Hey, and we're back with another episode of Before You Buy. We're very busy here. You know what this show is.
It's where we give you some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games we're releasing. As usual, it's me, Jake Baldino, and today we're talking about Forza Horizon 5. Once again, here we have a new Horizon game. You know, these are spinoffs from the main Forza series that are a bit more hardcore and simulation.
The Horizon games here embrace a bit more fun and craziness. with a music festival party style atmosphere around racing and just tons of stuff to do. Now the newest, Five, takes the adventures to Mexico with a more varied world, of course, more stuff, and really just bringing some improvements and developments along that cropped up throughout Forza Horizon 4's years of community support.
It's very much more Forza with a couple of strange new spins, but really just a big old pile of fun. Oh, and also just so you know, we've been playing a review copy for the past week and all of the footage here is captured on an Xbox Series X. Now, the Forza Horizon games are solid because they find a great balance between hardcore realism and fun arcade style racing. There are tons of options to fine tune how you want the game to play. And there's quite a few sweet spots to it.
You know, the game does a great job of setting up the excitement with a really cool cinematic intro that takes you through various locations and vehicles swapping on the fly. And once that's done and then you're out there, it's good at easing you into the world. You start with one centralized festival with a couple of different race modes and open... open world random activities, and then as you do stuff and win, you level up, increase your ranking, and get to choose the next big event style thing, which will open up more activities on the map.
It's all extremely nonlinear. You know, you can unlock whatever you want whenever and kind of progress how you see fit. Honestly, the game throws so much at you that you might forget for a bit that you were progressing to more modes, and then the game will remind you because there's so much stuff to work through.
We'll get to more of that in a bit. Now, the game at least keeps the progression and stuff straightforward here. You know, you're not trying to become a famous racer. You kind of already are. You show up.
You're not trying to level up by growing a social media account follower number, like arbitrary stuff like that. No, just regular old rankings and leveling and unlocking stuff. Now, it might make for like a little bit less cohesive personality in the presentation. And that's just like a super nitpick because the previous games were so on point with how everything flowed. So you probably won't notice.
But interestingly enough, the game does have a surprising amount of personality still. I mentioned that you're already a famous racer. You create your own. own character with like a nice couple of options and show up to Mexico to race the horizon festivals but there are cut scenes with your character talking and other characters introducing you to the world and races and there's a bunch of dialogue and that's usually a huge red flag for me in games like this I don't need story it's admittedly like a weird choice I don't know man but I will say it's nice and it's slight here and manages to work and make things feel slightly less lonely and a teeny bit more fresh I really don't care much about what they're saying sometimes, but it's not that deep.
It's mostly anecdotal type stuff. You know, you do some missions where you're riding along with enthusiasts or like scientists collecting high-speed data, and they'll give you a story about an old car or a little bit of a history of Mexico. And every so often, there's like a nice little nugget in there. But speaking of that, you know, the real star is Mexico itself, man.
Even if it sounds cheesy. I don't care. It is the biggest character in the game.
It's a huge world with a ton of variety. There's like mountains, flat deserts, dunes, some woods, lots of jungles, mud, small towns, city streets, beach straightaways, volcanoes, ancient ruins. There's so much and like every 60 seconds on the road.
the game can look completely different. And there's enough where like, if you're into a certain type of thing, you can stick around and get a lot out of it. Like, do you like blasting your way through a muddy jungle in a fresh new Ford Bronco?
The game gives you a lot of opportunity for that and rally races. Got a wild Ferrari you wanna blaze down the highway? There's plenty of races and challenges to keep you busy. Maybe tight streets and corners with a Nissan Skyline?
Also, plenty of modes and things to engage with with that. My personal favorite has just been getting in a Baja truck and bouncing around on the sand dunes. And also, there are some really great switchback courses all over the mountainous areas that are just really satisfying to drift around. But if we're keeping it personal for a second, I find myself hooked on this game because there's always something to do, yeah, but also just how the game consistently rewards you. Every time you take a cool turn, or get a near miss, or break a new speed record, or even just discover something, it's always He's being tracked and you're always filling up a meter or a bar somewhere.
I don't know, my lizard brain just likes that feeling of accomplishment. The game is drip feeding you currency and new cars and clothing items for your car. And of course, barn finds, which are really, really well done in this game in particular. The way it works, the way they're presented. the little bit of story context I actually really like.
But you're also earning randomized roles that can give you more money, more cars, stuff like that. Every time you level, you can buy cars or earn cars, and then of course, customize them with different liveries and even tweak some cosmetic stuff and most importantly fine tune the car the detail once again is freaking staggering and there are like over 500 cars it is really fun to grow a collection and i've gotten a kick out of selling the occasional car in the in-game auction house i've made a ton of money like flipping this big weird mercedes off-road truck so I could just buy another one of my favorite weird 80s Ferraris. Now all of this stuff, it can of course be overwhelming.
It's sensory overload, you know, a jam-packed map, tons of menus, multiple different screens of different rewards and stuff to track. It's messy at times. So just be ready for that going in if you're new to the series. Oh, and then of course there's multiplayer. Not only does the Battle Royale style mode return that was established later in Forza Horizon 4, but there are big world events going on randomly that are like group contribute events.
One of the more common ones is like stay in an area with a bunch of racers and try to rack up a high drift score, and you're all filling points into a pool, and everybody's drifting and having fun. Stuff like that is a nice extra, but it didn't really hook me too much. But the regular old online racing did.
However, I was only able to get into a few races here and there as I played this game pre-release. and some the day it went live for special edition early access or whatever the hell it's called. There are tons of race options, the ability to link up, a bit more added Forza linking and communication feature type stuff, and the ability to, of course, form clubs.
Now, races are good, but I had a surprising amount of lag and an issue where some opponents'cars just animated weirdly and looked kind of unfinished, like weird wheels and tire stuff. I don't know if it was like a bug. or just due to the lag or, I don't know. I hope it's not a common issue. The game is being updated all the time.
It's just first day launch stuff. It's something worth pointing out though. Along with that, it is early, but first impressions, I also tested out a bit of the PC version. And although it looked pretty, I had a few crashes on a pretty normal and solidly powered system, which was a bit frustrating. So keep that in mind and, you know, maybe look into it a bit more if you're considering.
Because I mean, on the flip side though, like it is a gorgeous game. Not to go too hard on this, but it's one of the prettiest I've seen in a while. The way the lighting works, the level of detail on the cars, and just the realism. of the vast environments with the huge draw distances, Forza is really a freaking looker.
Once again, I know car games always look good, but this one definitely is taking the cake right now. I mostly kept the high frame rate performance mode on, and there really isn't much sacrifice to the visuals. It is a rock solid looking game on console. Now the racing itself, of course, like in general out in the world, the sense of speed, the visual feedback, the controller feedback, the different viewpoints and... and first person modes and the cockpit modes and stuff like that, all of that stuff is what sells these games.
Races are tight and satisfying and challenging and so is just driving across a field, crashing through bushes or exploring. Horizon 5 embraces exploration a ton with photo mode challenges, hidden stuff, lots of fast travel and XP point billboards to find and crash to progress even more, and also expedition levels that let you drive around and explore a small area and complete little challenge checklists, almost like a side quest in an adventure game. It's pretty quirky.
Now, along with that, the weather season style stuff returns, although it's a bit more low key here, it's still some satisfying progression. The DeLorean is locked behind the summer season coming up soon, so you best believe I'm going to be grinding for that right away. Oh, another high point, the game is extremely accessible. The developers give you like tons of options, so if you have a disability, there are multiple ways to still enjoy the game.
I love to see that. Now, Forza Horizon 5 is more Forza, yes, but the new environment, the slightly different vibe, and just more stuff than ever make it a really good time. I actually haven't been able to even cover everything. The playlist, all this stuff, there's so much. But the cool thing is that I'm looking forward to the inevitable additions from the developers.
You know, Forza Horizon 4 lasted for years, and it was fun to pop in and see what's new. And... I like Forza Horizon 5 enough that I'm gonna look forward to popping in all the time. It's a pretty simple video, really.
More Forza, more stuff to do. Insane graphics, couple of weird glitches and forced story moments, but otherwise, a damn good time for racing game fans, even the most casual ones. But hey, of course, that's a Before You Buy. You know how this works by now. We give you some pros, some cons, some information, some personal opinion, so now we wanna hear yours down in the comments.
Of course, we're talking about this game before it is fully released, but If you got that extra special edition and you're jumping in today, let us know what you're thinking so far. We'd love to hear your first impressions. If you're waiting for the game to release on PC and Xbox and Game Pass and all that, let us know what you're looking forward to jumping into first.
What car are you gonna get into immediately? Let's talk about anything Forza and racing games down in the comments. We definitely wanna hear what you're thinking about this one, so we know if we should make more videos or not.
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Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next time.