When you play Forza Horizon 5, it’s not just a racing game. You experience a sun-drenched Mexico where you can endlessly explore, while every mile is celebrating car culture. For me, the game is perfect because I have spent countless hours obsessively building my dream garage in Forza Horizon 4. However, the game is not a rehash of familiar roads. There is a special electric feeling that keeps you wanting more.

The Thrill of the Open Road (and Even Off It)

Of course, Forza Horizon 5 is primarily about racing, but the main focus of the game is exploration. The map has humid jungles, arid deserts, sleepy villages, and wild coasts, and every inch of this virtual Mexico is begging you to drive. If you are like me, you will take every opportunity to drive off-road. In the past Horizon titles, when the standard was to buy cheap PS4 games, it always felt that the fastest way to earn points was to stick to the main roads. Here? Not even close. Smash a patch of cacti, throw your car into a riverbed, and charge down a mountain. The more reckless, the better. There is something amazing about skidding to a stop in a dusty cloud, yanking a barn door open, and finding an old car that is just waiting to be restored.

The Pulse of Mexico’s Roads.

There’s something deeply intoxicating about cruising down a sun-drenched highway, the horizon shimmering with the promise of the unknown. Whether you’re drifting through a dense jungle, tearing through arid desert plains, or weaving through cobblestone streets of colorful villages, the world feels alive and personal. It’s not just a map—it’s an experience.

The team at Playground Games has designed a Mexico in Forza Horizon 5 that is not only personalized but also vast; a Mexico that has postcard views and a Mexico that has little treasures begging you to stop and appreciate. Every little detail is accounted for, like when you speed through a tropical storm and sunlight reflects off your car and paint, and you appreciate the sunlight. They are extremely chaotic but comforting; a good reminder that natural machines are just as important as the storms and the other machines you are controlling.

A Collector's Dream

Having stored numerous cars and having built a dream car garage in Forza Horizon 4, I Forza Horizon 5 fulfilled my needs in ways I didn't know I needed. I could spend hours in Forza Horizon Vista in the car observation mode just to check the car and interior details. The detailing down to the aggressive lines of the Lambo Huracan and the rich and shiny leather of the Jaguar E-Type is impressive. Some players who buy PS5 racing games enjoy making shifts to their customization settings. Customization is incredibly satisfying. There is nothing quite like the feeling of tuning the handling of a Ford GT to match your every nerve and command.

While the interaction with the simulated car is satisfying, it also experiences the most refined and improved car interaction. The driving experience has improved with a greater connection to the road and the vehicle being driven. There is a single spot for every driving experience that can be achieved by a driver, whether the driver is a casual driver or more serious.

The new Horizon Arcade mode replaces the structured Forzathon Live events and offers a more organic and untamed multiplayer experience. It’s not flawless—some events in Forza Horizon 4 are more memorable—but the variety is enough to keep things interesting. There are plenty of high-speed sprints to salt flats and plenty of designed technical tracks to urban centers of the country.

The Essence of Mexico

However, the finest thing about Forza Horizon 5 is the Mexican culture it represents. Most certainly, the main story missions, even when they are somewhat cheesy to partake in, narrate deeper stories about the culture. One of the more memorable moments involved a barn find of a venerable Volkswagen Beetle, forked in a race, that the finder restored to its former glory. There was personal history in the story beyond the car, and plenty of rich culture and people.

Cars, Cars, and More Cars

Each car has a personality, like a McLaren 720S that begs to be driven at top speed, or a Baja Bug that is unstoppable in the dunes. Customization is unbelievable. I have spent—actual hours—doing liveries, tweaking suspension, and adjusting power-to-weight ratio. While the design tools are complex, the designers made them user-friendly to the point where they can save you from getting frustrated. My favorite moment? Creating a custom paint job for a classic Mustang and then watching it shine while I jumped off a ramp going 120 mph.

The Auction House

Collecting cars is not as simple as racing through the campaign. You can collect the rare cars, but it will take some work. You can enter the auctions where people are able to sell the cars they no longer want. While this isn’t new to the series, it has a better flow here. You can have the thrill of sniping a rare car at the last moment, then flipping the car for a profit.

Word of advice: Most players who buy PS5 games already have mission-earned cars, so their value drops quickly. If making money is your goal, go after cars that are rare and in demand. You shouldn’t miss the thrill of a great deal either. Like the adrenaline rush I get from racing, finding a great deal, like a Porsche 959 in great condition for a small percentage of the real price, is a racing thrill unlike any other.

A Couple of Bumps in the Road

While the Forza Horizon series is spectacular, this one definitely has flaws. The Horizon Challenges can feel somewhat monotonous, and while the game provides you with what seems like an excessive amount of events to pick from, I found myself wishing for a little more organized flow. There are only so many times one can sprint from point A to point B and not feel bored.

While connecting with your pals is simple, it can feel painstaking when a whole party is trying to compete in coop races and their game progress doesn’t match up. However, the feeling of unity when you and your buddies are driving all over and conquering the land definitely redeems it.

Conclusion

There is no need to reinvent the wheel on Forza Horizon 5, and it simply doesn’t need to.  If you have even a casual interest in racing or cars, the open-world gameplay, authentic car culture, and attention to detail in craftsmanship will make it a game you simply have to experience. Playing Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 is amazing. The light and chrome of the supercars and the dust of the off-road trucks are in sync with the changing weather. I find myself stopping mid-race to take in the stunning scenery, be it the neon festival or the waterfall.

Keep Driving captures the dream of a road trip, a coming of age experience where you’re finally able to start motoring around the world in your own set of wheels. Your sense of wonder’s still intact and each place you visit on brings fresh surprises.

But the game isn't a schmaltzy dip into wanderlust, or a blinkered memory of youth and a lack of responsibilities. Lurking in the background is the nervousness of inexperience, which transforms mundane tasks into nightmares you must overcome.

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Truck Driving is a title developed by Tap Nation and published by Ultimate Games. It’s marketed as an action game, according to its Nintendo page, but it’s a driving simulation at best. Out of so many driving sims in the world, how does this particular game compare? Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

The premise of Truck Driving is to learn how to drive a truck, though there is no story. It’s simply a simulation to see if you can handle the physics of driving heavy loads between three different trucks, two of which you have to unlock. You do this through various levels of small driving exercises.

What type of exercises? Well, the first few levels involves driving in a straight line. Then come small turns, then bigger turns. Some levels include you driving backwards, going up and down ramps, and… that’s about it. Each level took seconds. And, no, that’s not an exaggeration. Overall, Truck Driving took me twenty minutes to complete all fifty levels.

These levels are broken into two segments: day and night. The first twenty-five levels occur during the day, and the final twenty-five levels occur at night, meaning the graphics are darker and your headlights are on. It took me two of the night levels to realize those are exactly the same as the other batch. So, instead of fifty unique driving exercises, you’re repeating the same twenty-five you just completed five minutes ago.

When you complete a level, you’ll earn coins, and that’s what you use to unlock the remaining two trucks. Each truck has a heavier load than the last, and I could feel a difference with the physics. However, that didn’t make the game any more difficult. I still got through the levels with no problem. I even tried to purposely drive off the road to see if it would “fail” me, but it didn’t. I was able to drive back on the road, make it to the parking spot, and still earn my coins as a reward. There were no consequences and nothing else to do in the game.

Even after completing all fifty levels and unlocking all trucks, I have 5,000 coins left over that I can’t do anything with. I can’t customize my trucks, I can’t buy more, I can’t even buy cool horns… although the trucks do have a horn that does nothing but give you aesthetics, it was delightful to play around with it.

Part of the reason the horn was fun to play with was because Truck Driving has no music, only sound effects. Fifty levels of nothing but the truck’s engine whirring, non-existent people cheering for me when I complete the levels, and me continuously booping the horn.

And that’s all there is to it. Truck Driving is not a groundbreaking title by any means, though I can see younger kids having a good time with it. I think it’d be a fun short and sweet title for little kids to get a feel for playing video games, especially if they have a fascination with trucks. The levels aren’t difficult, controls are easy, there are no consequences, and it’s not overstimulating. Plus, you can honk the horn as many times as you want.

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