It’s teeming rain at Brands Hatch as my Volvo 850 Estate revs eagerly on the grid. Framed by a field of far sportier competitors the shiny red station wagon looks slightly absurd. But she’s a true sleeper car; from the outside she looks as if she ought to be packing nought but a cabin full of groceries and a back seat stuffed with squawking, snot-smothered kids but underneath she’s meanness set to music. She’s stripped of every excess kilo, turbocharged, stiffened, lowered, and converted to all-wheel-drive. Not even the fondly remembered 850 Estates of the ’94 British Touring Car Championship I built her in homage to could touch this thing.

The fastest way through a corner? Take a lion through it.

Shame there aren't any tracks that combine both night and rain.

Can-Am have a giant wing on this? Sure can!

Forza 6 features enduros for LMPs, GT cars, Indy, V8s, and others.

She’s not entirely unbeatable, though. In torrid conditions the best I can manage is second. But it’s moments like these where most of what’s truly great about Forza Motorsport 6 Forza 6 is the biggest, broadest, and best Forza Motorsport game to date by a massive margin.Bucketing rain is Forza 6’s biggest bullet point and the effect itself is astounding. It would’ve been nice if the wet weather was able to arrive and break up dynamically (as it does in Forza Horizon 2) because it would add some tactical spice to the racing, but visually and physically it’s extremely impressive. The streaking droplets on the windscreen, which slosh under the wipers and trace left or right with cornering forces, are a big step up from Horizon 2 – far closer to the likes of Driveclub – but it’s the 3D puddles of standing water all around the tracks that really make Forza 6’s wet weather racing an unmissable experience.Hit a puddle with one side of your car at speed and it’s going to try to drag you off track, as that side slows from the drag of the water. Notice a small lake on the apex of your favourite corner? Take a wider line; you can’t steer when you’re skimming over the water’s surface like the world’s least-practical wakeboard. It’s not just slipperier; it’s like the tracks are actively trying to kill you. It makes for amazing racing, whether you’re behind a fancy wheel or content with feeling the feedback though the Xbox One controller’s criminally underrated haptic triggers. That this is all achieved with 24 cars on track and at an undaunted 60 frames-per-second is quite remarkable.Night racing is a similarly great-looking effect, from the pitch black Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans – so dark that in chase cam your car is barely visible behind the red glow of its taillights – to the artificially-lit Daytona, with every car throwing multiple shadows from multiple sources simultaneously. It’s white-knuckle stuff, with corners suddenly emerging from the ink. Very demanding and very satisfying. Like Forza 5, however, all tracks are snapshots of a certain time of day and temperature; it’s all baked-in so it can get a little samey.When it comes to curating a car roster Turn 10 is the best in the business. Forza 6’s garage of over 460 cars takes in everything from cult ’80s and ’90s performance faves to today’s bleeding-edge hypercars, from ’60s and ’70s F1 cars to race-ready machines out of the current WTCC, V8 Supercars, and IndyCar seasons, and from unrestricted Can-Am monsters to pre-war open-wheel deathtraps. It’s an incredible assortment of cars even if the game is a bit of a tease at times, mentioning things like the zany six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 during a key voiceover but not actually featuring the car. As always they’re all fully-upgradeable and primed for painting. They’re all viewable within the game’s Forzavista mode too, the look and feel of which is more or less unchanged from Forza 5.There’s also been a great refresh with how you browse the cars. Scrolling left scrubs through manufacturers and individual models are listed vertically. Very welcome considering how cumbersome it was getting in Forza 5 as more and more cars were added. I heartily recommend a year’s subscription to the Jelly of the Month club for whoever spearheaded this tweak.The handling remains fantastic, and the sense of grip and weight is even more pleasing than it was in Forza 5. Engine notes remain another big highlight, particularly with a field of 24 cars standing on the throttle waiting for the green. I also particularly like how sounds seem to bounce back off parts of the environment in tighter spaces.The two-pronged career mode does a good job of putting you in a wide variety of the many cars on offer in Forza 6. The Showcase Events, which are bespoke races designed to highlight particular vehicles, racing series, or eras, are a good addition to the game. You don’t need to own the cars utilised in these races; you can just hop straight in once they’re unlocked. They’re good to cleanse the palate between the regular career races. This is where you’ll find the endurance racing, which I enjoyed in Forza 4 but was absent from Forza 5.The regular career races in Forza 6 are delivered in a more linear fashion than Forza 5, which meant I couldn’t hop straight into a racing series in the cars I wanted to race most even though I could afford one (returning players are well rewarded, depending on time spent in previous Forza games). I think the biggest sin here though is the dated top-3-or-bust progression system. It simply means your race objective never wavers; start in the middle of the grid, pass seven-or-so cars, finish on the podium. If you don’t, you need to start the race again – you can’t simply make up points later.I found myself yearning for a bit of a revamp here, perhaps inspired by the more nuanced Grid and Project CARS approach to race weekends. The new Mod system (gameplay modifiers you can apply to single-player to earn bonus credits and XP by achieving certain objectives or enduring specific handicaps) adds some zest to the career but I will admit I often found myself forgetting about it, even though some of them give you increased car performance.Don’t worry about this Mod system giving anybody an unfair advantage in multiplayer, though; they don’t apply there. Forza 6’s online multiplayer has performed well during testing; even during heavy rain and playing against opponents from far across the Pacific the racing was smooth and lag-free. Equally good news? Those of you who prefer couch multiplayer are still covered; unlike most developers Turn 10 hasn’t forgotten split-screen.