Accumulating huge skill combos in Horizon 2 is a lot of fun and far more satisfying now that there’s more reason to do so. Where previously Skills points had a nebulous effect on your ‘popularity’, in Horizon 2 they unlock points you can trade for permanent perks like discounts on new cars or a small grace period at the beginning of an online game of Horizon 2’s tag mode, ‘Infected’. These rewards for impressive driving return from the original, although this time they’re integrated far better into the gameplay. These are great places to compulsively rack up your Skill points. The airstrip, shipping port, and abandoned freight yard are highlights, each offering drift-friendly, hoon-tuned playgrounds to experiment in between races. It’s still dwarfed by the likes of Test Drive Unlimited’s life-size Oahu, but there’s a lot more to do in it. It’s a bigger area than Forza Horizon’s small slice of Colorado, though it’s not a 1:1 recreation of the region. It’s wish-fulfilment for Forza fans who’ve spent the last decade watching the hosts of Top Gear cocking about on the Mediterranean coastline every second week. The backdrop this time is a slab of land straddling the border of northern Italy and the south of France. What developer Playground Games has added, however, is a far richer world that’s exponentially denser with rewarding racing and exploration content. As usual, supercars feel crisp and sharp, SUVs feel suitably soggy, and everything seems honed to let you heave your cars into corners with two glorious fistfuls of opposite lock.

Like Horizon before it, they all feel distinct from one another too, thanks to the Forza series’ familiar, top-quality driving dynamics. The eclectic roster of 200+ lavishly detailed cars here ranges from cult coupes to hypercars, and it’s the best line-up in the open-world racing business. Forza Horizon 2 rebottles the winning formula established by its predecessor, albeit with a heaped tablespoon of new and improved ingredients.

Forza horizon 2 pc