Pizza Hut cashier, fashion icon, bestselling toy, game developer, and US Marine Sergeant are some of the accolades that Barbie has accrued over the last six decades (raising serious questions about whether or not she's experienced crunch or the horrors of war.) And now she can add one more to the list, as she’s joining the brilliant Forza Horizon 5. Or more accurately, her beautiful pink car (and Ken's less beautiful grey Hummer) is joining the game.
]]>In today's Forza Horizon 5 livestream, developers Playground Games offered details of the open-world racer's free "Explore The Horizon" update. It'll launch tomorrow and includes six new cars, new photo mode features, and new pathfinder challenges.
]]>Forza Horizon 5 announced its second expansion this evening as planned. Rally Adventure will launch on March 29th and is entirely focused on getting your wheels dirty. You'll find the announcement trailer below.
]]>Forza Horizon 5 is getting a new expansion, and it will be revealed this Thursday, February 23rd, during a livestream. It'll be the first expansion since last year's Hot Wheels extravaganza.
]]>Several senior figures from Forza Horizon developer Playground Games have broken away to develop new open-worlds at their own studio. Maverick Games is based in Leamington Spa, UK, and headed up by Forza Horizon 5’s creative director Mike Brown. Brown also fills the role of creative director at Maverick. Harinder Sangha, formerly of Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington, will run the studio as chief operations officer.
]]>Forza Horizon 5’s Hot Wheels expansion is out and reader, I am in love. Firmly leaning – shoving, really – into the base game’s arcadey side, it’s a gleefully silly collection of physics-mocking race events across an eye-catching tangle of twisting, looping tracks. In between challenges, and flashbacks to covering the floor of my grandparents’ house with ribbons of orange plastic, I’ve also been testing how the DLC’s new skybound setting performs on PC.
]]>It’s sweltering in the UK, land of drizzle and cardigans, right now, so the last thing we’re desperate to hear about while we’re forcing steaming cups of tea down our gullets is anything with the dreaded word ‘hot’ in it. I’ll let Forza Horizon 5’s Hot Wheels expansion off though. Launching today, it looks like bloomin’ good open-world racing fun, even if there’s too much liquid hot magma on display.
]]>The next expansion for open-world racer Forza Horizon 5 will once again feature the gravity-defying stunts and tracks of the Hot Wheels toys. The expansion launches on July 19th and it’s the second such DLC, following on from similar orange loop-de-loops made for Forza Horizon 3. Buckle up and try not to chuck when you watch the trailer below.
]]>This weekend brought the second annual Video Game Accessibility Awards, a celebration of games which make an effort to welcome a wider range of players. Prizes came in ten categories covering everything from control and text options to friendly training spaces. It was a fun awards show too, with good hosts, chat from devs, and even a special appearance from Van Wilder star Ryan Reynolds.
]]>Despite being a Forza Horizon 4 mega fan and having played it three times, I've yet to dig into Forza Horizon 5. I'm relishing the experience of still having it to play, like keeping a big chocolate bar on a high shelf in case of an emergency.
When I do decide to head down Mexico way, I'll get a better experience for having waited. Playground Games' second patch for the game went live this week, bringing tons of fixes.
]]>Forza Horizon 5 is finally here. One of the most anticipated games of the festive season, this racing game romp dares to ask: is there any problem that can’t be solved with a suitable application of car? And the answer is no. Especially if the problem is a volcano. Get ready to take to the varied roads of Mexico and tear them up in super cars. Or mobile homes, whichever takes your fancy. Out now on PC and Xbox Series X/S
]]>If you've been struggling with crashes or online stability in Forza Horizon 5, it's probably worth updating your game. Last night, Playground Games released a patch for the new open-world race 'em up, fixing a number of crashes that can occur when upgrading cars or spawning traffic, and improving stability for Horizon Life (the game's online component). This hotfix was supposed to arrive last week, but better late than never.
]]>Give players a grind to unlock goodies and earn money and, rather than play the game the way the developers might intend, they'll likely figure out the laziest and most efficient way to accomplish that. In Forza Horizon 5, this involves buying janky Jeeps. So many Jeeps. Players have figured out that an endless stream of Willys Jeeps give them a cheap way to get big spins on the prizewheel, potentially winning big money and unlocking rare cars. The game is awash with Jeeps.
]]>Playground Games will add sign language interpreters to Forza Horizon 5's cinematics, adding to an already long list of accessibility features. The devs are currently working American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) support, which will come to the game sometime soon. They'ved also detailed a number of accessibility options the game has from launch today, including screen reading, game speed modification and more.
]]>You could argue Playground Games have just made essentially the same game at least three times in a row with Forza Horizon now, but while every previous edition had a few things you could point at to show how it was imperfect, you can’t do that here. Forza Horizon 5 is as close to flawless as any racer has ever come. For this level of quality to successfully cover such a massive and ambitious game world is a monumental achievement and should be celebrated with some kind of festival. A festival of driv… OK, yes, you should celebrate by playing it. That’ll do just fine.
]]>Update: Forza Horizon 5’s Hot Wheels expansion – which is great fun, by the way – has launched, and I’ve been testing its PC performance to see how it compares to the base game. The answer: very closely, maybe a wee bit better in some places but indistinct enough that the settings guide and any general performance advice given below can apply to the expansion as well.
]]>Almost all of the games I'm interested in playing this November will launch on Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft's subscription service on PC will see the arrival of Forza Horizon 5, Football Manager 2022 and Unpacking.
]]>The Forza Horizon 5 PC system requirements are out in full, and hoo boy, are you gonna need the best graphics cards to max it out. Revealed in a blog post, the new specs both update the previously listed Minimum requirements on Steam, and include an “Ideal” tier on top of the Recommended requirements. This doesn’t specify a particular resolution, but does ask for either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon Radeon RX 6800 XT as the GPU – two of the most powerful, expensive, difficult to buy graphics cards on the market.
]]>I don't know my carburetor from my timing belt drive pulley, so much so that I had to Google "car engine parts" in order to find a second reference for this sentence. The Forza Horizon series mostly operates on my wavelength, letting me be excited by cars because they're shiny and have smooth lines and go fast, without me needing to know their innards.
The list of cars so far confirmed for Forza Horizon 5 might mean different things to you than it does to me, then. To me it means that the Jaguar XJ220 I had as a toy when I was 8 is in there, but maybe you have opinions about different kinds of Land Rover.
]]>Gamescom 2021 is underway, and this evening brought the Xbox showcase stream. You can watch the stream archive in full, but if all you care about is new trailers, then we've gathered them together here.
]]>I think the most car fanatic thing I've said in my life is, "That's a roomy glove box isn't it?" So long as the atmosphere is ripe for a nice blast down a highway, I'm happy driving any old rustbucket. And that's why Forza Horizon 4 appeals to me. Even if you don't know your brake pads from your knee braces, it makes the simple act of kicking up dust on four wheels a cause for celebration.
And having seen roughly 15 hands off minutes of new Forza Horizon 5 footage, I can confirm that it does indeed look like a Forza Horizon game. Should we celebrate? Yes, absolutely. Let me take you through what I saw - and for added effect, I'd recommend sticking on some house music.
]]>Having Forza Horizon 5 on the way is like having the noise of a warm bath running within earshot. I already know I'm going to enjoy everything about the experience that's coming, and the 12 minutes of footage released this week which show a drive around Mexico only confirms it.
]]>This November, Forza Horizon 5 is taking us on a road trip to Mexico, and now developers Playground Games have given us a full look at the map we'll get to explore. The standout bit is absolutely the giant volcano, La Gran Caldera, which players will be able to see from all over the world. Better yet, the devs say it's full of windy tracks and areas you can launch your car off of it.
]]>Forza Horizon 5’s big tech trick will be the game’s massive, ever-changing map. At 1.5x the size of Forza Horizon 4’s landmass, it can afford to have some variety in its world. So while you’re racing through the Mexican landscape, developers PlayGround Games have confirmed you’ll be driving through 11 different biomes, and each will have seasonal weather events to bring more variety to the outrageous looking racer.
]]>Forza Horizon 5 was announced during last week's Microsoft conference, and it was among the best of E3. Since the show, developers Playground Games have been out talking, including about the Events lab, a new tool shipped with the game that lets you create your own modes.
]]>E3 is finally over for another year, and golly there were a lot of new games announced, weren't there? Having waded deep through the flood of streams from practically every publisher under the sun, we've emerged with our filleted highlights of the best games of E3 2021. With this year's show taking place soley online, we haven't played as many of these as we'd normally do during E3, but these are the games that excited us the most and whose trailers we've had on repeat ever since we clapped eyes on them.
]]>It was a weird E3. A lot of video games we already knew about, and more CG trailers than we might like, but there were still some notable announcements and gameplay reveals. While Kevin Hart didn't seem too pleased with his involvement in the festivities, those watching at home had an alright time.
]]>Playground Games have announced Forza Horizon 5, the next instalment of their series of open-world racing games. Moving away from FH4's sunny British streets, FH5 will take players to actually-sunny Mexico. It's coming on November 9th, and you can catch the trailer from Microsoft and Bethesda's E3 showcase below. As always with these games, I'm a huge fan of the environments - it looks like they drive up to a volcano at the end!
]]>A few months into 2024 and we've got some stonking new games out already, all the better to add to our list of the best PC games to play right now. The trends right now are towards bombastic action adventures and puzzle games, but as we look to the future of 2024 we can see some roguelikes, deckbuilders and more strategy on the horizon. Still, whatever you're looking forwards to, you'll find something to enjoy on this list of the top of the top, the best of the best PC games out now..
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