Forza Horizon 5 is a big game, so it needs a long review. R.E.A.D! I know, no one likes to read. But do you want to learn to play the game, or just figure it out? Reading is always easier.
Beginning the Game
Once you install the game, which took almost 3 hours on my Xbox Series X, so maybe download the game a few hours early. After I downloaded it, it took a few minutes to load into the game. By the time you load in, the game will show you settings. Once you're done with settings, you will be on the loading screen, where it shows two buttons at the bottom. One is Settings, and the other is Play.
Every Forza Horizon game takes place in a different place. Forza Horizon 4 was in Great Britain, and this one is in Baja California in Mexico. Once you click Play, you will start at a tutorial kind of thing. You are in a plane and your car drops out and races the other cars to the Horizon Festival. If you've played previous Forza Horizon games, you will know that there are different festivals.
Once you complete the tutorial intro thing, you will have to pick a car.
Racing and Exploring
Once you've picked your car, you will want to do some test driving. At the bottom of the screen is a map. To open a bigger map, press the menu button on your controller and click the map. Gray roads are unexplored, and white roads have been driven on. Red roads are dirt roads that have been driven on.
Press RT to accelerate and LT to back up. Press A for the emergency brake, and press in RS to honk your horn. To change your view, press RB. (or is it LB?) There are six different views. My favorite for racing is the ground view. My favorite for driving is the back view.
If you have explored some of the map, maybe choose a race to do. Green races are cross country races, orange races are dirt road races, blue races are road races, and purple races are street races. There are 4 racing championships to complete, plus a stunt championship.
Open the menu and select Festival Playlist. From there you will select a championship to complete such as road racing. If you do races on this championship and then switch championships without completing it, your progress on that championship will be lost.
Once you have selected a championship, you will have to do the expedition that comes with it to start. For road racing, it is the Jungle Expedition. To do races, you must complete the expedition. At the end of each expedition, you drive to the new festival site. Each championship comes with a new festival. The road racing series is the Apex Festival.
Now you should race. Remember: ONLY do races in your current championship!!!! All races are against AI (artificial intelligence, or more simply, robots.) UNLESS it specifies. You might want to head to the festival and enter it to change cars. Just press My Garage, and it will show all your cars, which you can get in by pressing A. We cover more about different cars in the next section.
As you race more and get better at it, the game may ask if you want to get to a higher difficulty. You can change this manually when you're loading into a race.
Your goal is to complete every race in your current championship. At the end of each championship, is a final race. The final race is always very long. For example, the final dirt race was 36 miles. (It took me 3 tries to get 1st place.)
If you're tired of racing, maybe explore some roads. While exploring, especially off-road, you may find XP boards or Fast Travel boards. Run into these boards to get XP. XP boards will give you XP to level up. The more fast travel boards, the cheaper fast travel is. To unlock fast travel, you must buy a certain house, which you unlock at a certain point in the game.
You can set a route to a place by opening the map and pressing A on the road or event, or wherever you want to go. The road will be highlighted blue on the map, and blue arrows will appear while driving. A marker will appear above your destination.
Accolades and Customization
If you end up driving every road, you will get an award. Awards can be seen by going to the menu, and going to Accolades. To earn accolades, you must do certain things such as getting 1st place on every race, or simply driving a long way. You will get rewards, such as cars or character items. To customize your character, head to your house or a festival site. From there, you can change cars, customize yourself, tune cars, and more.
To customize your car, first switch to the car you want to customize. Then, click on Designs and Paints. From there you can add vinyls, choose designs made by other players, and paint it yourself. When you're done, do some test driving.
You can also tune your car. It's complicated, so this review does not cover it.
You can also customize your character. When you enter the festival, select Customize Character. (I think that's what it's called.) From there, you can customize your appearance. Most of the items have to be unlocked by earning accolades.
Stunts and Seasonal Events
Once you unlock the stunt festival, there are plenty of stunts. Stunts are danger signs, speed zones, speed traps, and trailblazers.
Danger signs are ramps commonly on top of a hill. When you do a danger sign, you have to get a certain amount of feet jumped to get stars. It will tell on the map when you select one.
If you go to a speed zone, you will see there is a starting point and ending point. When you drive through a speed zone, go as fast as you can without going off the road. The speed zone will take your average speed. Like danger signs, it tells how fast you need to go to get three stars.
Speed traps are much like speed zones. Speed traps measure how fast you go as you pass by. Similar to the other stunts, it will tell how fast you need to go to earn stars.
To do a trailblazer, first drive through the trailblazer gate, which is the starting point. From there, you must drive any way you want to the ending gate in the shortest amount of time as possible. The ending gate is marked on the map. When you select it on the map, it will show how fast you need to get there.
Conclusion
This game also has additions, which you pay for. There is one coming out soon. The Forza Horizon series is rated the world's best racing game. There are rumors that the developers are making a Forza Horizon 6, so stay tuned!
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