The reviews for Forza Horizon 6 are in, and they won’t surprise you very much if you’ve played another game in the racing series. It currently sits at a 91 on Opencritic and a 92 on Metacritic (the highest of the year so far), aggregate scores that are just about identical with the last three games in the series.
Forza Horizon 6 takes Playground Games’ critically acclaimed open-world racing formula and places it in Japan. While the new version features new cars and some tweaks here and there, it’s more or less the same game with new aesthetic flavoring. Just how similar is it? Forizon Horizon 3 also sits at a 91 on Metacritic, while 4 and 5 reached a 92. The takeaway is that critics aren’t tired of the formula yet, and don’t see it deteriorating over repeated returns to the well.
On the high-end of the review spectrum, IGN’s Luke Reilly praised the game in a 10/10 review that dubs it “the new standard in open-world racing games.” While Reilly spends some time upfront noting that it’s very similar to previous games, he notes that there are actually a lot of changes under the hood that warrant the praise.
“Forza Horizon 6 arrives with an adjusted and more satisfying approach to its campaign progression – one that straddles a middle ground between the curated structure of the original and the unbridled freedom embraced by Forza Horizon 5,” Reilly wrote, also citing boosts to user-generated content and graphical fidelity.
Eurogamer echoed those strengths in its own 10/10 review by Dom Peppiatt. In addition to praising a new approach to progression, which sees Playground Games reintroducing wristbands from the first Forza Horizon game and including more ways to progress, Peppiatt notes that the big picture changes this time all help to give players more freedom.
“Playground has been treading this unenviable tightrope between structure and player freedom ever since Horizon 3, but here – thanks to the sheer scale of the map and the sheer number of things to do – it feels like you, really, are in control,” Peppiatt wrote. The way the two progression tracks eke things out to you is nothing short of genius, really; you rarely feel invisible hand supporting and teaching you at every turn.”
The game’s setting is also a high point for critics. In a 9.25 review for Game Informer, Brian Shea praises Playground Games for capturing the look and feel of Japan respectfully, even with some limitations. “Driving through Shibuya Crossing or cresting over a hill to reveal Mount Fuji in the distance always feels special,” Shea wrote. “Playground Games captured the beauty of these iconic locations, and the size of Tokyo, the series’ largest city to date, is an accomplishment, even though it falls well short of the seemingly endless sprawl of the real-world city.”
There’s not much sense that Playground Games made any major missteps this time, but some critics feel the series trending down in very slight ways. For example, Gamespot’s Mark Delaney criticized the campaign’s Showcase races in a still-glowing 8/10 review.
“I’ve played all the games in this series, so things like the boss-style Showcase events didn’t do as much to dazzle me as they did a decade ago, or even as much as they did in the previous game,” Delaney wrote. “Sure, I’ve not raced a Gundam-like mech before, so the details have changed, but the way it unfolds was all too familiar. I know by now that, so long as I stay roughly on the pace the game expects me to be on, it’s going to let me win in the end, and so these boss races feel like a lot of style without much substance.”
The bottom line is that there aren’t any real surprises here. As our own Oli Welsh stated in his own review, “Horizon 6 is as good at that as any of its predecessors. Arguably, it’s better.”
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