Put simply, there’s nothing on PlayStation 5 quite like Forza Horizon 5.
The Crew Motorfest? Close. Leaning hard into the philosophy of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, its fully fledged festival approach certainly makes Motorfest more like the Forza Horizon series than either of its predecessors.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown? Sadly, no. The Forza Horizon series itself may owe a significant debt to the trendsetting MMO racing of the original Test Drive Unlimited, but Solar Crown went on to fly too close to the sun in this department. An always-online racer with no dedicated solo component? The Horizon series has allowed players to seamlessly slip between offline and online play since 2014’s Forza Horizon 2!
Need for Speed Unbound? Well, there are definitely several areas of Need for Speed’s impressive customisation suite that handily eclipse Horizon, but Unbound’s arcade focus on high speed hot pursuits means it’s not really a like-for-like comparison.
No, the pound-for-pound champ of modern open world racing is Forza Horizon 5 – and now it’s available on PlayStation 5 for the very first time. Its broad and beautiful Mexico map. Its delectably drift-friendly vehicle dynamics. Its mammoth, 900-odd car garage that goes way beyond just featuring the essentials, and is brimming with cult favourite cars that simply aren’t available in any other racing game. The whole box and dice. PlayStation users are being immersed in all of this, many for the very first time.
The reaction has been fun to watch.
This influx of brand new players has been something the team has been particularly looking forward to.
“Yeah, I’m super excited,” confirms Playground Games art director Don Arceta. “Like, brand new people; for many, this will probably be the first Forza Horizon game that they’ve ever played. So it’s super exciting just to think about that, and think about what our first Horizon experiences were.”
Arceta is especially keen to see what kinds of places and races PlayStation 5 players begin creating with Forza Horizon 5’s huge set of customisation tools – the Event Lab.
“We have over 800 props now in the Event Lab, and just seeing what the community’s done with that feature and mode – and the creativity of the community – it’s just mind blowing,” he continues. “I’m super excited, once we get into the PlayStation 5 users, about what they’ll build, and the creativity that will come from that community.”
“You’ll actually get some pretty good Halo content too on the PlayStation, with the event lab props!”
In pleasing news, the port itself is proving to be as technically impeccable as its Xbox and PC counterparts, which is some flex considering the sheer girth of the game – and the fact that the engine that underpins it has never been unleashed on PlayStation before.
“As you can imagine, because the series has been based around the Xbox environment and architecture, there’s a lot of code and engineering that’s worked with that,” says Arceta. “So when we brought it to the PS5, it was no small undertaking. It was quite a huge task.”
“The PlayStation 5 version was developed by Panic Button, in collaboration with Turn 10 and ourselves, but Panic Button did an amazing job. So you get that amazing, quality experience that you get on Xbox and PC – now you get on the PlayStation, and it’s just amazing work that Panic Button has done.”
Personally I’ve never been able to look past the Forza series as a whole as home to the biggest and best bag of Hot Wheels on the block. No other racing series contains more weird and wonderful cars that I want, piled on top of a cavalcade of cars I didn’t even know I wanted. As a car fan, I love the idea of a whole new cohort of players potentially discovering their favourite cars in Forza Horizon 5 – cars their other racing games just haven’t been serving them.
For Playground Games lead game designer David Orton, however, it’s the sheer breadth of Forza Horizon 5 that he’s anticipating will impress new players.
“The breadth of Horizon is quite staggering,” says Orton. “I think what we find is players go in and find what they really enjoy but, because there’s so much freedom, that can really be whatever you want it to be.”
“We always pride ourselves on giving the player that kind of agency and freedom to do whatever they want, and the game will reward them and react in that way. I’m really looking forward to players just discovering the breadth of the content. If you just want to do road racing, or if you’re really into Rivals and track racing, you can totally do that. But if you love taking incredible photos, you can totally do that. If you’re into Event Lab, and you want to create content for other people, you can totally do that. Horizon is the space where really everyone is welcome, and there’s something in it for everyone. I think the feeling of people going in and realising this is more than just a racing game is what’s really exciting for me.”
“For me, a victory would be, like, ‘I can’t believe I’ve never played this game before,’” says Arceta. “I think the surprise.”
“That, for me, is a victory, because once they’re surprised, they’re engaged – and they want to learn more. So I’m really looking for that. The delight from players; just hearing their surprise and hearing their stories.”
Here, Orton is in agreement.
“Yeah, I think it’s that,” he adds. “Players who’ve never tried Horizon before – whether that’s because it’s on a different platform, or they’ve just never had the time to do it – to actually jump into this world and realise that it’s actually a really warm, welcoming place that’s full of fun, and finding a home at Horizon.”
“Players who’ve never played before realising that, ‘Oh my goodness, how have I never played this game before? This is incredible.’ That, to me, is a win. We’re about to target a cohort of players who may have never played a Forza title before. There’s a bit of an unknown to how people react to that, but I think when you look at the history of our titles, we’re continually perfecting our craft. We feel so excited to bring this to PlayStation. I think we’re going to bring in a whole load of new players and that’s really exciting.”
If there’s any hobby that’s more tribal than car culture, it’s those who hinge their identities on their video game console of choice. For racing game fans, however, one big wall has come down.
Let’s hope it’s not the last.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
