When you’re talking about a year where for at least six months of it the closest most of us got to an airport was secretly constructing paper planes during yet another three-hour Zoom meeting, the freedom to escape on an exotic, idealised road trip in Forza Horizon 5 has never felt more welcome or vital. Horizon 5 offers you more miles of road to explore than any game in the series yet and you’ll do so behind the wheel of the most desirable vehicles to ever emerge from a designer’s crayon set. Barring Gran Turismo, which will also be arriving on this latest generation of consoles next year, this is the biggest-budget racing game around and it shows in every accurately rendered fleck of metallic paintwork.
The magic of the Horizon series is that the game’s vast open world and hundreds of activities can be enjoyed either on your own or with your mates, making this as much an endless virtual car meet as it is a racing game. Without getting too wistful about it all, our own roads are becoming increasingly regulated, making Horizon 5 an almost dreamlike fantasy of automotive excess, with its shouty engines and speed cameras that are only there for you to rack up a high score. It’s TopGear’s happy place and unequivocally our Game of the Year.
Mike Channell