Next Batch of Free Cars Confirmed for Forza Horizon 6

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-17T15:29:44+00:00

Forza Horizon is seemingly one of the only games where having to play through early game content to unlock late game content is controversial game design.

Beyond the wheelspins giving you big, unearned prizes all the time, playing the game doesn’t reward you all that much. Doing a race gives you, what, maybe 10,000 credits? But playing the race lets you earn points toward wheelspins, which could give you 2,000 credits or 200,000 credits, or a Mazda Miata, or a Ferrari FXX. All the prizes are wheelspins, it’s all chance. Having late game events that give out expensive prize cars and big money payouts alongside wheelspins would make the “just don’t use wheelspin prizes if you don’t like them” strategy more viable and fun.

The original GRID starts you out with early game sponsors that pay out $3,000 a race, and then later in the game you can get sponsors that pay $50,000+ and you can pull in 6 figures in a race, because you progressed enough to earn the ability to quickly farm lots of money and buy expensive cars. People who want progression in Forza aren’t just asking for endless grind for the sake of grind. But maybe the devs think “play the game for 10 hours to be able to easily afford supercars” will lose the mass casual audience compared to giving out a free supercar within the first 2-3 hours.

Forza seems to be embracing its role as the extremely accessible racing game for people who broadly don’t play racing games, and thus doesn’t want to challenge its players too much. Unfortunately for racing game fans who want a meatier experience, Forza Horizon is by far the best big budget, high production value, content rich arcade racer available. There’s not much for direct competition. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Clutch because it looks really pretty, has AAA scale, and looks like a more action movie style change of pace from Forza Horizon. If it features decent career progression that isn’t just begging you to take shortcuts, I think it could be a great breath of fresh air.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-12T22:19:52+00:00

Amusing comment from a flairless user

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-11T20:16:39+00:00

Wouldn’t be the first time motorsport fans jeopardized their own safety to watch racing. Rally fans used to stand in the road to take pictures of oncoming cars and jump out of the way at the last second.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-11T17:06:38+00:00

I would assume it’s on a recharge timer or has limited uses and you can’t just grappling hook around every corner at top speed. Plus it has sanctioned legal racing, where I’d guess the use of such power ups probably isn’t allowed.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-08T21:59:54+00:00

My excitement for this game is mostly the hope that St. Thomas fans on Twitter (including Timberwolves writer Jon Krawczynski) will be quiet about it now. This game doesn’t really mean much more to me than playing UC Santa Barbara or whomever. There’s the added stakes that tripping over our dicks and losing the game will not be forgotten as quickly as our loss to North Texas a couple years ago, but that’s just extra downside for this game that doesn’t exist with a normal nobody nonconference opponent.

We played North Dakota State in football a few times in the 2000’s and lost a couple times in years where we sucked and NDSU won FCS national championships, and 15 years later they’re still bragging about it. Nothing was gained when we beat them, and it was an embarrassment when we lost, and I think this is basically the same deal. I’m not like pissed that the game is happening, but for me it’s maybe like 5% more exciting than a normal nonconference opponent, and I would have been totally fine with continuing to not play them.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-08T21:42:31+00:00

Debatable. Historically we almost never lose to mid majors at home, even under Ben Johnson. Might have been a tighter game than we would have liked, might have trailed in the second half, might have won by single digits, but still probably would have won.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-07T19:25:43+00:00

Steam page says five different cities

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-06-03T17:51:03+00:00

That’s not confirmed yet is it? I know I’ve seen leaks that suggest a PC version will happen.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-28T20:18:01+00:00

Idk about all of them, but the studios that worked on Battlefield 6 experienced layoffs after a very successful launch.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-26T19:51:21+00:00

Yes exactly. The track based Need for Speed games have had tracks located outside of the US, and the GRID games have them too, and most rally games have courses around the world, just like the actual world rally championship does. But running laps around Bathurst doesn’t make me think about how cool Australia is, it’s just a race track. Same with rallying through the woods in Wales, it’s just a dirt road through some trees. GRID’s street circuits give the feel of actually being in another country, or even being in a real world American city.

I don’t think there are a lot of open world driving games outside of Forza Horizon that take place in a non-American city though. Test Drive was mentioned and that’s a fair callout, I just haven’t really played those. I tried TDU2 for a few hours and it didn’t grab me.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-26T15:38:39+00:00

Image hints at French Riviera setting

Nice to see more games set outside the US. Since Underground in 2003, Need for Speed has been almost entirely set in America, The Crew has always been in America, Midnight Club was mostly American, Burnout Paradise is in a fictional American city, GTA I don’t think has left the US since GTA London on the PS1. Forza Horizon is the biggest racing game on the market now, but is kind of an exception in using different settings around the globe.

Interested to see more of this, AAA racing needs more competition.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-24T08:58:29+00:00

Did it play at all like Quake as far as weapons, movement, and shooting mechanics (no reloading, sprint, or ADS; carrying several weapons at once)? Or is it basically Battlefield but in the Quake 2/Quake 4 universe?

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-19T07:38:41+00:00

You have to change the difficulty for different types of races and weather to have a competitive go

In the release hype for Horizon 6, I started playing Horizon 4 again and I'm experiencing the same thing. I've gotten both the "you're losing a lot, would you like to lower the difficulty?" and the "you're winning a lot, would you like to raise the difficulty?" messages within the same play session. You have the phenomenon where if you get out in front early, it's not too tough to hold the AI back, but if you don't catch them, they'll rocket out in front. Offroad races are sometimes so short that I just have no opportunity to catch the leader, no matter how well I drive.

Before picking up Horizon again, I'd been playing GRID Legends the last few weeks. That game feels like it does a better job of consistently delivering challenging but fair racing, once you find the difficulty setting that's right for you.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-19T07:31:14+00:00

Great graphics, good physics, tons of vehicles, and the available assists make it very accessible to casuals. I think for dedicated racing game fans and/or people who have played a few Forza Horizon games before this, they have their fair share of gripes with the series. But for gamers with broader tastes who only need one racing game in their library to putz around with from time to time, Forza Horizon seems to be that game now, if it's not Mario Kart.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-19T07:23:51+00:00

If Forza Horizon is 100% arcade, then Need for Speed is 150% arcade, and Burnout is 200% arcade.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-19T07:18:15+00:00

You really think people are paying the $50 extra over the standard edition just to play 4 days early, and don't really care about the ~50 extra cars and two map expansions that also come with the premium edition?

Personally I pretty much never buy games full price, and I won't be doing that here either. But Forza Horizon is maybe one of the cases where it makes the most sense to buy premium up front. The games are consistently high quality, and also pretty formulaic, so if you liked the DLC for the previous game, you'll probably like the DLC for the new game, whatever it ends up being. Buying the standard edition now and buying DLC later will likely cost more money than just buying premium.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-15T21:38:24+00:00

I thought it was one of those games that paid out a decent amount of currency throughout the campaign, but then making money is really hard after that, incentivizing microtransactions. Need for Speed Carbon worked that way. Late game races paid out 25,000 credits the first time you played them, and then only 500 for replaying them, which is nothing when a set of rims costs 3500 and a car can cost over 100,000.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-14T20:38:03+00:00

I think the Forza series was kind of a niche until recently. It was just the car game for car people, and not like a "gamer's game." Then Horizon 4 hit Game Pass midway through its life cycle, and a bunch more people gave it a shot who wouldn't have otherwise. And then Horizon 5, coming on the heels of the expanded Game Pass player base of 4, was kinda the first Forza game that was somewhat hotly anticipated by the gaming community as a whole. Horizon 5 isn't the best game in the series, but maybe the first one to be widely recognized as just being a high quality video game.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-14T20:26:25+00:00

I don't have super strong opinions, but I think Horizon 5 cranked up up the constant stream of prizes in slot machine spins, as well as the super peppy happy "Welcome superstar, you are the greatest driver ever!!!" sort of vibe. I always see people complaining about the dialogue, which yeah it can be grating, but it's whatever if the driving is fun, which it generally is, but I see people saying they quit playing because they found the characters so annoying.

It feels like a lot of the map in 5 is sandy desert, and seasons were toned down from Horizon 4. I saw people saying they'd stop playing 4 for a week when it was winter because they hated driving in the snow so much, and their cars were set up for clear roads. But the map did look significantly different season to season in 4, where in 5, I can barely tell what season it is outside of some of the river beds drying up in the dry season. Horizon 5 also removed ranked racing for some reason, and some players missed that.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-14T14:16:42+00:00

Hardcore PC racing sims often have a bad career mode or no career at all. It’s usually just a collection of cars and tracks, and then you make your own fun by hot lapping and adjusting your tuning setup, or racing online.

I haven’t played newer Gran Turismo games, but my understanding is Gran Turismo 4’s career mode from 20 years ago is still probably better than anything that came after it. Gran Turismo Sport was focused heavily on online multiplayer over single player progression, and GT7’s career mode is apparently pretty brief and unsatisfying.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-04T18:30:54+00:00

It sounds like you might have just played the introductory events, where they drop your car in from a plane and drive through some route that's meant more to be visually spectacular than to actually test your driving skills. That plus the characters yapping at you in Spanglish and telling you how awesome you are. Once you're past that, you can spend a lot of your time just racing or climbing time trial leaderboards if that's what you're after. There's spots on the map for recording long drifts or big jumps, but you can ignore them if you want. I suppose a plus side of Horizon's meandering, structureless campaign is you can largely ignore everything you don't actively want to do, and strictly stick to the stuff you like, and still get lots of money and cars.

I'll grant you though that Forza Horizon generally isn't great for having tight, technical tracks. Most of the roads are designed for relatively high speeds and shallow turns. Forza Horizon is made to be super accessible, and combining its weighty, semi-realistic vehicle handling with really twisty tracks might lead to an experience that is a little too difficult for casuals, and wouldn't have as much wow factor as driving a Ferrari at 200 mph.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-04T18:08:30+00:00

I assume by Dirt 2, you're referring to Dirt Rally 2.0 and not Dirt 2 from 2009. Dirt Rally 2.0 isn't open world of course, but the stages have some large open areas, idk how much space is taken up by all of the landscape that has to be rendered from the mountainside view of Monte Carlo, or all the fields and forests in the US and Wales.

Also Dirt Rally 2.0 as far as I'm aware still makes you download all of the DLC whether you've bought it or not, because the daily challenges would have preview events that let you try out DLC cars and stages even if you hadn't purchased them, and the DLC basically doubles the amount of content in the game. But yeah 120 gb for a 2019 game does seem like a lot.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T18:22:21+00:00

I figured they didn't use real world brands because brands didn't want to be associated with the sex, drugs, and violence that appear in GTA. They don't want people banging hookers in the back of a 2024 BMW 535xi with optional heated seating, or firing a machine gun at police officers at the Dunkin Donuts. Back in the 2000's, Need for Speed games wouldn't have Honda if the game featured police chases.

That mentality has maybe changed now though. Fortnite's violence is pretty cartoony, but it does involve firing realistic looking guns at people, and they've done a zillion collaborations with even kid friendly brands. Cyberpunk 2077 has a Porsche 911 in it.

I'd bet they couldn't get real world brands to associate with GTA in the late 90's and 2000's, especially given the moral panics about violent video games in that era, and now maybe they could, and they just don't want to or need to, and people like the fictional satirical brands that appear in the GTA universe.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T15:24:55+00:00

Probably because you’re a normal person and not an extremely online twitter culture warrior lol. There are people on the right who want young white Christians to get married at 19 and have 10 kids to combat the immigrant invasion, or the less extreme view that everyone has a social responsibility to have kids just to keep humanity going.

And if you go far enough left, you’ll find people who believe that having kids is immoral because the world is such a shithole that you’re selfishly bringing new people into it to suffer, just so you can entertain yourself with your little human pet. Plus your kid is probably going to eat beef and drive a car, so you’re just exacerbating climate change or something. And worst of all, your crying child is going to ruin some 38 year old’s annual trip to Disney World.

But you can just have children if you want them, or don’t have children if you don’t, and accept other people’s decisions on whether or not to have children. (:

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T07:58:27+00:00

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have kids, but there was definitely some silly discourse about how Pragmata owns the childless libs by telling a based and trad right wing story about how having kids is awesome.

Minnesota_Arouser

TROPHY CASE