There’s something about opening the door to your majestic Ferrari 250 California or Reliant Supervan as the waves gently crash against the shore to your right and a blazing sun beats down on you from above that you don’t really appreciate until it disappears. Or at least that’s what I found while playing Forza Horizon 6.
Playground Games’ latest work, while undeniably iterative even by sequel standards, still comes with some notable additions and changes to the foundations established by its predecessors. As I highlighted in my Horizon 6 review, house customization debuted in two forms, a pristine track-building valley dubbed The Estate, and custom garages built into each of the racer’s eight purchasable houses.
Going in, I couldn’t wait to try the latter. Adding a touch of customization to Playground’s private car DIY hangouts seemed like it could add something unique to the Forza housekeeping experience. However, I hadn’t really thought about the costs this would entail. Upon entering a house in Horizon 6, you are immediately transported inside to garages offering the same white and gray blank slate. Unless you have the radio on, these are completely silent voids. Over this soundtrack you begin to place an assortment of fairly generic building blocks and clutter.
A black sofa. A nondescript set of tool drawers. One of those plastic things that mechanics lie on when sliding under an engine. An arcade machine that your character cannot interact with. A reserve of wooden logs. Some castle steps without a castle. A few trees and rocks if you want to try and pretend you’re outside. The brick-shaped building seen from the top of the stairwell of a multi-storey car park, which cannot be entered because there are no stairs inside. Various brightly colored pavilions on the theme of the Horizon festival. A metal palm tree that lights up in a single color.
Or you give up and import someone else’s premade design. You cannot give a personal touch to these, as they are not editable by people who are not the original author. In previous Forzas, garages were not customizable. Instead, each house used the outdoor driveway space designed by the talented artists at Playground Games as a stopping point. When I arrive at Buenas Vistas, the coastal villa I’ve long established as my home base in Horizon 5, I can see and hear the beach as I ride around in my rides in the series’ car viewing mode, Forzavista. The seabirds scream as I decide which ridiculous spoiler I want to install. I never feel like I’ve left the living world of Mexico, even though I’m separated from it and other players by a partition of menus.
Horizon 6’s DIY garages could be the basis for something good in future Forzas, but at the moment I find them to be pretty uninspiring hangouts. Beyond the monolithic garage doors lies a Japanese landscape bursting with authentic details, varied biomes and vibrant colors, but driving home takes you away from it. The last house put on the market as you progress through Horizon 6 is called Vision House. It is an ultra-modern mansion with chic architecture and its description praises the view it offers of the city of Tokyo. It’s not the real estate agents who tell the pigs that the view is spectacular, made all the better by the fact that if you look in the direction away from the metropolis, the snow-capped Mount Fuji looms in the distance, offering an equally breathtaking view.
In previous Horizons, you pulled into that house’s driveway every time you returned to it and could make any adjustments or purchases to your car while at least some of those sights hid within sight. Your soundtrack would be the diegetic symphony of the Japanese countryside, probably a combination of wind rustling through the trees, wild animals chirping, and perhaps the dull hum of a distant road.
I generally find the environs of Horizon 6 to be a nicer place to hang out than Mexico, and yet it keeps steering me towards bland purgatories that I have to spend my time trying to make visually palatable. So, I sometimes found myself voluntarily stopping on the driveways of his houses to admire the view before pressing the button that locks me in my cell. Fuji Unkai House has a charming traditional Japanese garden and, as its description boasts, “unparalleled views of Mount Fuji.” An unparalleled view that disappears as soon as you enter.
Hakusan Mountain Lodge overlooks an alpine lake at the foot of snow-capped peaks. Less grandiose, the Minka House in the Ito region still offers a rustic stopover at the bottom of the bay of a fishing village. Tokyo House goes back to the well of the charming Japanese Gardens, this time with enough riding space for a whole host of rides. Even Soko 78, the warehouse near the Tokyo docks, has a decent view despite its industrial surroundings.
All are ideal locations for an alley providing as nice a backdrop as those in previous Horizons. Perhaps Playground Games will add the ability to stop outside of them to tinker with a menu later, if the adoption of custom garages is extremely disappointing. I honestly can’t see this happening. For one, someone has already created a custom garage that surrounds the player’s car with dinosaurs on bikes. There’s no doubt that soon there will be endless other options for people to just run with. On the other hand, I’ll probably be stuck looking for a perch in Horizon 6’s wide open spaces where I can open the hoods and stare longingly at the engine blocks, just like I did at Horizon 4’s Derwentside Lake Lodge.
