When it comes to racing games, it's no secret that I'm a big fan of Forza Motorsport 4. Sure, there are more hardcore racing sims available for PC gamers, but for consoles, it's as close as you can get to being on the track without having to worry about what happens if a wheel falls off. That's great if you're a hardcore racing nerd like me, but mine is not a universal passion. Dan Greenawalt, creative director at Turn 10, has made no bones about wanting the Forza franchise to inspire the next generation of car lovers, and while I felt FM4 did that pretty well, it probably wasn't equally inspiring to other gaming demographics. Enter Forza Horizon.

While FM4 served up a series of some of the world's best race tracks, Forza Horizon lets you head out on the open roads of a virtual Colorado, in much the same vein as Test Drive Unlimited. The game is the product of a collaboration between Turn 10 and Playground Games—a UK-based supergroup drawn from the ranks of Codemasters, Bizarre, and other developers with titles like DiRT and Project Gotham Racing in their back catalog—and it's built atop FM4's legendary physics engine. With DNA like that, you'd be right to expect great things from the game. But does it deliver?

Let me answer that with a disclaimer aimed squarely at the legion of fanboys I've already seen griping on the Internet: Forza Horizon isn't Forza Motorsport 5. If you're expecting a game that rewards amazing driving skills and punishes beginners for putting a wheel off track, you are going to be disappointed. On the other hand, if that's precisely the sort of thing that has put you off Forza games in the past, you're in for a treat. The game begins by putting you behind the wheel of the new SRT Viper for a short battle against Darius Flynt, your ultimate nemesis and Forza Horizon's current top dog. This is a brief taste of the faster cars in the game, though, and pretty quickly the SRT is replaced by a 1995 VW Corrado, the first car in your garage. You're tasked with being one of the first ten cars to arrive at the Horizon Festival, a gathering of speed and music that uses the state of Colorado as its playground.

With your GPS to guide you and the radio DJ egging you on, this should be easy enough, and when you make it you're greeted with a cut scene that introduces you to Alice Hart, your contact at the festival. As a new face on the scene, your job is to make a name for yourself. Festival events are the meat and potatoes of the single-player game, consisting of either circuit or point-to-point races on asphalt, dirt roads, or a mix of both. As you compete and win these events, you'll level up by gaining different colored wristbands, and you'll unlock new races in further-flung parts of the state, giving you the opportunity to explore. Showcase events are more theatrical—racing a Ford Mustang against a P-51 Mustang, or an Audi Sport Quattro against a hot air balloon, with the car as a prize for getting to the finish line first.

As you make your way around the state, you share the road with AI citizens going about their business, as well as other festival competitors you can challenge to races. Unlike the Test Drive Unlimited games, you won't come across other human players in the single-player mode, something that may disappoint some, but to be honest I'm not that interested in racing newbies that get their kicks by crashing into everyone they come across. Visually, the game looks superb, despite running at just 30 frames per second—the trade-off for dynamic night-day transitions and night racing. And while your playground might not be an exact replica of Colorado, it's still a pretty expansive space to play in. The soundtrack is also top-notch, as befitting a game set at a festival, with three radio stations to choose from, curated by British DJ Rob Da Bank.

Winning races isn't all there is to the game, though. As mentioned, your goal is to make a name for yourself, and you do that by driving with brio, verve, and panache. Drifts that go on for days, burnouts that atomize your tires, close shaves as you blast past other cars, even shortcuts across the dirt and through road signs—all of these will gain you popularity with sponsors, and if you can chain combos together, all the better. The state is littered with speed cameras, where you can challenge your friends to beat your top speed, although you better make sure you've got the car for the job! With rewards on offer for flashy driving, it's probably not surprising that the only consequences for getting it wrong are dented panels. This is yet another change that might annoy the purists, but that's their problem, right?

Speaking of cars, many of them have made the transition from FM4 to Forza Horizon, and there are also some new models. As expected, there's plenty of DLC in the pipeline. There are quite a few ways to grow your stable. You can buy new models at the Autoshow if you have enough credits, and if the game detects an FM4 saved game, it will give you a number of vehicles based on how well stocked your existing garage is.

Winning showcases and showdowns against big-name AI characters will win you rides, and you can also win cars as random rewards for leveling up in multiplayer races. But perhaps my favorite unlockables are the barn finds. Every so often, the radio DJ will tip you off about an abandoned piece of rare or exotic metal that's languishing out of sight in a barn. You'll be given a rough area on the map to search, and a little diligence and a lot of driving around will usually be rewarded.

Multiplayer matches offer a range of formats, from plain old races to playground games (cat and mouse, tag, and so on), and you can even just roam around the state with your friends if you want. Lobbies are limited to eight players, though. Car clubs are also present, and as with FM4, we've set up Ars Velocitas if you fancy joining. The paint shop also makes the transition from previous Forza games. You can even import vinyl groups from FM4, and you can sell your creations via storefronts as before. Other carry-overs include the PI and upgrade system, although setups can't be fine tuned (at least, I haven't been able to figure out how to do so). Unlike in FM4, cars don't level up for cheaper upgrades. Instead, there are 100 upgrade billboards across the state, and each one you drive through will knock one percent off the cost of upgrades, yet another reason to explore.

Overall, I've been really impressed with Forza Horizon, and it feels like a game I'll be spending a lot of time in as we wait for the successor to the Xbox 360 and Forza Motorsport 5. It strikes the balance between realistic-handling cars and accessibility, and I can see it appealing to my young cousin or our venerable managing editor (and confirmed Burnout fan) in ways that FM4simply doesn't.

The Good

Great selection of cars

That awesome Forza physics engine

An expansive world to explore

A brilliant soundtrack

The Bad

Only eight players in online mode

The single-player storyline is a little too sexist for my liking

The Ugly

Some purists are bound to get their knickers in a twist over it being too "arcadey"

Verdict: Buy It