As you know by know, I'm a car enthusiast. I work on and mod my own cars, but that actually makes me more scrutinous of racing games. Does Forza Horizon 5 please me?

I put together an unusually more detailed Presentation section, so I do hope you all check that part out!

Written version: https://zyro-eg.com/2021/11/25/forza-horizon-5-review/

EDIT: Forgot to add the link to the written version!  I looked at stats, and it seems many of you actually prefer to read my reviews lol

Man, I really wish I could play this game... It looks amazing!

I mean, Xbox has the least barriers: GP Ult would let you stream this on your phone or your PC.  If you really want to play it, it's actually really accessible

Your vid made me realise i haven't been customizing the inside of my cars, also good score

It runs pretty well on my laptop, loading times are atrocious though from HDD. It's loading now in the background. HDD is fast enough for streaming the terrain, I only got a streaming warning once. I suspect Windows is using the rest of my 32GB ram to cache terrain files (The game itself only uses 9GB RAM) However pop up or rather terrain morphing is pretty noticeable.

First impressions:

Horizon festival is as annoying as always, and add in the mandatory introduction to get through before you can go. Visuals are great, although most of the time my eyes are focused on the mini map to see where to go, the big disadvantage of open world racing.

Handling feels rather dead and floaty. It doesn't seem to matter much what you hit (you can drive through trees) or whether your wheels are on the road, curb, or next to the road. I've only driven the Corvette Stingray so far (besides the mandatory car switches for the story) which works for everything.

Just driving around is the most fun so far. Eyes on the road, just drive. The game keeps spawning in cars to overtake, never alone on the road. (Bit silly to see race cars on dirt roads) It's certainly a looker with great variety in the landscape. First thing I did when the game allowed me to take off was drive a lap around the map. Lots to see!

Too many progressions systems overload at the start. Same as FH4. It's hard so far to find actual races, so much fluff. It seems I need to do the fluff to gather accolade points to unlock story chapters, which unlock more races. Although I seem to be stuck? atm.

It says I need to choose the next chapter but I can't figure out how. Maybe it will show up when I clear the other icons.

Ah, stupid me, just follow the gps line of course. I had to 'buy' a house to proceed. Overthinking it as usual.

Found the garments section, wtf happened to gaming!

ye the progression of the story is locked behind non story races/events

Yes and the races are locked behind the story progression.

Currently I'm trying to turn the screen reader off with no success yet. When I started the game today it's narrating everything that's highlighted, very annoying when browsing the menus. I turned the screen reader off in accessibility options (was on system default, which should be off as well) but it just keeps on going. Trying to restart the game atm, takes forever to load.

It seems restarting worked, normal sound is back, screen reader is silent. Back to racing, after the next story segment that is. No races available yet.

you have to drive to the races on the map. After you do the two on the map, more will pop up.

Yes, more have shown up now. It's still hard to find the races. I accidentally entered an online tournament and cancelled again, then some user created race (was crap). Just the pure blue race icons I'm looking for. The problem with the map filter is there's no way (that I know) to just see the new events for selected categories. Select NEW and everything NEW shows up. Only select races and the old ones stay on the map. I did already turned all the other stuff off, Forza link, Anna, all notifications etc. It's a lot of work to just do some offline racing!

FH5 certainly has tons to do. I configured it to what I want out of it turning this all off: Head to head requests, Anna, Converible HUD, Forza Link, Names over cars, Ghosts, Skills, Notifications, Online Even Notifications, Horizon Arcade Notifications, Convoy Invite Notifications, Accolade Notifications, Horizon Promo Icon, Lens Effects, Radio Volume, GPS Volume, GPS Voice, Radio DJ, Horns, Microphone, Motion Blur, Accolades, Festival sites, Seasonal Events, Seasonal PR Stunts, Seasonal Collectibles, Showcases & Expeditions, Speed traps, Speed Zones, Danger Signs, Drift Zones, Trailblazers, Bonus Boards, Barn Finds, Stories, Landmarks, Houses, Eventlab Events, Multiplayer Events, Online Friends, All Online Players.

I changed the steering linearity (too sensitive at speed), deadzones (default too big) and fov to get a better experience. I race in bumper cam and the default FOV turns all the cars into stretch limos when overtaking, FOV 50 works better. The cars are still stretched yet any lower makes it look zoomed in. I still need to tweak the settings better, push the stick a little and the car veers off the road. Deadzone 0, Steering linearity 30 is working better.

Sadly, you can't customize the inside that probably only 1% of people look at because they drive in cockpit mode like me

So after reading the thread a bit, yes: it can be daunting with how much stuff FH5 shows you that you can do.  The good news is that most of it is optional: nothing is really "locked" behind anything other than your rank.  You can pretty much do anything and rank up (speed zones, barn finds, races, events, etc.), and as you rank up, you can then keep unlocking more Horizon tiers which then unlock more stuff to do.  For reference, I did barely any story races, and instead focused on the endgame races (aptly named things like Goliath, Colossus, Marathon, etc.) because it's always been the endgame races that are intense, long races that take you across massive sections of the map.  For reference the Goliath is a 13 minute race

In fact, I didn't even do story races until after I had already completed all the showcases and endgame races.  The way the game is, it's sort of like BotW: as long as you're doing something, you'll progress.  As you progress, you have more to do.  You actually have all the cars you need to do literally everything right from the get-go.  How you do it is up to you: you basically have options.  And yes, most user-generated races kinda suck, but it's nice to have the option to create races and send them to your friends.

That also goes along with your statement about "wtf happened to gaming", though: options.  Put a dress on a man?  Sure, if you want to.  I see some people get bent out of shape over these things, but the modern era is all about options and open-endedness.  If someone WANTS to cross-dress, then the option is there for them.  It doesn't hurt me, it doesn't make my car slower, it doesn't make my food taste worse.  People get so caught up in mixing their political/sociological beliefs together that it's like they forget that they're not the only people on the planet.  I don't take you to be that type, actually, but yea, it's all about options.  The option is there for a trans to have a male character with a female name/voice wearing a dress.  It doesn't hurt me, and until the day it does, I see nothing wrong with it.