Forza Horizon (2012-10-23) is the fifth game in the racing series, considered an arcade spin-off rather than a true simulation entry. It introduces an open world concept to the series, similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012), Burnout Paradise, and FUEL. The game is set in Colorado, USA, where the player participates in the fictitious Horizon Festival with a light story. The Horizontal Festival is a central location on the map that acts as a hub to buy new cars, sign up for new events, get paint jobs etc. The player starts as the last of 250 competitors and has to make his way up by participating in races and gaining popularity. The competition is divided into different Horizon Event tiers represented by wristbands of different colours that need to be earned to progress. Events include point-to-point races, circuit races, rally tracks, illegal street races, skill challenges, speed trap records, races against helicopters, hot-air balloons and planes in showcase events.
The player's goal is to earn street cred through continuous sponsor challenges that involve aggressive driving acts such as drifting, jumping over obstacles, near misses, trading paint, passes, burnouts, drafting, or by driving on two wheels. These can be combined into combos and they contribute to a global popularity level, provide credits and consequently open up new events. The series' paint job creator is still present along with players trading and selling liveries. There are also still different performance upgrades at the festival's mechanic Dak that can lift the slowest vehicles to the higher classes. Upgrades can be done manually or automatically, and the game provides a warning when the player attempts to join a race with a vehicle that is not powerful enough.
Multiplayer includes regular races through different lobbies based on the skill level. Next to the regular races there are King games of tag in open environments such as a warehouse or a golf course, Infected where one player has to hunt down survivors to infect them and have them join the infected team, and cooperative challenges in a free-roam mode with the entire game world.
In the single-player there are different outposts that act as smaller hubs. Each outpost offers three PR stunts (break the speed limit, get to a photo shoot without damage, get a certain amount of skill points with a limited amount of time) that can be completed to reduce the cost to fast travel between outposts around the map by 25%, 50% and 100%. The Kinect peripheral is supported through its voice recognition capabilities.
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