Forza Horizon 6 took me on a journey that I don’t expect to do in real life. It let me drive through Japan. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Japan a few times, but I have never even tried to drive through any part of it.
There’s the thing about the steering wheel on the wrong side of the cabin, and people driving on the wrong side of the road. And of course I would never be able to drive through the real Japan at the speeds I did in the game. I give credit to the studios here. They knew enough to make Japan itself into the main character of the game.
The game is coming out worldwide on May 19, and I had a chance to play the preview, which is a snapshot of the first hour or so of play. It included prologue events and rides though beautiful Japanese roads and landscapes. It also had some open world and customization features. The game is coming from Turn 10 Studios and Playground Games, and it’s perhaps the biggest game coming soon under the new leadership of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma.
I didn’t see any particularly bothersome bugs, but I was not that impressed with my Japanese-looking avatar. As a person, he was less interesting than my cars, for sure. He had the same facial expression and repetitive poses, so I hope they’ll fix that by launch time.
But how I looked didn’t matter. It was more like what the world looked like. And it was beautiful, for sure. You can’t beat the landscapes of Japan and the day-night changes and the constantly changing weather. In fact, the environment is actually the best thing — even better than the cars in my opinion.
The landscape is full of scenic views, rice fields, rural buildings, and gas stations. There are magical places like bamboo forests, cherry blossom orchards, long tunnels, wet city streets, and winding mountain roads. There was a flaw when I went into a tunnel, where it went from completely dark to well lit as my lights came on. It was just such a sudden difference in lighting that it nearly caused me to crash into a wall.
Between the city streets and the countryside, you’ll see where Japan’s modern life meets the edge of traditional society. The roads have such sharp but wide turns that there’s plenty of room for drifting.
Tokyo is the highlight of the urban part of the game and I enjoyed driving fast through the city like you never could in real life. The path crossed the Shibuya crossing, which is the busiest intersection of the world. There’s lots of neon and skyscrapers, but you can’t stop and admire the view so much unless you want to lose your race.
In the journey, you want to go to Horizon Festival events for everyday driving races and then hope to qualify for the Horizon Invitational and work your way up the ranks to more challenging events. You can play these races as many times as you want and memorize the tracks. I did the Windfarm Cross Country qualifying race and the Airfield Trail near the Naruo Golf Course and Ito Airfield.
I often slid into walls while winding corners. But if you watch the blue line for ideal racing, you’ll do fine. When you see orange and red, you need to step on the brakes and slow down and get the blue lines back as fast as you can to have any hope of getting a good time.
You get access to a few different cars, and I enjoyed the Toyota Celica GT-Four ST 205 1994 model. In the garage, you get to tinker with your car and design and edit the things you want.
The full game map spans Japan and it has 662 roads and 74 unique and iconic areas./ There’s a lot to see. I found the driving challenging, but I got better the more of it I did. I think it’s the kind of game that both veterans and tourists are going to enjoy.
The game will be available on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Xbox Play Anywhere, or play it day one with Game Pass – also available on Steam. It’s coming to PlayStation 5 post-launch.