Forza Horizon 5 Xbox 360 Original

Forza Horizon 5 is a racing video game set in an open world environment based in a fictional representation of Mexico. The game has the largest map in the entire Forza Horizon series, being 50% larger than its predecessor, Forza Horizon 4 while also having the highest point in the Horizon series. The map was described by creative director Mike Brown as one of the most diverse Forza Horizon maps the team has built. The map contains an active caldera volcano, jungles and beaches, ancient Mayan temples, and towns and cities such as Guanajuato. Players can explore the open world freely, though they can also compete in multiplayer races and complete the campaign mode.

Both the cars featured in the game and the player character can be extensively customised. Players are able to create custom liveries and tunes for cars, and perform engine swaps, drivetrain swaps, or install body kits on certain vehicles. The game is the first in the franchise to support ray tracing on cars . Don't worry about hyphens, the system takes care of those for you.

Forza Horizon 5 is also an impressive test case for Microsoft's cross-generational hardware strategy. I played the game for several hours on my Xbox One X, and it doesn't feel compromised compared to anything else on the console. It's still a better-looking game than 3 and 4, and it looks more or less the same as the Series X version's 60fps mode — just running at half the frame rate. The One X is generally a machine designed for 4K/30fps games, and that's what you get here with Forza Horizon 5.

Would the Series X game have looked even better if it didn't have to run on Xbox One consoles? Maybe, but it's hard to complain about the performance on either platform. On your PC, press the Start button , then select Xbox Console Companion from the list of apps.Make sure you're signed in with the account that you want to redeem the code with. However, Forza Horizon 5 is on another level on Xbox Series X and it's one of the few games where I prefer the 30fps quality mode to its 60fps equivalent. The increase in fidelity and the more graceful LOD transitions combined with the upgraded visuals elevate it significantly beyond performance mode. True, it's not 60fps but the motion blur is the best I've seen in bridging the gap.

Of course, it is possible to play this game at full frame-rate with Series X's mixture of high, ultra and extreme settings - and that's where the PC version comes into play. We'll be reporting back on our testing and experiences there soon. You can run it at 60 frames per second on Xbox Series consoles, or there's a 30fps mode that further boosts the graphical features; I personally find it hard to play racing games at 30fps, but each mode delivers a convincing presentation.

Being the fifth instalment in the series, Playground Games has taken huge steps to make the driving experience more immersive. Starting with the map size, which is 50 per cent larger than Forza Horizon 4, the game features countless locations such as an active volcano, jungles, beaches, ancient Mayan temples, and the narrow, colourful streets of Guanajuato. Besides the standard campaign mode, players can take part in online multiplayer races and explore the open world with no restrictions.

Signs that the game would be a success were there since before launch, when the premium edition early release boasted over 800,000 active players a day before full launch. Just one day after launch, Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed that Forza Horizon 5 had earned the "largest launch day for Xbox Game Studios game" and had a peak concurrent player count three times higher than Forza Horizon 4. If you're an arcade racing game purist, Burnout Paradise has a lot to answer for. By taking the classic series open-world, Criterion essentially obsoleted the concept of traditional racers — here are your cars, here are your tracks, learn to drive the former to perfect the latter — at least in the eyes of major publishers. Ever since, virtually all big-budget arcade racing games have been made in the shadow of Paradise, with most tracks consisting of lines drawn across vast, explorable maps. Switch from 30fps to the 60fps 'Performance' mode and you'll immediately feel the difference.

Playground state that this is still running at a maximum 4K resolution, but that "additional graphics settings adjusted to maintain target framerate". In practical terms motion blur is reduced significantly giving it a much more gamey feel and pop-in is now noticeable, . However, it's also just that much more responsive feeling when you play the game and, after a short time at 60fps, a switch back to 30fps feels like daggers in your eyes.

This consists of a series of mini-multiplayer games strewn across the map. One of these mini-multiplayer games is called "Piñata pop" where the Horizon Festival's cargo plane drops piñatas. The goal is to pop as many piñatas as they can with the help of other players. It also introduces the "EventLab", a toolset in which players can create custom games, races, and more depending on their personal preference. According to Brown, it is an AI assistant that tracks the current statuses of players, helping them to link with other players online and play together.

Forza Link can also link players' GPS systems if they accept the invitation from another player. Prior to the announcement, Xbox boss Phil Spencer also recently revealed that the game had experienced the largest launch day of any Xbox Game Studios game ever. The open-world racing game amassed over 4.5 million players in its launch week where it also featured peak concurrent player count heights over three times the size of its predecessor Forza Horizon 4. Ultimately, Playground has delivered an excellent game for all Xbox systems. The surprise package for me was Xbox One X - level of detail pop-in and longer loading are blemishes but perhaps it's only because these areas of the game are so dramatically improved on Series hardware. Graphically, it's a treat, and the Scorpio Engine continues to surprise in its ability to service a 4K display.

Judged on its own merits, it's a good version of the game and a worthy sequel. The fact that it retains Forza's signature 1080p 4x MSAA image quality and a consistent 30fps helps immensely in mitigating some of the more obvious cuts - it adds immensely to the overall polish. Quality mode looks excellent, performance mode is locked at 60fps and for those still gaming on 1080p displays, I can't foresee any complaints.

A key aspect of Forza Horizon 5's visual appeal is its sheer density and its massive vistas, something Xbox One cannot hope to deliver to the same level of fidelity as its Series counterparts. Far-off detail is still rendered to an impressive degree, and as it's a persistent aspect of the scene's visual make-up, it has to be - it sells the scale of the open world. Closer to the player, that's where the cuts are more evident. The ground has far fewer layers to it compared to the other consoles, looking rather flat at slow speeds (it's far less noticeable in the thick of gameplay, however).

It's not so much of an issue in closed-circuit racing but it's in the open world that the limitations of the console start to bite. This is Your Open World - Create your own expressions of fun with the powerful new EventLab gameplay toolset including custom races, challenges, stunts, and entirely new game modes. Customize your cars in more ways than ever before with new options such as the ability open and close convertible tops, paint brake calipers, and more.

Use the new Gift Drops feature to share your custom creations with the community. The game still gets its graphical intent across, but the LOD scaling really shows this console's age. As you race through jungles, you'll notice that the tree foliage stays in its blobby low level of detail until you're almost right up against it, at which point you will have whizzed on by. At times it feels like the game engine shouldn't bother trying to pull in those higher detail assets. The gameplay still holds up though, and a steady frame rate in this situation is going to be the most important aspect.

The game wasn't even officially out yet, but that's how many people had decided to pre-order, or pick up the post-launch DLC bundle, in order to unlock early access. Since launching for real yesterday, the game has seen over 4.5 million players get behind the wheel and kick up dust in its lovely Mexico landscapes. Despite the name and the hundreds of accurately modeled real-world cars, Forza Horizon has little in common with Turn 10 Studios' Forza Motorsport series, which is more of a serious racing simulator.

While Horizon isn't exactly a Ridge Racer-style arcade game, it's certainly on the more accessible side of things. The physics feel somewhat grounded in reality, and you'll notice big differences in how various cars handle, but the driving model is very forgiving, and it's easy for anyone to pick up and play. As Horizon 5 continues to break new records moving forward, Playground Games also recently announced that it is continuing to add elements into the game that will increase inclusivity and make the game more accessible to a wider range of players. On top of its base accessibility features that can currently be found within the racing sim, Horizon 5 is also set to add an on-screen sign language interpreter to the game in a future update. Create your own expressions of fun with the new EventLab gameplay toolset including custom races, challenges, stunts, and new game modes.

Increase your with the new EventLab gameplay set of tools, including custom races, challenges, stunts, and new game modes. Forza Horizon 5, the latest open world racing game from Playground Games, was released for premium customers last week and everyone else will get the game this week. The open world arcade-sim racing game is now set in Mexico and returns to North America for the first time in 9 years — since the original game that was based in Colorado. One of the things Playground Games and Turn 10 have mentioned is that Mexico is the biggest map they have developed for any Forza Horizon franchise till date. Forza Horizon 5 doesn't change the basic structure, and there's still a huge amount of stuff dotting the Mexican map. But it does do a better job of easing you into its mountain of content.

You're able to choose which specific types of events to unlock as you progress, so, for example, I preferred to focus on closed-track road races early on before delving into cross-country rallies. I feel like if I stopped playing the game and came back to it weeks later, I'd have a much better sense of what I'd been doing and where would be best for me to spend the next couple of hours. In turn, that makes me feel better about simply driving around the landscape in search of whatever esoteric quest I might come across. Unlike with 4, I've never felt like I'm wasting my time in Forza Horizon 5, as I always have more of a sense of what I could be working toward. Crucially, there are advantages to playing Forza Horizon 5 on Series consoles that aren't just about graphics or frame-rate.

Hosting the game on SSD makes for a more streamlined experience on Series consoles - and it's noticeable right from the beginning of the experience. The intro drive is a Playground staple, a spectacular preview of the action to come. It's a glorious, seamless, load-free experience on Xbox Series machines, but Xbox One consoles simply can't deliver the data for each new stage in time, leading to second pauses from one segment to the next. It looks the part, but the loading delays interrupt the flow and don't leave the best impression. While these transitions are indeed instant on the new consoles, there is still loading in the main game but it's much faster than last-gen console equivalents - around 3x to the better in my tests.

On your Xbox Series X, you'll enjoy a 4K resolution at 60 frames per second in campaign mode and experience relatively short loading times. The latest game in the open world spin-off series, and the 13th Forza game over all, Forza Horizon 5 is a mostly known quantity. But nearly a decade after the Horizon series started, it feels like many are encountering it for the first time. And they're loving it, in a way that's sucking up all the oxygen in the room in a way that racing games rarely do. This is a Social Open World - Team up with other players and enter the Horizon Arcade for a continuing series of fun, over-the-top challenges that keep you and your friends in the action and having fun with no menus, loading screens or lobbies.

Meet new friends in Horizon Open and Tours and share your creations with new community gift sharing. This is Your Horizon Adventure - Lead breathtaking expeditions across the vibrant and ever-evolving open world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world's greatest cars. The previous game in the series, Forza Horizon 4, was personally appealing to me because of its UK setting, which I found to be a convincing rendering of where I grew up.

But I found the game hard to get into because of the way it handled its open-world design, throwing an overwhelming array of cars and quests at you. Every time I opened the game after a week or two away, I'd have no idea what to do — the overwrought UI gave me option paralysis. It felt more like Assassin's Creed on wheels than an arcade racer. Forza Horizon 5 also features a brand-new weather system, where players will be able to experience different climates in different parts of the country. Additionally, you are also introduced to the Horizon Arcade, where you can play a series of mini-multiplayer games spread across the map.

Over the past decade, Forza Horizon hasn't just grown to be the premier open world arcade racer series, it's become one of the landmark technical showcases for what the Xbox series of consoles can do. Forza Horizon 5 is the first new game in the series to release for Xbox Series machines, but, as the racing heads to an open world rendition of Mexico, Playground Games has also had to design this game with Xbox One and PC in mind. The Eliminator battle royale game mode introduced in Forza Horizon 4 returns, albeit with players starting in a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle rather than a 1965 Mini. The world is designed for the mode unlike the previous game, which received The Eliminator after launch.

As in the previous game, players can buy in-game houses ranging from small beachside cabanas to even a hotel, which can unlock rewards such as Wheelspins and the right to Fast Travel. Lead breathtaking expeditions across the vibrant and ever-evolving open world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world's greatest cars. Playground Games has revealed that Forza Horizon 5 has achieved the biggest launch week in Xbox history, with over 10million players flocking to the racing game. Forza Horizon 5 features a 50 percent larger map, new game modes, and will support sign language in a future update. This is a series that has always aimed for 30fps, but this is probably the best that it's ever felt, thanks in part to the excellent and natural feeling motion blur. The dense foliage on trees, for example, always looks like it's being rendered at high quality.

Collaborate with other players and enter the Horizon Arcade for a series of fun and over-the-top challenges that'll keep you and your friends in action and let you have fun without menus, loading screens, or lobbies. In Forza Horizon 5 for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X, you lead breathtaking expeditions through the vibrant and ever-changing open landscapes of Mexico. You can entertain yourself for hours with almost limitless driving pleasure in the best cars of the world.

In this sequel to the successful Horizon series, you can visit realistic landmarks. You race along real locations in Mexico and can choose from hundreds of cars. Play the Horizon Story alone or join your friends on the Horizon Arcade. For drag racing on automatic transmissions, there's no need to manipulate the clutch at the start. But for high-torque cars, or playing without traction control, you may need to feather the accelerator to get a smooth launch before dropping the hammer.

Explore the vibrant and ever-evolving open world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world's greatest cars. Today the Twitter account for Forza Horizon 5 has shared that over 10million players have already played the game since it launched on November 9. Beyond its slight but welcome tweaks to the unlocking system, Forza Horizon 5 makes hardly any progress on its predecessors in terms of game design. It really is as if the previous couple of games just got airlifted to Mexico and received an extreme technical glow-up. The setting is everything in Forza Horizon — it's what dictates and defines the endless firehose of races and championships and quests, not to mention the future expansions that have already been confirmed. The games developers not only wanted to recreate the best parts of Mexico onscreen, but they also wanted it to stand up to the minutest scrutiny too, even the tiny elements usually ignored by players.

And in this they have been successful, using photogrammetry and ray tracing to create superb graphics that almost demand that you slow down a examine a tree trunk or a rock. Forza Horizon 5 includes a bunch of accessibility options such as game speed modifications, colour blindness mode, a high contrast mode, subtitle options, text-to-speech feature, and the ability to disable moving backgrounds. In addition to that, it will be adding sign language support in a future update. In the right hands, this console can absolutely live up to Microsoft's original pitch.

Let's start with the Xbox Series X and the default graphics mode. The 'Quality' setting runs at 4K with a target frame rate of 30fps, but because of this, Playground are able to really push those graphics settings and, while 30fps is rarely the go-to frame rate for racing fans, it still feels pretty damn good. Release9 November 2021GenreRacingModeSingle-player, multiplayerForza Horizon 5 is a 2021 racing video game developed by Playground Games and published by Xbox Game Studios.

The twelfth main instalment of the Forza series, the game is set in a fictionalised representation of Mexico. It was released on 9 November 2021 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. While Microsoft is still to announce official numbers, the number of existing players can be seen in real-time via the game menus.