We Played Forza Horizon 6 - Kinda Funny Gamescast
54 min
•Apr 8, 202610 days agoSummary
The Kinda Funny Gamescast team discusses their hands-on preview of Forza Horizon 6, set in Tokyo and surrounding Japan. The hosts share their impressions of the game's open world, new features like garage customization and AI assistant Anna, and compare it to Forza Horizon 5, concluding it delivers more of what fans love with high production values but incremental rather than revolutionary improvements.
Insights
- Forza Horizon 6 is positioned as Xbox's flagship IP for 2026, likely to be the company's biggest release outside of Call of Duty, indicating strategic importance for Game Pass and console sales
- The game successfully leverages Japan's geography and culture as a differentiator, but urban Tokyo itself feels less dynamic than expected—nighttime racing and special events may be key to fulfilling the Tokyo Drift fantasy
- New accessibility features like AI assistant Anna and customizable difficulty settings maintain the franchise's strength in appealing to both casual and hardcore players simultaneously
- Community engagement mechanics (seeing friends' progress, ghost races, user-generated content) remain the 'secret sauce' driving player retention and competition
- Expectations management is critical: Forza Horizon 5's critical success (92 Metacritic) has raised the bar, and incremental improvements may disappoint despite the game being excellent
Trends
Location-based gaming design: Using culturally rich, geographically diverse real-world settings (Japan vs. Mexico) as primary differentiators in open-world sequelsAI-powered player guidance: Implementing contextual AI assistants to reduce decision paralysis in massive open worlds with hundreds of activitiesCommunity-driven content creation: User-generated content and collaborative building mechanics becoming standard expectations in open-world franchisesAccessibility as core design: Difficulty scaling and assist options no longer optional—now fundamental to AAA game design philosophyIncremental innovation in mature franchises: Sequels focusing on refinement and new settings rather than mechanical overhauls, with risk of diminishing returns on critical receptionNighttime/dynamic world states: Developers recognizing that time-of-day variations (nighttime street racing) can dramatically alter player perception of the same locationCross-platform parity expectations: Players increasingly expect feature and performance parity across Xbox, PC, and Game Pass versions
Topics
Forza Horizon 6 preview and gameplay impressionsTokyo and Japan as game setting designOpen-world map design and biome diversityGarage customization and player housing systemsAI assistant features for player guidanceNighttime street racing and drift mechanicsUser-generated content and community buildingPhoto mode and visual customizationAccessibility and difficulty scalingGhost racing and asynchronous multiplayerVehicle tuning and customization systemsSet piece design and spectacle racingSoundtrack and music licensingPerformance modes (30fps quality vs. 60fps performance)Comparison to Forza Horizon 5
Companies
Microsoft
Publisher of Forza Horizon 6; Xbox exclusive with Game Pass availability mentioned as strategic release
Playground Games
Developer of Forza Horizon 6; discussed regarding lessons learned from Forza Horizon 5 implementation
Xbox Game Studios
Parent company; Forza Horizon positioned as Xbox's number one IP for 2026
Toyota
Vehicle manufacturer; Toyota Celica featured as starter car in preview build
GMC
Vehicle manufacturer; GMC featured as one of the starter cars, surprising inclusion for Japanese setting
People
Blessing Adio
Primary host leading discussion; shared impressions of Forza Horizon 6 preview and gameplay experience
Mike Minotti
Co-host discussing garage customization, drone mode, and comparing to Forza Horizon 5
Andy Cortez
Co-host highlighting organic discovery, AI assistant Anna feature, and ADHD-friendly design
Paris Lilly
Co-host with prior Japan experience (3 years in Navy); provided cultural context and gameplay impressions
Phil Spencer
Mentioned as appearing in Forza Horizon 5 ghost racing; indicates executive involvement in franchise
Quotes
"Forza Horizon is like coming back to a vacation destination that like I go to every single year or every other year where it's this is my spot. I know it's sunny. I know it's vibrant."
Blessing Adio•~45:00
"It's more Forza, which is a big positive, right? I am a little let down by this demo because it is only three main races, a couple of outside side activities."
Mike Minotti•~25:00
"Forza Horizon is Xbox's number one IP now. And I don't even think it's close. This is arguably their biggest game. I don't even think arguably this will be their biggest game this year."
Blessing Adio•~50:00
"I pick up Forza and I'm like, oh, shit, a phantom just pulled up. This game. Oh, man, I forgot how good the racing in Forza is."
Blessing Adio•~48:00
"The community aspect is the secret sauce of Forza Horizon. You're seeing your friends doing something, just that little number goes, well, I want to beat that."
Mike Minotti•~65:00
Full Transcript
That rocket money helped you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocket money.com slash kind of funny. Head to factor meals dot com slash kind of funny 50 off and use code kind of funny 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscriptions on. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. Yeah, let's up. Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Wednesday, April 8th, 2026. I'm one of your hosts, blessing Adio. Yeah, junior joining me is the master of hype. It's no bike. Mike bless what up. Good morning. Good to see you, big dog. We're also joined by the nitro rifle Andy Cortez. Hello. And we got the best voice in the biz. The one and only Paris Lilly. Good morning, blessing Paris. We got quite a few things to talk about because I learned right before this. You used to live in Japan. Yes, when I was in the United States Navy, I lived in Sassabot, Japan, which is on the southern Kaisu Island for three years. That's really cool. Three years. Well, what was that like? I want to hear hear about it. Oh, man, don't get me started. I loved it. Honestly, I always I always ask myself why I came back. I love living in Japan. It was amazing. I don't speak the language as well as I used to. But I still understand it somewhat. Really embraced the culture, got to see just tons of stuff. Like I know we're going to talk about Forge Horizon 6. You've been made my way up north to Yokohama, Tokyo a few times. Just try to see everything. It was a great time there. Really, really great place. If you have never been, I would say this to everyone. Go at least once. You got to go. You will regret it. You will hate your country when you come back. Dude, for real, though. Yeah, no, going to Kazane, you went to Kyoto. I went to Osaka. You went to Osaka. You have you not been to Tokyo or Kyoto? I think I might end up going to Kyoto for the first time later this year, because I'm taking a trip with some friends, but probably the same experience of I went to Tokyo and it's so clean and everybody's so respectful. And I'm like, this is great. Yeah, food was amazing. Yeah, yeah. Japan, you come back and you're just like, oh, man. Yeah, I came back to San Francisco and I got our ducks in a row. Yeah, you got to figure some things out. But enough about all that, of course, we're going to talk a lot about Japan on this episode because this is our Forza Horizon 6 preview. We've all gotten a chance to play a little bit of the game. So we're going to talk all about that. Of course, if you're watching live, be a part of the show by super chatting in over on YouTube.com. Slash kind of funny games. Remember, we couldn't do this without our producers over on patreon.com slash kind of funny. So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney, the Psalm twining. For now, let's begin with topic of the show. Forza Horizon 6, a franchise. I think we all very much enjoy quite a lot. We're on our sixth entry here. We are visiting the one and only Tokyo, Japan in the surrounding area of Tokyo, Japan. We got to get our hands on a preview. The preview featured about an hour worth of gameplay, more if you just want to drive around the open world and hang out and do whatever. Mike, actually, no, Paris. I want to start with you as the man who used to live in Japan. What are your thoughts? What was your experience experiencing this preview? I loved it. I think Forza Horizon 6 is great. It's obviously built off of everything we've come to expect for Forza Horizon 5. But putting it in Japan and going through that open world map and seeing all the different biomes and. Just again, embracing Japanese culture, some of the music that that was playing during the preview, I thought was great. Obviously, it was very limited because it was essentially the prologue. And then you did a few events which led up to the Horizon Festival. So, you know, about an hour's worth of content, but you were able to free roam the open world after. And the majority of the map is open. I know there's the one island thing. What is it called? Is it Legend Island? I'm blanking on it exactly. But that wasn't available during this preview period. But the game's gorgeous. I mean, we play it on Xbox Series X. I know it was locked to 30 frames because it was only in quality mode. But even at that, just a beautiful game. And what I'm the most curious about is once we get the final game and we can start unlocking everything, the question that I still have is, is this just Forza Horizon 5, but it's in Japan? Or how much of the improvements are we really going to see? How many lessons learned did playground games get from Forza Horizon 5 that they're implementing here into six? They've talked a lot about it, obviously, you know, we've heard about it, but we weren't able to really experience any of that in the preview. I mean, I already got things I want to follow up with just regarding what you just said. But I want to go around the table. Mike, what are your thoughts on playing this Forza Horizon 6 preview? Yeah, Paris, I think we're going to see a couple of really interesting things that are added on from five and into six and new things that are brought on, especially with kind of outside the cars when I want to call out photo mode, of course. But there's a drone mode now where you can explore everything with a drivable drone in the air, which is pretty cool. I think you can customize your garage. What I got to do a little bit of, I don't know if you guys dove into the garage customization, decking that out and taking photos inside the garage was really cool. We'll kind of see the factory and homestead add on to this. I think that's going to be the big stuff. But yeah, Paris, I mean, I'm happy to report, bless. It's more Forza, which is a big positive, right? I am a little let down by this demo or this demo that we got to experience because it is only three main races, a couple of outside side activities. And that's really it. I didn't really get to taste the full experience of Forza like I want, right? But it was to highlight all of Japan. You got to drive around as much as the map as you wanted to, except for Legend Island, as Paris said. So I did find myself once I finished and wrapped up the races that they provided to me, I just started driving, right? And nothing better than a Forza experience getting, hey, I've collected 45 out of X amount of roads already. Oh, Andy's done 55 roads. I'm at 57. That's awesome. Right. Now they have fun collectibles. There's the XP boards all over the place, but there's Japan specific mascots that they have all around the the map that you can just ride up to run over the mascots. And those feel fun and good. I really liked this drag race mechanic that I saw. I don't know if that was in previous ones, but they had a great drag strip set up. You rolled up, you even got to do the timer like you were in a real drag and just rip it. I thought that was fantastic and really well done set piece wise. And so, yeah, I got to experience a lot of Japan, which I enjoyed the scenery, the visuals, driving around all of the map was really, really fun to see the different biomes and what you could add in Japan. I think we're coming off the Baja of five. And it's like, you know what you expected from the Baja and they did so well with that to now go to Japan and see so much vast and different to the cityscape. Right. We'll talk a lot about kind of just the heart of Tokyo there and having Shibuya crossing and other stuff. Yeah. It was really cool. Of course, I'll remind the audience if you're listening or watching live, you can ask us what questions you have about Forza Horizon six, because again, we've all played probably around an hour each between all of us, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. Andy Cortez, what are your thoughts with the preview build here? It was awesome. I mean, it felt like I'm back home. It's you're in a different location, but it's all the it's all the mechanics and the things that I loved about Forza Horizon five. I think with a bit more organic discovery, I really enjoyed just kind of driving around Japan and running into new things and discovering things. And I really, really love their Siri AI thing that Anna, which is great for people like me with bad ADHD, who sometimes take forever to get started on a task. When you get that big open world popping up, you could sometimes get that and, you know, decision paralysis and you open up the map and say, oh, I don't even know where to start. What the fuck do I do first? I find a fun name for it. I'm Iconomania because icons all over the map. I call. OK. That's why I'm open to better ones. I figure that's what you meant. I don't think I need to explain. I'm making sure you know, you know, because icons. Yeah, I like that. I like that for now. I'll sort of workshop it a little bit later. But you see the you see the map pop up with a bunch with a butt load of icons and you kind of get like, oh, wow, a little bit overwhelmed, right? But I love this AI, Anna, you know, sort of guide that you could just ask her. What do you recommend I do next? And she says, I recommend this. You go, that's perfect because I wasn't sure what I should do next or what, you know, there was too many things to select from. So I really enjoyed that portion of it. But aside from that, the game is gorgeous. Again, kind of a bummer that we only had the quality version of 30 frame per second mode looking forward to play this at launch where we will have the performance 60 frame per second mode. The game is still insanely gorgeous. Otherwise I and I was surprised by one thing, the pronouncing the pronunciation of the car, the Celica, I always call it Celica. And she called it Celica. I was like, huh, I've never heard that. I'm like, I've always said Celica as well. And she was like, you have three cars that you could choose from. This is the Toyota Celica. And I was like, huh, never heard of that. But, you know, Japanese do a different man. Shane Lerinch has as I constipated. Oh, think about it. I constipation. I like that. Yeah, that's really good. I'll take that. Hey, that so far that's in the that's the leader. All right. Yeah, I bet it better than I kind of made it. This is like a lot. I know I heard that. Yeah, I got you. This is really a lot. Yeah, I echo every single thing you guys say, right? I think for me, Forza Horizon is like coming back to a vacation. Destination that like I go to every single year or every other year where it's this is my spot. I know it's sunny. I know it's vibrant. I know that I can get that feeling of like the wind flowing through my hair or like, you know, that nice feeling. The sun hits the skin. It is that game that I come to. And I'm like, man, this just feels good to play. And Forza Horizon 5 or sorry, Forza Horizon 6 is more of that. It is more of what you experience from Forza Horizon 5 to where I kind of feel where bikes coming from as far as the demo where you go in, you do three races and then you're just hanging out in the world. And it is. All right, cool. Yeah, this is this is Forza. I think a few things I'll note. The Forza Horizon games always start with a fun, like set piece style thing where they introduce you to the world and you're racing, and you're hopping between these different races and they're trying to intro you to this is what it's like in the world of Forza. And the one they did here, I thought was fantastic. They always are fantastic. This one had me in my fuels a little bit where I was like, man, this is all just so good. This is sick as hell. This is just so cool. They didn't allow us to record for footage that specific part. But a lot of the B-roll we were seeing if you're watching the video version is is my B-roll for when you're out in the open world, which they did let us record, but just trust that the set piece of was really cool. It's one of those where really good headphones or have an awesome speaker system during that intro prologue because it's it's going to get you high. You're going to have goosebumps. You're going to real you're going to remember I'm playing one of the best racing games ever. 100 percent. And to the thing of one of the best racing games ever, my current game of the year is a game called Screamer, which is an arcade racing game. And I'm going to talk a little bit of shit about my game of the year, even though it's not really talking shit. I'm just making a joke here. But there is a cat Williams standup from like 2007, where he has a quote that says, you know, my buddy drives a Chrysler 300. And he talks about it like it's like a fan or whatever. And you like the thing is a Chrysler 300 does look like a phantom until a phantom pulls up. Yeah. And like for me, that's Screamer and for in Forza, where I'm playing Screamer and I'm like, yo, this is my game of the year. Like Screamer's so good. And then I pick up Forza and I'm like, oh, shit, a phantom just pulled up. This game. Oh, man, I forgot how good the racing in Forza is. I forgot how good like the trigger feel when you're when you're, you know, hitting the acceleration, the sounds the cars make, the little like every single detail is so dialed in the guiding arrows are just it's my fate. Probably my favorite feature of the game was just like letting you the game or no one to kind of slow down. I I love all I love everything about this video game and about this franchise. I mean, you just have to look at this one. I know we talked about it a few days ago with the fixing Xbox, but Forza Horizon is Xbox's number one IP now. And I don't even think it's close. This this is it. This is arguably their biggest game. I don't even think arguably this will be their biggest game. This year outside of maybe Call of Duty, but yeah, I mean, even if this was just Forza Horizon 5 and you're in Japan now, it's still going to be great. I think that's what I took from this preview. I'm just curious to see how some of these new modes are going to play. Like I know Mike, you even talked a little bit about the garage and you're going to be able to do the co-op building now of like your your garages and that collaboration aspect of it. And then just the in game open world, you know, matchmaking with with various races that you're going to do. I want to see how all that plays out in real time, you know, with your friends in competition, just all these things that you're going to be able to do. And it's in Japan, which has been the number one requested thing. People have wanted from this franchise. We're finally getting it. So like I said, it's a preview. We will see what the review. I mean, you know, this isn't saying it's a nine out of 10 or anything like that because we don't know until we review it. But even in just as limited preview, I was impressed with what I played. Yeah, I want to talk about the garage to put a bow on my thoughts, right? Of course, enjoyed it. Like I've enjoyed every past four. My only thing and this isn't to Forza Horizon, because this is to be expected because of the game that Forza Horizon is. It's so dial in. So you know what you're getting when you're playing Forza Horizon. I feel like Tokyo in the game is underwhelming in the way that I don't know how I don't know how to remedy that that though, because it's like every other force of game. I don't think we got the taste of it yet. Nighttime is going to be the remedy here. You think so? It's going to be nighttime. It's going to be nighttime drift racing. It's going to be nighttime street racing. We didn't get to experience that in this build. And yeah, you only saw it really during daytime. And yes, blessing, it is a little underwhelming. But the size of it when we talk about Forza Horizon games, that's the. Oh, wow, this is exciting because it's the largest cityscape we've ever gotten. And it is larger by so much, right? And so it's going to be a lot of fun exploring to this. I think you'll see a lot of great photo mode out of it. And I'm expecting big things when it comes to the racing. But yes, I totally agree. At first look, you're like, this cityscape is pretty plain. It's pretty plain. It doesn't feel like the streets are popping. And it's like, well, I don't know how you do that with Forza and the kind of game that I think Forza shines most honestly when you're outside of the city, which is the tough thing about putting a game or having this game take place in Tokyo, slash around Tokyo. I'm kind of like, well, I want to get out of Tokyo so I can be in these beautiful vistas and like drive and drift around these cool winding hills and stuff. Fuji in the background. Yeah, it's like, I care more about that stuff than I care about the actual city. But let's talk about the garage customization. Mike, you said you got your hands on that. That was something that I kind of I piqued that. And then went back to the racing. Can you tell me more about what I was pulling? You know, once I finished my three races, I was like, all right, let me start doing some open world activities, which is fun. The drift challenges. I was smashing signs and I rolled up past your house, right? And you've had the house before in other games, which is like, hey, this way you change your car. This is right where you want to kind of take a moment, deck it out, take some cool photos. And I pulled up and they were like, hey, inside the garage, you can customize it. You can dial it into however you want, add different fun items and props and make it your own. And so I thought, you know what? I'll spend a little bit of time in this. I love the Sims. I like the idea of it. I think when I come to these games, I am the worst photo mode taker. I don't have the I like Jack Quaid to get it dialed in, mess with all the filters. But I definitely can make a fun background. And these rooms, think about it. Oh yeah, he'll get their one. I spent some time in there. And yeah, they give you a number of props, a lot of different props that you can put in and start kind of moving around and adding to it. So I put a bunch of arcade machines behind my car. I put some fun little lamps and couches. So it's like a great way to stop, deck out how you want it to be made. And it'll be really interesting to see in a larger scope what I could do. Because there was like some items there that wouldn't really fit in the garage proper. But I wonder where those will go. Be cool to put a big bus there. Yeah, but you get but you get to build like your own compounds or however. It's for us exactly, right? So that that's going to be the thing. And like I was saying before, you can collaborate with people to do it via co-op. So I think that's going to be interesting part of the game as well. Paris, did you check it out at all? Just just a little bit. The only thing I really did was I actually took some of the credits that I had and I bought a car and then I tinkered a little bit with tuning. But that was about it. Did you buy that? M3? Did you buy that BMW? No, it was. I think it was another Toyota or something. There was a cool one of like your driving around. You're like, because you go and you open up the menu like, oh, everything's locked. Right. Like I want to buy cars. We see it, but there's cars on the side of the road that you roll up to. And you can buy right there. I thought that was fun to see like a cool BMW at the drag race that I wanted to buy. And I was like, I'll save it. I'll skip it since it's the demo. But I thought that was fun. There were some things about the UI that kind of confused me and that it's likely just because of the preview bill, because of how we were locked out of certain aspects of it. But I looked at the three cars that they give you and I said, I want to tune up one of these cars the way you would call duty and tune up your gun and make the recoil better or whatever the hell. It's like, I want to make the engine better. I want to make my tires, you know, have more handling or whatever. And you go to the tuning section and say, sorry, you're locked out. But you could do it if you are in the main NPC's house. OK. And I didn't really know how to differentiate those two, because I'm still tuning up the car inside of our house, but I can't do it through the menu. So it's more of a preview issue and more of like a you may think you're locked out of this whole feature, but you're not because you could like similar to in Forza Horizon 5, you could stop by somebody's house or whatever your GTA safe houses or whatever. And you could kind of like chill there at that area. And that's where you could tune up your car. So that there was a bit of a bit of confusion there, but I didn't really get into any of the the painting or any of that. Like we saw a sawed blessings car. Yeah, looks way cool than mine, because I didn't get to any of that. Were there any improvements there? Bless, I mean, I couldn't have there any improvements. Again, it comes back to the thing of this is this being a preview build and the game not being out for everybody, because what I always do in Forza Horizon is I look at those the spray or the libraries, whatever they're called that are online and people will always make a naruto. Take your right. Yeah, I'm always like, I'm going to take whatever you guys got. And so that's honestly one of my favorite parts is having a garage that just has a bunch of different. All right, here's my Spiderman car. Here's my, you know, I don't know, my fucking IQ car, whatever random animation there is. But here, because the game's not out for everybody, yeah, I was just rocking with whatever options they gave me. And even with just doing my own thing here, right, I found this fun little like, I don't know what you call it, like a chrome kind of pearlescent color. Yeah, like a darker color that really shines. And I yeah, I stuck with this for the demo. But I'm sure it's going to be all the things that you already expected for Horizon. This is a good race right here. Yeah, going out in the farmland side of things. I like this. If we're talking about the races, the races that they had for the demo, again, they were very limited, but they're all fun. They're kind of what you expect. I think one of the additions here when you're talking about what Japan brings is like the kind of like Drifty roads that you have, like kind of like the windy vertical roads, which very vertical this map at some points. I want to shout that out. There's a lot of verticality here, but I forget the exact. There's a word for the race. I might have written it down here somewhere. Toge, it's T O U G E, which are like, I think Japanese style races where you are drifting around hills. They have one of those in the opening for the game. And I can't I I'm looking forward to experiencing more of what that has to offer because that seemed really novel and fun. Did you have the game say your name, Paris? No, no, I didn't. I selected Andy and then I selected Nitro's. Toge, as I said, what did I say? I said to get you said to get to get to get to you. They any of y'all have the A.I. Say your name. No, which I do want to make a request because I know people at Xbox sometimes watch this. You'll put blessing in the game. Put blessing in the game. It's less than that. Yeah, you have so many names in there. So many words. It's a popular name in Nigeria. We said it's not like it's only me that has the name. Yeah, I was shocked that one of the starter cars was a GMC. I like that. I was surprised by that. I'm looking for my forerunner that blessing just overtook right there on the side. But I do love these off road races. I am such a big fan of getting in the big cars and just ripping outside of the road. It's so much fun. And this was a good race as well. We've seen this in all the other Forza games when you go off road. It is so much fun and to see the diversity in cars. Right. We're talking about 500 plus cars that launches what they're saying. So yeah, you're going to have a lot of cool cars like this. I didn't I didn't do much with the compound base building. I grabbed an object, tried to place it down. It disappeared and I quit out of it. Because I don't know. I just I was a little bit overwhelmed by that. And I love I love customizing and making bases and things of that nature. But not really seeing how it fit into the core gameplay. I was like, I just want to get back on the road. And I'm also reviewing other stuff. So it's like, just get me back onto the road. I want to be back out in driving over, you know, these off road races or trying out the little drift challenges or the speed challenges that, you know, Fortes is really, really great for having massive big races. And then in between little challenges that you might sort of come across here and there. Yeah. I mean, don't forget about the big user generated content. Right. We saw that with Fortes Horizon 5. They'll be bringing that to six. I even drove out to a stadium that's just a completely empty stadium. And you know, that's going to be the home of a lot of user user generated content of like, hey, here's a ton of different things to put in the world, put it in there. I can't wait to see what the community creates. Mike, earlier, you mentioned the mascots that are just out in the world. That's something that I think is neat. I wish they're more varied, though. I kept running into the same one. A lot of food mascots, huh? It was like a lot of ramen cups. OK, maybe you definitely found more than I found. I found a lot because I only found the peas in the peas were everywhere. Ice cream scoop to look like. Or maybe ice cream soup might have been mochi balls. It might have been mochi balls. You know what? That makes more sense. I ran into like three of those and I was like, where are the other mascots at? Yes, they have the regional mascots, which are very similar to the XP boards. They are just static. They're just standing there and you run them over, but you'll see them all over the map. You'll see my little face on your mini map. And it was like I saw it. It was like, blessings ran over to and I'm like, well, I'm going to run over three. And then, of course, like you talk about with Iconomania or whatever we're calling it. It's like I want to run over a million. I want to run over over a thousand Pikachu. And they keep going over. We run over Pikachu. What you're describing right now, I think, is kind of the secret sauce of of a horizon in that community aspect. You're seeing your friends doing something. Just that little number. He goes, well, I want to beat that. I got to beat that. And I'm going to go do it, you know, so it keeps you fully engaged. That's been the secret sauce is the drive at times is how it started. My friend's name over there over the car. Oh, now it's starting to take like their data and how they race. Put it in there. And then, yeah, now it's like, yeah, I saw Phil Spencer and Fort Horizon 5 drove on 75 roads. It's like, well, I got to drive on 92 right now. Yeah, if you somewhere in the footage, I started to send you on a goose chase. But like I definitely run into Andy and I face off against Andy in a one on one race. Really? Drive a tar. Yeah. One of you one. One of you one. Now, the only thing I don't love about the drive at times is that the the way that they are, like I love it when they do feel real and organic and you know that it's not actually that person driving, but when it does, you know, I try to like sort of just get into the escapism and go, yeah, that's that's blessing right there, even though it's not. Or that's Danny Penya, even though it's not. But then the Times word really, really breaks the immersion is where I am on this massive bridge in Osaka and I'm driving just on a straight away and it is like highway just straight away. I've been driving for what feels like just a minute straight going 150 miles per hour. And I see blessing up ahead and I pass by him. Blessing pops up ahead again in front of me. Blessing gets public. It's like, OK, well, now now I feel like how the like now you're kind of breaking that immersion for me. Yeah. I would assume we'll see a lot less of that in the full game because then it's obviously going to be opened up to everyone in your entire friends list and stuff. So you should start. You shouldn't have those repeat encounters over and over like you're discussing. Now, I will point out one thing though, because like he brought up Danny Penya every time I saw him, I ran him off the road. Nice, nice. As you should. I had to beat all of his records. He was the one that was always in front. Did you ever use the auto drive feature? So when it's announced, she goes, hey, I have some different features for you. I can show you what's next to do to help you with decision paralysis. And I can take you there and it just has an auto drive. I turned it on immediately drives into a car. T-boned. Oh, no. And that would do in the way most situation where we are there for 30 plus seconds as the car is bumping into an AI car. I'm like, all right, like what are we doing here? And then sure enough, they get disconnected, starts driving. We go through a tunnel, exits a tunnel, bang, pile up, smash it. I'm like, we got to tune this up a little bit. You're smashing into the top. I would have never taken a bad turn like that. These jobs are going to be more accurate. This is such a bullshit. It's like this doesn't represent me representation of me. I'm just way ahead of. Oh, no, there you are. We're right there. We're right there. We're catching up. I so I was captioning this footage right at a like stop and restart because like my first the first video I took, it was it was very shameful stuff of like me forgetting how to play forza because I'm so screamer piled. And so like I like bammed. I hit I hit you like face to face, Andy, like ran right into your car. And I was like, oh, I want to challenge Andy. I just got my I got fucking destroyed. And I was like, I got to delete this. I can't let the world see this footage. I mean, for those of you who, you know, maybe you're having a first timer right there. They've done so many incredible things with helping you with driver control, right? Traction control, driving assist. You have the rewind button right there. You have the map with the arrows in front of that show you to slow down speed up at all times. They've done a really good job at onboarding new drivers to just go out and have fun with it. Idiot. Fool. You did this. I like destroyed my AI just giving you so many chances. Like I must have been driving four miles an hour. I cut through the trees to beat Andy. I'm embarrassing. But that's the thing, Mike, that you're saying that that's the beauty again of this game is they make it. If you want a full sim experience, you can go in and change everything to make it that way. If you just want it to be a very easy arcade experience, you can do that. So it's very approachable for new people, but experts and people that got the full racing setups at their house, they can have that experience in the game too. So I think that's pretty good. We got a whole lot more to talk about just like soundtrack because people in the SuperChats were asking about that. So we'll talk about that in a second. But before we get there, when I tell you about patreon.com slash kind of funny and youtube.com slash kind of funny games, we can go and get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Factor. Let's be real. How many times have you had all the ingredients for a healthy meal in your fridge that you should be making, but you're just too tired to put in the work? For me, healthy eating isn't a willpower problem. It's a setup problem until I found Factor. Factor saved me so many times. Bounce between shows or just after a long day. 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I got a great deal on these scooters, though. You expect us to move a two tonne pallet on a scooter. It'll be fun. Just think of the core strength you'll build. This is a job for sponsored jobs. This is what happens when you don't sponsor your job on Indeed. So the next time you need someone to get the job done right, get matched with quality candidates with an Indeed sponsored job. Visit Indeed dot com slash next hire and sponsor your job today. And we're back. I want to bring in a couple of super chats starting with one from Khababs, who asks how's the soundtrack? Which artist does it have? And then also we have one from meta 318 who says this will be unplayable. Tokyo Drift Song is not in the soundtrack. Unfortunately, the build that we played, I believe, was on streamer mode the whole time. So there was some music that was there was music that was playing, but like we didn't have access to the entire soundtrack. Yeah, OK. But like music seemed fine. I did. There was no Tokyo Drift from what I heard. Yeah, they have an opportunity to do something really, really fun with Tokyo Drift in the song and like a moment. Oh, yeah. Sure. Like I would be backing up the truck to make sure we paid for that and got it cleared. That'd be such a fun set piece race. Of course, like the Tokyo Tokyo Drift homage race. Race against the DK. We got another one from music was good, though. Of course, Forza Horizon Festival is all about the music and the cars and the fun. It is one of those of like I spent a lot of time in these games to the point where I eventually just start playing my own music. But so far, I enjoyed the playlist that they gave me. I'm excited to dive in more. I think you got some really cool regional hits and music that was like, oh, nice. I'm excited to hear more of this. It makes me envious of the world that they live in in the video game. I just want to live in a world where all like it's just cars and racing. Like that's all they give. That's all that matters. All that matters in in Forza games. And it's just like, oh, that's why everybody's so happy. Everybody's so happy. Yeah. Music and Forza Horizon Festival, like the whole world cares about this festival. Dude, even my GPS is happy. Yeah, you know, like I so you asked about it. Did I give it my name? No, I named my character Beast. Because if you look at my license plate in the game, it's OK Beast. And whenever you tell it to tell to point you somewhere, the navigation is like, OK, Beast, let's go over here. I like that. It's been like that for like quite a few of the Forza Horizons. So that's a tradition for me. Bring in another super chat from Casper, J87, who says, did you try Forza Horizon Five after to see the difference from your footage in others? The environment looks more dense and less open. And did you try photo mode? Yeah, well, how would we compare this to Forza Horizon Five? Well, I mean, the environment being more dense and less open, I think a lot of that has to do with the biomes, you know, in Mexico, there are more wide open spaces with less foliage and in a lot of the spaces here in Japan, you are apart from like the farmland areas, but a lot of the spaces in Japan are going to have it's going to be roads surrounded by a lot of trees. Now, all the trees are still breakable, but you can still just drive through all the trees, which answers another super chat from Arnav Dugad, who super chatted as well. Thank you for your generosity. Who asks, are the trees destructible in the game? Yeah. And no matter what car you're using, it's not like only heavy cars break it down or whatever. You can just drive through trees all day and night in rocks. It feels like 90 percent, right? Because I did smash into a small tree and got pissed. Oh, really? I feel like it's not all of them. Right. I feel like eventually one of them stops you. Maybe you found the one tree. I feel like there is some sort of punishment of like most of the trees are breakable and then there's like the one that is real, like it's going to stop you. Because I was driving up a hill and a baby tree stopped me. I was like, I just ripped through about a thousand big trees. Why is this the small one stopping the one bug tree? Yeah. I was assuming maybe it was one of these trees on a road track that is purposely meant to be an obstacle that is, you know, because the trees in the middle of the forest, those are the trees that are like, we don't want you to not have fun in our video game. We don't want you. We are not here to frustrate you. So we're going to let you drive through everything out here. But you may have found the one. What? We'll have to get the footage. Super angry. Walrus says you're not supposed to run into trees. I don't think that's true. Don't you get points? Because they have the arcade. Whenever you do anything in the game, they have like the arcade style score at the top. Oh, yeah. You know, it's called like Landscape or something. Yeah, I think I think. Yeah, you get like points for destroying things. And so there is always a moment and I think I do it during this demo where I'm just out in the open and I'm just drifting around all these trees. Yeah, just trying to level myself up. I'm sad the demo didn't have any of those wheel spins or at least I didn't unlock any wheel spins. And I didn't get in either. I don't think so. No, I didn't either. Yeah. Where do we want to go from here? It's an interesting one because I feel like to sum up this preview. Yeah, it's more Forza Horizon, you know, it's great. It's amazing. It's going to be great. Yeah. And this is going to be one of the highest reviewed games of the year. Do you guys think this lives up or this is now to get speculative about it? Do you think this lives up to what people desire from a Forza Horizon in Tokyo? Do you think this is going to hit that bar? Also, Barry, I think it broke the microphone. It does not stay. I think the interesting thing will be that the legend Island, because that is you have to unlock that progressing through the campaign. And we obviously have no idea what that environment is going to look like and what you're going to be able to do. I mean, it's tracking towards yes to answer your question, but, you know, we still have unknowns in there to see the full game of what it's going to do. But I mean, we'll see, like I said before, even if this was just Forza Horizon 5, which it and it was just in Japan, I think it would still be a very good game. Yeah. But there would be some disappointment with that because you're you're looking for that next evolution of Forza Horizon. And that's what we still need to see. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think it is absolutely going to be what people want. I think a lot of it comes down to having large spectacle races with a lot of fun stuff to do in between. And I don't think in my opinion, I don't think Mexico had the amount of cool like PO eyes to go look for and go hunt out and go seek out as you're driving. I think Tokyo is going to have a lot more of those spaces in the open world, sort of when you're just kind of driving around and vibing out, you know, that those and that's some of my favorite shit to do in Forza Horizon is just let me just drive on this hill and just see how far I can send it. I think in those moments, you're going to find a lot more cool, discoverable, organic things in this in this little player space of Tokyo as opposed to Mexico. It's a high bar. I mean, Forza Horizon 5 is currently sitting at a 92 on Medi-Critic game of the year for IGN. A big conversation piece when it did come out in 2021. Right. Here we are now. It is more Forza. It is very exciting. We're going to Japan off of these three races that we got to do. The initial kind of just jump in. I was I'm leaving excited, but not like, oh, wow, this is going to change everything. Right. And I think that'll come down to the game. Those are the big set pieces. Those are all the races that will do. Those will be all the unlockables. What is this giant outpost that me and Paris will work to create and share this kind of fun creative moment with? What is the what are the users going to generate and like allow other people to jump in and play and see what they can make over there in the world? Ninety two is a high bar. Will this go past it? I don't know, bless. I don't think it will, but I don't I don't know if it needs to. There was just something special about Mexico was kind of like a big jump from the UK and like what they were pushing and doing. This feels more of the same. And I don't see the like, oh, wow, this is going to be crazy. That's where I that's where I feel like I land, where I didn't play this demo and go, damn, this is the best Forza Horizon game. I played this demo and went, oh, this is more Forza Horizon, right? Like this is more of what I liked from the previous ones, which is a fantastic place to be because to that point, I think you land in the 90s. I think you land at least I would hope at least at a 90, right? With it, if you're trying to follow up on the previous stuff, I think a lot of it has to do with Forza Horizon 4 being obviously an insanely popular game, but five being the true coming out party. I think Forza Horizon 5 being the one that everybody and their mama got into. And it wasn't just the racing fans. Forza Horizon 4 still did that to a degree. That was like when Forza Horizon 4 was on Game Pass. That's I think pretty sure Forza Horizon 4 was my first one. Maybe it was three, but like five was the true coming out party to where everybody said, shit, I have to be on board for this because everybody who all of my favorite influencers, all of my favorite, you know, the people that I look to for gaming tastes, they don't give a shit about racy games and they're saying this is a must play. I should this should be a must play for me as well. I think that was just a moment of Forza Horizon 5. Everybody's playing it and we're getting into that sort of territory of can you relive, can you read? Can you give that experience again to people? And a lot of that comes down to like it's kind of a hard thing to do, but you could certainly get really, really close. Yeah, I think what you're like, what you're build on, what you're saying, Andy, I think it really comes down to expectations. I think the expectation for Forza Horizon 6 has been raised from previous games as good as five was. I didn't go into five expecting the leap that we saw with five, right? So now I think with six, you don't just want more of the same you're expecting. All right, now, how are they going to blow my mind this time with Forza Horizon 6? We're in Japan. This is the thing that people have wanted to see from this franchise. So I think that'll be the thing more than anything. The games, I'm pretty confident the game is going to be really, really good. But I wonder if people's expectations will be too high for it as a result. But we'll see. I mean, like I said, I think it's tracking to be a really, really good game that to the point should at minimum be high 80s. It probably is in the 90s again. But we just need to see more. I think that's that's it. We got like this little taste of it. And you're like, OK, now show me show me the rest because they've talked enough about it that I want to see what the rest is. How it's going to play, you know, when we get to get hands on. Yeah. Yeah, for me, like I know for previews, I often do the thing with the rose, bud and thorn, which is rose being what you like the most, thorn being what you like the least or what you dislike the most during the preview and bud being what you want to see more. Right. Right. My rose is that, hey, this is more for horizon is the quality of for it's a horizon. Right. Like you get your hands in the controller and you're back to the euphoria you felt playing the previous games. That's awesome. My thorn and this is the thorn that could be reverted back into something that works, depending on what that final game looks like. So maybe it's maybe it's a bud is Tokyo itself where I it's what I expected. But I feel like I had low expectations for what I would get out of my time in the actual Tokyo city where it feels a bit dead. It feels like, OK, there's not much going on. Yeah. Like that's what Forza Horizon. Forza Horizon has never been a game that's been filled with traffic. So it's a tough expectation to have. But yeah, when you take the city of Tokyo and then combine what Forza Horizon, there's something about it where I'm like, damn, I just wish there was more going on. I wish it was more lively. We're at should be a crossing right now and it's empty. You know what I mean? It's almost like I wish even if you had to like rope them off, I wish there were crowds or something. You know, I mean, I wish there were like lights or something. Maybe nighttime brings that. Yeah. Maybe nighttime brings what I'm looking for. Ludacris. Ludacris. Yeah, bow. There are crowds on the side of the road. Mike, you're blessing. We did the sidewalk. Well, that's why I'm saying you have to rope them off. I really don't. And make it. It's a long rope. You have to protect the crowd. It's really strong rope. Yeah. Video game rope. But yeah, I'm like, OK, yeah, OK, this for me, the it's not the actual thing is not the Tokyo that's really dialing in the setting this time around for me. It's Japan that's dialing in the setting for me this time around where I love the verticality. I love the hills. I love when we get outside the city and then from a naturalistic naturalistic standpoint, I think it's the vistas are full and beautiful. And then yeah, my bud kind of being the Tokyo thing as well. But then also for bud, the Kusher months around it. What are those special events? What am I? What does it look like when I race that mech? You know what I mean? What is the soundtrack? What? How do those wheel spins and barf barn finds make me feel and all that shit? Right? What are the are the accoutrements hidden? Mike, I'm going to pass to you. What's your rose button thorn? Oh, damn bless. I thought yours were perfect. I echo yours. I mean, what is my rose? My rose is being in Japan, being in the center of Tokyo and looking forward to the events that they'll have a night with the nighttime street racing in the heart of the city. I want more city racing as someone who was enjoyed for Sir Horizon. I love Horizon for being, hey, I can drive anywhere. I can rip everything, but there hasn't been much city racing. And I'm excited that now like this is the push for that. My thorn is when I turn this game on, it did just look like Fort so five. Right. And that is a tough one of like, hey, we've maxed this out. There's only so much we can do. But the positive is it's more sports and it's really, really good. Right. And so the bud is, hey, it's more for so. I'm excited to jump back into this as much as I say, it looks like Fort so rising five. I love five. I wanted more and more of five. And I'm excited to be able to do all the things that I've already done before. Right. I want to smash signs. I want to break speed records. I want to jump off of giant jumps. I want to create with Paris. I really want to see what this outpost is. Like what is this idea? How do you make it so I'm actually interested in this? Because I think a lot of the user base is like, I just want to rip. I just want to ride and drive as fast as I can. How do you say, hey, let's build and enjoy, which is something different for Fort's, unless you're building your own car and like having fun with that. But building an outpost, that's a very interesting idea to me. Andy, what's your rose, thorn and bud? That would be my thorn. I think the building and the tutorializing for being a brand new, big feature that you're adding to an already amazing video game franchise. I don't think that they. I don't think this little demo portion previewed as good as it should have. Like it just kind of felt like very secondary and the actual tutorializing of it just didn't feel smart or engaging. And that's why I kind of just I put that object down and when it disappeared, I was like, I don't this is already kind of annoying. I'd rather just get back to racing. So if you're going to make somebody like me who's already super into building things in games, like it shouldn't be that hard for me to get into something like this. And so that's probably my biggest disappointment in a game that I probably won't spend a whole lot of time building stuff anyway, because I do think the driving is that's why you're here and it is so damn good. The rose, I would say, is the world of, you know, just the map of Tokyo of Japan, just being gorgeous to drive through and being, I think, having its own separate biomes, whether it's out on the farmlands or doing these sort of like cross country races. Or now you're in the city, now you're on highways. I just love the differentiation there. And then the bud, I would say, I hope to get some. I want to see what this whole mech race is going to be. And I hope we do something like what what Doom the Dark Ages did, Paris, when like the big mech arm, the big mech put his arm down, then that's the bridge that you're driving across. Like, yeah, sort of interactivity with that. There was a bullet train in that like initial intro. He didn't race the bullet train, but it was there. That was kind of cool. You'll race that. You think I hope so. I really hope that's a bullet train. I don't know if you're crazy. That's a really good point. Bullet trains are fucking fast. That's what bullets. You can cut different ways that a bullet train can't go. True. Yeah, true. Short cut things. That's a good point. I think you all missed something for the bud. Yeah, Paris, there's one thing that you got to have. OK, actually, I'll save the bud for the last. So my thorn, ironically, I never agree with you, blessing is Tokyo itself because I want the street racing aspect. So and we don't know. So we'll see when the final game is out. I want more street racing. I want that night racing. I want to live that fast and the furious Tokyo drift. Me on. Right. Yeah. So that would right now to the preview, that would be the thorn. I mean, I mean, the Rose, it's like we've already said, it's just the rural world when you're outside the city and just experiencing some of these biomes like that one stretch where it's all the cherry blossoms. Oh, I can do that every time. It's just beautiful to do. The bud for me, it is the if they've not worked out the licensing and the collaboration for this, at least had some kind of DLC, I'll be shocked. It's got to be Godzilla. Come on. We got to have Godzilla. Oh, yeah. You not have Godzilla. Yeah, you're so right. Him just out there in the distance. Oh, man. I jump at, you know, walking through the city is you're kind of driving through the feet. Oh, that'd be so awesome. Driving up the tail. What's gonna be good about it? This game has a high, high, high ceiling for what you can do with those pieces. That's the thing is I want this game to have the best set pieces of the Forza Horizon franchise. There's no reason why it shouldn't. That's my hope for it. You know, they've gotten better every single time. They really have gotten better every time. And I love it when you like you drive, you drive off a thing and then like two motorcycles slow mo. Yeah, do slow mo flips in front of you. God, I love Forza Horizon. I love the person in chat that's like, why are they being so negative? I asked them to be negative. I asked them each for a thorn. That's mine. That's on me. Y'all, thank you so much for joining me on this very fun preview of Forza Horizon 6, really looking forward to the final thing coming out when Mike can be the exact date, May 18th, Paris. I'm guessing on that one. 19, I think it's 19. 19. You're real close. There's Mike, but there's early access. So I think five days early access so you can you can get it before. Yeah. Is this on PS five day in date? No, no, no, no, no. Too bad Xbox and PC, I presume. Yeah, of course. We're all playing it. PC, man. PC and I'm driving with a wheel. Really? I'm setting up the wheel. I think I'm going to try to do like 90 percent of this game. Should I play on PC? I always play these games on Xbox. Well, they're both PC boy now. That is true. Anywhere. The play anywhere follows you. So I'm going to show you on the Xbox app. That Xbox. So you got to play. Think about it. Hundred frames, the ray trace. Oh, yeah. This is a space. Come on. Come on. This will be my first for it. So that I try on PC. I'm really excited for it. Paris, thank you so much for joining us. Mike, anything special for joining me. Yeah, making this a great one. Sounds like we're all very much looking forward to Forza Horizon 6. Go check out Paris's YouTube channel. He's got a pair. He's got a preview up. Oh, yeah. I had to re-up it. I kind of f-ed up the first one I put up. Don't know that. Yeah, you can't prove it. We're movers from the edit. Of course, this has been kind of funny gamescasts for each and every weekday. We get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, supports with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Apple or Spotify to get all of our shows ad free and get a daily exclusive exclusive exclusive show. Next is going to be me and Nick playing some of the Pokemon champions. Champions, be a really, really funny and interesting one. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.