Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 moved the traveling music festival to Mexico and offered perhaps the most varied map the series has ever had. Within a few minutes you can drive from a tropical beach through jungle and desert up the slopes of a volcano where snow falls — and all these biomes are handled so that each has its own weather and its own mood. The structure remains pleasantly unconstraining: you earn points for all sorts of things, unlock new festival hubs, and between races you simply drive around discovering billboards to smash, jumps, and speed-trap sections.

The driving model keeps the series' famous compromise between simulation and arcade. Cars have noticeably different weight and behavior on tarmac, gravel, and off-road, yet the game is also packed with assists including time rewind, so it's completable even for a complete beginner. The huge roster of cars can be tuned in detail, and setups and custom liveries can be shared with others. A key component is the online layer — players continually cross paths in the open world, trigger shared events, and take part in large co-op events that the series has gradually honed to perfection. Story-driven jobs with their own rules form a separate chapter, ranging from stunt driving to shooting commercials, spicing up the otherwise racing-focused routine.

Visually it's one of the best-looking games of its generation; even the Xbox One version retains impressive lighting and dense environmental detail, just with a lower resolution and a less stable frame rate than on newer hardware. The radio stations cover a wide musical range from electronic to Latin American styles, making the drive a pleasant backdrop even for long evenings. The game was received very well and is often called the peak of open-world racing titles. Today it can be recommended to practically anyone — as a relaxing drive or as an in-depth tuning project. The game also offers extensive controller-customization options and aids for players with hearing or vision impairments, something rarely seen in racing titles.