As you drive, you earn skill points for everything from drifting to crashing through destructible scenery.Your garage fills at an absurd rate. As you win races you unlock more events, new cars, more money. A map filled with more icons than a Ubisoft open world, each denoting a race event, a PR stunt, a rumour about some vintage car, a series of challenges organised into a handful of stories.
If you have played any previous Forza Horizon game you already know what this means. It’s not being forced to reinvent the wheel, and so it’s content to just hone and refine-to be the best Forza Horizon it can be. Forza Horizon hasn’t so much pulled ahead of the pack as it’s already finished the race and is now free to amuse itself. Dirt is similarly confused the strength of its Dirt Rally spin-offs leaving the parent series unsure of what it’s meant to be. The Need for Speed series ping-ponged between varying degrees of arcade and simulation for years, never carving out a singular identity for itself. Burnout Paradise showed the promise of open world racing back in 2008, but, for whatever reason, EA never followed it up. Sim racing is a competitive field, but on the more arcade side it’s not looking so healthy.