Warning: I’m a Gen X historical video gamer who hasn’t seriously played a driving game that didn’t feature a skeletal turtle and lots of mushrooms (looking at you, Hard Drivin’) in years, and I just loaded up Forza Horizon 6 on my Xbox Console. You have been warned.
To be good at video games, or not to be good at video games, that is the question. I like that I was given an opportunity early on to admit that I’m not good at this, or let my ego as a person who has operated both a fast car and an [XBOX] controller lead me into many many many frustrating walls.
I chose bumper-bowling, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Yet. From there, I explored the accessibility controls, which are numerous in 2026, and loaded up the game. The opening cutscenes describe the experience that follows to be an adventure, transposing a montage of our protagonist (we’ll call him Racer X) checking their voicemail against a backdrop of driving scenes that provide a bit of a tasting menu for the whole experience.
Initial reaction was that this game is stunning. I found the whole thing quite lovely. To be honest, I also thought Samurai Showdown 2 was stunning, so maybe I just like swift swordsmanship, fast cars, and cherry blossoms. I’m sure the detail and scale are well executed, but I lack an awareness of how well they nailed the details. It looks like a place on Earth, and I recognize it from pictures.
Rather than guessing, I spoke with prolific world traveler and Journalist Paul McNally, who had this to say: “It’s super pretty and ‘textbook’ Japan, but at the start you drive through Shibuya Crossing, which is obviously iconic, but as it flashes past in the game, it could have been anywhere. I know it’s Japan cause it tells me, and there’s cherry blossom everywhere, and like landmarks such as the tower are there, but it could be anywhere really.”
“Like Shibuya crossing, busiest place on earth. In game, not a soul…I know you can’t like mow people down but it could be anywhere “ – Paul McNally
The cutscene shifts and I find myself not just watching the scene, but driving in it. It’s like that story about the man who dreams he is a butterfly, in this moment I’m a video game racecar driver who is being transported between myriad experiences across a tapestry of lands dreaming that he is a man. Having never played the game I wondered if this is what playing Forza is like, just random races with no consequences, choices, or control. That would be a weird game.
So remember about me not being embarrassed yet by my selection of easy mode? I will tell you it’s because in spite of my aged, decrepit fingers being finely tuned FPS bar-lowering machines, they’re even less useful at driving games. My barbaric grip rendered easy-mode unto the depths of hell, and I bounced into the first wall I could find, setting the stage for what would become my own private version of death race. Either way, I wasn’t very good at following the blue line. Or any lines.
I traded a little paint with a stationary object, and the game asks, “Want a do-over?” Why yes, in fact, if you could just make those more or less infinite, I’d appreciate it. The Venn diagram of perfectionists will be split imperfectly by this feature: those who accept perfection on paper and those who start the race over halfway through if they miss a turn, which really leans into my dawning suspicion that Forza Horizon 6 is a racing “adventure” game tuned for the middle.
Up until the character customization screen I didn’t realize I cared how I look behind the wheel, but here I am gendering, styling, and accessorizing my Drivatar so that when the next cutscene comes out it can feature our shiny new haircut, body shape and cochlear implants. You read that right. Options include accessibility features like prosthetics and assistive-hearing gear which is hella cool, though I couldn’t figure out how to do more than one prosthesis at a time and felt like that was a missed opportunity.
Once my character is finalized I’m pretty sure that the game is starting for real this time. Outside of a literal crash course in modern game physics and bounce mechanics I have few expectations and not a small amount of anxiety that the game might at some point be challenging.
I drive around and start doing the things you do in an open world driving game. I keep waiting for the story/game to really begin in earnest before it dawns on me that I’m doing the thing. Drive around, collect things, explore, race, fall in love. Wait what? No. Otherwise, I’m doing it. Game is already in progress. If this game is going to be fun, it’ll be something inside of me that sparks the joy, and I am going to have to sit with that for a while.
In the meantime, I spend several human hours alternating between food deliveries and jumping off of stuff. Open world, options abound, and like water I easily found my level. This is the Forza Horizon 6 experience as I can detect it, and it’s (probably not all that) uniquely mine.
Other things I like: I think it’s nice that I get points for “drifting” into things and that I can live in a world free of cosmetic or mechanical consequences for myself and others. Scoring points for being bad at something is its own special kind of dopaminergic hook and I applaud the devs for their approach to “suck until you’re addicted to the game” as a player journey. Meeting me where I live.
Of all the tall, handsome SUVs they could have gifted me to start off a video game ostensibly about driving around aimlessly collecting roads, they picked one of the first vehicles I ever drove around aimlessly collecting roads in – the 1st generation GMC Jimmy. It was already decades old when I first drove it. I can still remember the way it smelled like exhaust in the back (because rust had eaten through the floor panels) and the way that it lost the plot in the corners. While I can say unequivocally that the physics of the thing in Forza Horizon 6 are different from the truck, the same way that real water is wet and birds are real. I enjoy the nostalgia of this ride as much as I resent that it’s labeled common in game. You’re common, Playground games. Do better.
The storyline has no friction or drama. This is a world of positive vibes and zero consequences. The NPCs lack character. I can’t really tell you what they’re like. The radio DJs have more personality and texture than the people guiding the story.. The opening scene promised something that I don’t think the game delivered on – an adventure.
On that promise, I expected there would be a more intentional adventure than grinding bracelets and collecting stuff to get access to the final boss Island. Racing is cool. I guess.
I hear the buzz that mastering technical gameplay at the greater difficulties is essential to winning, but we are bowling with bumpers here, so outside of a few attempts to increase launch so that I could execute a stunt jump with a car not meant to fly, I filed the tuning portion of the game under letter A for Autophile, Artist, Analyst, and Alpha Gamer. The game makes no effort to bridge the information gap here and leaves it to minimal explanation of tuning functions along with trial and error as the learning pathway, which means it’s a feature for somebody else. Perhaps a future version of you or me? But today, I feel like this part of the game lacks accessibility.
This acts as a metaphor for the rest of the mini-game and micro experiences that will ultimately be the game for some players. From shopping for houses to racing for pinks and decorating cars with highly customizable designs to the aforementioned custom-color-coded-cochlear implants, there is a hook for every fish, so long as you’re willing to hang yourself on said hook at a small amount of personal effort. Whatever hook sinks into you, setting that hook requires you to be complicit. You’re not handheld into these experiences, which is genius in that there are few blockers to playing your game. It’s also maybe why Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t really work for me.
The game is pretty. It’s fun. It’s got all of the things people like to do in video games, mostly.
My mother used to say that only boring people get bored and while I think that was just her way of taking a shot at me framed as wisdom, it feels true in the world of FH6. I’m not particularly entertained, so perhaps I’m not entertaining? The game has moments where it hit me in the feels over the scale, scope, and beauty of the world that Playground Games has built, but I never felt like I was playing something that I wanted to come back to and see what happened next.
This is a game that requires imagination and effort that aren’t an adventure for me.
Mike's early media career began with publishing video game guides and selling them on the internet. Since then he's accumulated a lot of miles and played a lot of games on a lot of systems. A lifelong fan of Sid Meier who loves to dance with all of the beautiful daughters on his way to conquering the Caribbean, when he's not at sea, he frequently can be spotted in DMZ holding it down for old men.
Dead by Daylight has marked its 10th anniversary in style, with Behaviour Interactive hosting a fan event in Montreal's Old Port over the weekend before taking to the stage to…
