Forza Horizon 3

Forza Horizon 3 moved the festival to Australia and became the first entry in the series where the player figures not merely as a participant but directly as the director of the entire Horizon festival. The open world offered an extraordinary variety of settings, from tropical rainforests through outback deserts to the metropolitan Surfers Paradise, all connected seamlessly with no loading. New to the series were four specialized hubs focused on off-road, drifting, aerial stunts, and classic championships, whose development the player plans out themselves, deciding which direction their version of the festival will take.

Thanks to the power of the Xbox One and especially the Xbox One X, which supported the game in 4K resolution, Playground Games pushed the visual quality to a new level with dense vegetation, realistic lighting, and a dynamic day-night cycle. A nighttime setting and storms with real lightning affecting visibility were added, so the same route feels like two entirely different places at dawn and in a heavy downpour. The game was the first in the series to support full four-player cooperative play in the open world and offered a robust Blueprint route editor, which the community used to create their own races and share them worldwide.

The car roster exceeded three hundred fifty vehicles, and the radio stations offered a genre-diverse lineup from electronic music to rock, with the player also able to build their own station. The Hot Wheels expansion, with a closed track full of orange ramps and loops, showed just how well the series' open world gets along with pure arcade fantasy, while Blizzard Mountain added a snowy mountain setting. Forza Horizon 3 is still considered by many reviewers to be the peak of the series thanks to its perfect balance between arcade driving feel, technical depth, and the atmosphere of an endless summer vacation that made the series famous. Its later removal from digital stores due to expired licenses has also made it a title that's now hard for new players to get hold of.