Forza Horizon is an open-world racing game built around the Horizon Festival, where a wristband ladder of events, showcases and street races gates each tier. The base game was completed to a hundred per cent in about twenty hours, including every wristband tier and the Horizon Championship.
The festival structure gives the campaign real content, with the wristband ladder from yellow through gold keeping the events varied. The showcases racing planes and a helicopter come down to the wire, and the Star Showdowns are one-on-one highway races against the wristband rivals.
The open world is packed with barn finds, a hundred discount signs that supercharge the car collection, outposts, speed traps and PR stunts. The starting Corrado stays surprisingly useful throughout, and the low-class car events offer a refreshing control-focused change.
Pulse is the favourite radio station, with DJ personalities and a standout track in Spirit of the Night. The street races replace barriers with traffic, and the mega point-to-point race across the map is a ten-minute highlight.
The final Star Showdown against the champion demands near-perfect driving, since one minor mistake lets him shoot off, and the finish line sits on a road split that blends into the tarmac. The AI is inconsistent, with rivals like the Manic Mini shooting off like rockets and recovering from mistakes far faster.
The rally expansion is bare bones, reusing the main map, skipping weather and keeping a mini-map that invalidates the co-driver callouts, and the last rally breaks at the same spot twice. Late-game track reuse disappoints, with the championship final repeating the same race twice and circuits reappearing.
Overall, the showcase races, the open-world content and the wristband ladder make Forza Horizon a very fun and content-rich racer. The near-impossible final showdown and the bare-bones rally expansion are the caveats.