Demo was kinda decent, reminds me of Need for Speed Underground 2. I hate the style of the game though, the music festival atmosphere, the music, the bro talk, the pink all over the menus.

wow the reviews for this game are decent..

IGN: 9.0

What I will say, however, is that Forza Horizon and Playground Games have rewritten the rules of the road. Thing is, Forza Horizon is exactly the type of game we’ve been trained not to expect. We’ve been conditioned to accept concessions. Increased scope for lesser quality visuals. Technical prowess for reduced content. We deal with Test Drive Unlimited 2’s visual shortcomings because it’s so enormous. We take the likes of the technically robust DiRT Showdown and make do with all the track recycling. None of this is the case with Forza Horizon. I don’t know how a game of this size, with everything going on, can look this good and still support a rewind utility, fully functioning car interiors and a full day/night cycle. I don’t know how the frame rate for this enormous game remains resolutely locked, because whether you’re racing under headlights or screaming down the freeway at over 400 kilometres per hour it never, ever dips. It might as well be witchcraft. I don’t know how it does it. It just does.

In fact, most everything about Forza Horizon looks improbably good. The fingers of sunlight reaching out towards you at dusk. The scattered leaf litter and gravel being kicked up in the wake of speeding vehicles. The bustle of the Horizon Festival itself and the way the shadows of the always-rotating amusement rides dance across your dashboard. It’s a world brimming with detail everywhere you look, from the leafy country lanes to the ribbons of asphalt lining dusty red canyons. It’s devastatingly gorgeous. It’s like Emma Stone playing bass guitar in her underpants.

It looks just as fantastic at night, too, which comes around every half hour or so. It’s especially cool to note the distant soft glow of the Horizon Festival, fireworks bursting overhead, as you approach under darkness from afar.

The cars are equally impressive. The high bar set by Forza Motorsport 4 has been maintained and, in some ways, surpassed. With a full day/night cycle now in effect Forza Horizon’s cars feature illuminated, working dials in cabin view. Pop up and hideaway headlamps are fully animated too, like those featured on, say, a BMW M1 or a ’69 Charger. As the sun sets your headlights will automatically emerge from the hood or from behind the retracting grille.

Eurogamer 9.0

Prepare to swallow your cynicism, however, because Forza Horizon is a quite brilliant racing game - one of the best of its generation. It's also a lesson in how to make that development model work to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

Rather than a chop-shop banger, this is a custom thoroughbred: a game that shares many of the strengths of its parent and adds a few that are all its own. Playground is a talented supergroup of racing game veterans working with raw materials of the finest quality: Turn 10's graphics and physics engines, handling model, upgrade system and car catalogue. On these rock-solid foundations it's built a hugely entertaining blacktop odyssey that finally realises the potential of open-road simulation racing.

Destructoid 9.0

And there's rarely a moment where it doesn't look amazing. Forza games have always looked great as far as car models were concerned, with the previous entry, Forza 4, sporting impossibly detailed interiors and exteriors. But Horizon ups the ante even further with its settings and lighting engine. I was blown away the first time I witnessed the game's transition from day to night, watching as the sun-drenched ground gave way to moonlight. Headlights took over for a bit as I overtook some country hills, but the wow moment came when I rounded the last corner toward the festival, where I saw fireworks lighting up the sky. No racing game has ever looked this nice.

Giant bomb : 100

With around 120 or so events to choose from, Forza Horizon might sound somewhat slim when compared to Forza Motorsport 4, but it gains a lot more depth from its open world than it initially lets on. But most importantly, it manages to simultaneously feel like a Forza game while also letting in more of what makes racing games fun for all players, rather than staying strictly focused on those of us who want strict simulations of varying realism. It's got a cockpit view, but it also gives you points for smashing through street signs and performing totally sick J-turns. That might sound like a contradiction that would cripple a game, but Horizon manages to make all of these different elements fit together in a way that seems natural. And that's pretty impressive

Gamespot : 85/100

Horizon's occasional missteps may clash with the machinelike precision of the Motorsport games that preceded it, but its ambition and untethered road map more than make up for those faults. This is a game that understands the thrill of the open road, and in delivering that thrill it's an unqualified success.

Gamesbeat 83/100

While Forza Horizon can feel like demographic-mongering, interactive junk food, you'll find a deeply engaging racing experience below its overly gaudy candy-paint top coat. The game truly shines when it lets you live out your childhood fantasies, driving that car from the poster on your bedroom wall down a meandering motorway toward the sunset-soaked … well, horizon.

Gamesradar 80/100

A great departure from the core Forza Motorsport titles. If you're blindly walking into the game without knowing that it's less sim-driven and far more of a fun arcade racer with many of Forza's trademark trappings--rewinds, color-coded tracking, and customization--you're likely in for a rude awakening. It's got its bumpy patches, but if you're interested in playing a long, deep, and rewarding racer, Forza Horizon is a game worth putting in the mileage on.