style stuff, which is incredibly annoying, as the main commentator is completely not my cup of tea. It’s also incredibly frustrating that open-world activities like jumps and speed traps are actively locked behind progress in the main racing events, forcing you to grind through the campaign stuff just to mess around in the sandbox.
Forza Horizon 6 Overall Verdict: Is It Worth Playing?
Forza Horizon 6 delivers an incredibly addictive and jaw-droppingly gorgeous racing experience that makes excellent use of its Japanese backdrop. The core driving mechanics and loop of endless rewards will easily keep you hooked for hours, even with the lightning-fast loading times on the Series S. It is a shame about the unskippable dialogue and forced story progression, but the pure freedom on the road completely makes up for it. If you love open-world racers, this trip is absolutely worth taking.
