Yes, we’ve played it and we can exclusively report that it feels like...well, it feels like a Forza Horizon game. Playground Games has taken the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t start hitting it with a hammer” to heart and applied its enormously successful core Horizon formula to Japan. Yes, there are tweaks to the gameplay here and there, but they are icing on an already delicious cake. A cake that tastes of petrol and scorched rubber. The metaphor falls over a bit at this point. Like all recent Horizon games, Horizon 6’s story kicks off with a veritable TikTok feed of bitesized experiences, whether that’s burying the throttle into the footwell in the new Toyota GR GT, blowing through cherry blossoms in a wide-body 911 GT or careening down a ski slope in a trophy truck. The alleged difference this time is that once you’ve finished this highlight reel, you start not as part of the festival crowd but just as an enthusiast following the travelling circus, in a more modest ride than you had access to at the start of Horizon 5. Materially, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference to what you’re actually doing, though; you’re still participating in races and time attacks rather than, say, spending hours cleaning a fast food restaurant bathroom to earn enough for a wristband. OTHER STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: Facelifted Toyota Yaris Cross debuts in Europe with AWD option Safe! The next GT-R will survive Nissan’s global production cuts What does make a difference is the map itself and, in particular, Tokyo. Japan’s capital is a literal game changer, in that it’s the biggest urban area in a Horizon game to date. The series has primarily been about gobbling up miles on the open road with occasional detours