by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… will blow you away.
One of the curious side effects of the end of the console wars – that rather bizarre competition over whose plastic amusement box was the best – is that former console “exclusives” of the loser (XBOX) are being ported over to the winners (Playstation and Switch). This has already happened with the likes of Sea of Thieves, Grounded and Pentiment. Recently, Playstation even managed to score the pretty excellent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. However, one game has remained elusive, Forza Horizon. The superb arcade racer has been on most Playstation fans’ wish list for quite some time and now, finally, it’s hooned across the finish line and done a sick donut on the PS5.
Forza Horizon 5 is the latest iteration of the spectacularly popular racing franchise, this time set in a stylised and fictionalised version of Mexico. After a jaw-and–vehicle-dropping tutorial, the game opens up and lets you, the player-generated driver, explore the landscape, get into races of various varieties, find or win new cars (and there’s hundreds of the bloody things) and dominate either AI generated or online opponents. Essentially, this is an open world game, with mini-events dotted around the landscape, and a constant sense of movement and propulsion to keep you engaged.
Real talk: your humble word janitor is, at best, a casual driving game enjoyer. Our knowledge of cars is severely limited and watching racing on the telly has a similar effect to a tranquiliser dart to the neck. We mention this to make you understand that there is a high bar of difficulty to make yours truly give a fat rat’s about a car game. Forza Horizon 5 clears that bar easily, offering slick, fast-paced and genuinely engaging gameplay in a staggering variety of events and modes. The sheer sense of speed is genuinely dizzying at times and for gamers that have long felt Playstation’s premiere car offering Gran Turismo was a little fussy and casual unfriendly, this new horizon will blow you away.
