Best Open World of 2021: Forza Motorsport: Horizon 5
Our favorite open world game this year is Forza Horizon 5.For more PC Gamer awards, please go to GOTY 2021 hub.
Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK Playground Games once again put together a large number of patchwork performances of a place, and is full of the fun of a theme park. There is the Baja Desert, where you can smash cacti to build a lot of skill sets. There is La Gran Caldera, an active volcano, with winding dirt roads and a mountainside, just begging for off-road stunts. There are jungles and farmland here, as well as a large track for drag racing.
In short, Forza Horizon 5 Mexico is a diverse car playground. In terms of architecture, it is roughly the same as before in Australia and the United Kingdom: different biomes put fun above realism, and there are enough races, challenges and collectibles to explore for hundreds of hours.
Yes, we could have given Forza Horizon 5 a “best car” award and finished it, but doing so would miss the point. Racing is certainly part of the Forza Horizon series, but not only that-it is a passionate celebration of video game driving. Cars are distributed like RPG trophies, and you can not only use them for a series of checkpoint games. There are “PR stunts”, each celebrating a different discipline, such as drifting or large-scale jumps that are not recommended. For example, when you turn into a stunt driver for some ridiculous action blockbuster, listening to the story will set specific goals. There is even a surprisingly good battle royale mode.
In most games, a huge open world full of icons will exhaust me. But in Forza Horizon 5, each one is guaranteed to do some interesting things in the car. If you like racing games, this series is still the pinnacle of form.
Jacob Ridley, senior hardware editor: Before Forza Horizon 5 was released, I was still playing Forza Horizon 4. I never really let go of it. Forza Horizon 5 feels very much like a shiny version of the same game, well, that’s all I can ask for.
There are many beautiful places on the map of Mexico, and there are still many things to do, even though I spent the first few hours on a drive, just for driving pleasure and beautiful scenery.
Evan Lahti, Global Editor: My biggest complaint is how unstable the fleet system is in the weeks after launch, and you cannot use the steering wheel initially. I guess this is the essence of modern games, especially in the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
Leaving aside these inconveniences, Forza Motorsport is the least cynical game I have played throughout the year. It is an uninterrupted stream of happiness. From the first minute, you will be praised and rewarded: free cars, master points, abandoned antique cars (barn finder, breeder), clothes and expressions, constant, almost creepy attention from radio DJs, and Continuous XP drops the most harmless behavior, such as destroying Mexican cacti. For open world games, Forza is obsessed with placing a prize for a railway track line in front of you. From a story point of view, it’s a bit strange (I’m a racing celebrity who fell from the sky, in a few hours, was buying or just acquiring multiple houses), but you can’t deny its appeal in our current dull state of the world In, a frictionless and optimistic racer.
Fraser Brown, online editor: After Forza Horizon 4 asked me to drive around my former home in Edinburgh, I think I found my favorite racing game. It turns out that the novelty of exploring familiar places in video games can be surpassed by exploring a more exciting place. Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico is definitely the green and gray Blighty, it almost makes up for the reason why I haven’t left this country in the past two years. I may be trapped in my apartment and the weather may be bad, but in the game, I make donuts around the ancient pyramids and compete with my friends in the jungle and pristine beaches.
Nat Clayton, feature film producer: Like Fraser, I’m not sure if I will like Forza, it won’t let me drive literally to my back garden (even though Edinburgh in Horizon 4 cuts off just before my apartment). However, since they are not trapped in the same territory in the UK, FH5’s Mexico is full of the diversity that this game desires. The vast sea of sand dunes flowed into the volcanic mountains and then returned to the rough jungle. The game knows that this is its strong point, and the best game is a 20-minute epic that takes you around the entire map.
In other words, I spent most of my time in Horizon 5 in the garage, painting smooth cars together based on my focus on games in the past few years. If you need a Datsun in Umuragi Generation color or an unparalleled Ford Mustang, please contact me.