Five must-haves in Forza Horizon 6

Organized floating
There are few things that feel more JDM, more Tokyo by Night-based street racing and more iconic than drifting, and although Forza Horizon has shown wide-body drifting since its inception, I personally demand that Playground pay much more attention to it this time around. I want to see organized drifting, tandem-style, in Forza Horizon 6, and I want to get together and start at Daikoku and Akihabara UDX. Let me set up my S15 on the bank in the glow of the beautiful neon signs of downtown Tokyo and watch all the ray tracing reflected in the puddles on the ground while a Supra lies licked behind me in valiant attempts to imitate every part of every string.

Pink Slip racing
There are few things in this genre that I remember with the same mix of utter euphoria, horror and deadly rage as the ability to bet on owning your own customized car, in Juiced. The game itself is now painfully forgotten and there were plenty of parts that didn’t work there, but the Pink Slip racing was just fantastic because of the idea of risking losing the car you had spent many, long hours building, due to a simple mistake. And, of course, you could just as easily win and take home a custom-built vehicle worth a great deal

Drive clubs
Although Playground Games, after five successful arcade racing games, has clearly built its own thing and redefined what accessible racing in an open world is and perhaps should be, to me it’s just silly not to steal the best bits from a series of now dead rivals, including Driveclub. The forgotten PS4 flop of the Motorstorm gang wasn’t the racing game many of us had hoped for, but the idea of online clubs where you could find a connection, challenge other clubs and collect club points really wasn’t crazy. Playground should pick it all up, let’s create more club mentality and more online team racing in Forza Horizon 6. In general, Playground needs to overhaul the whole online part of Horizon, which is hardly useful, especially in the last two games. Matchmaking should be redone and wait times for upcoming online races should be reduced by 80%.

More focus, less freedom
The basic recipe on which Horizon is based is, of course, open, free, extensive and wide-ranging racing in an open world. Drive wherever you want, even during the races themselves. If you’ve prepared your car to tackle both a cornfield and a hot summer asphalt, in many of the races it’s just a matter of racing across a field and hoping the shortcut will help you win. In Horizon 6 and when the game series moves to Japan, however, I hope Playground rethinks things a bit and builds more races that are also closed, in terms of layout and the game world itself. A variation between racing in an open world and more Need for Speed: Underground flavored racing could be magically good, in my opinion.

New game modes
The copy-paste work from Forza Horizon 4 to Horizon 5 in terms of the Horizon Arcade game modes offered was almost bizarre, and for the sixth installment I hope Playground really forces itself to “kill their darlings” to offer something different and challenge itself to reinvent the wheel. For my part, there are plenty of game elements here, especially in the fifth volume, that were already starting to feel very boring in the opening hour and new thinking is needed. The same goes for the design of the festival itself. Don’t just use Horizon Festival as a framing device this time, Playground. Let the festival be a real festival based on Tokyo’s car culture. Bring in Smokey Nagata, Keiichi Tsuchiya, Larry Chen, Kanjozoku and bring real live music and a real, proper interpretation of JDM culture. Wangan Expressway should not be missed, of course, as should Kanjo Loop.

What are your wishes for Horizon 6?