You can criticize Forza Motorsport 5 for taking a step backwards in the content department, but you’d only be half-justified. Sure, it originally cost the same $60 that both the meatier Forza 4 did and that Forza Motorsport 6

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I spent two hours playing the final build of Forza 6, and I’m already reasonably confident that I’ll never want or need to play Forza 5 again. The new entry from Turn 10 Studios, which takes the baton back from last year’s stellar open-world, more arcadey Forza Horizon 2 by Playground Games, includes everything Forza 5 did, up to and including DLC tracks like Long Beach and Nürburgring. Six opens much the same way Five did, with the game walking you through the early stages of the career mode. You’ll get a turn in the new cover car, the 2017 Ford GT reboot, before picking out the first ride for your own garage. I chose a Nissan 350Z and went to work.Everything about Forza’s core mechanics feels instantly familiar. Controls are responsive, everything is tunable – once again, the more assists you turn off, the higher XP bonus you get after each race – and graphics are their usual 1080p/60fps smooth. The only complaint I could remotely levy against the game at this point from a visual perspective is aliasing; I noticed a fair bit of “jaggies,” though I wouldn’t say they detracted from the experience.Meanwhile, Drivatars are unpredictable right out of the box now because millions of them have been trained by Forza 5 and Forza Horizon 2 players over the past two years. Forza 6 also reminded me that the Xbox One gamepad’s haptic triggers are both brilliant and criminally underused; the Forza series seems to be the only one to make use of their full potential. You can again feel the subtle grabs of the brakes, blips of the transmission shifting, and now wheelwell-clogging plow through a deep puddle in rainy conditions.And aside from the new tracks and dealer lot’s worth of new cars (over 450 total!), it’s that rain (along with night racing) that’s the signature new feature for Forza 6. You may be familiar with the inclement weather if you played Horizon 2, but it’s been appropriately dialed up to sim-like levels here. I’ll have to take Turn 10’s word for it that the puddles on the track pool up right where they would on the real-life courses, but when you do hit a deep spot of water, your car is going to come off the ground ever so slightly and compromise your handling. Read: DO NOT HIT A PUDDLE IN A TURN. I quickly learned that the braking line HUD indicator has to be taken pretty seriously in the middle of a rainstorm, whereas in dry weather I could safely ignore it for its first few car lengths.Two other fun new additions are level-up spins and Mods. When you gain a new XP level, you’ll get a free spin on a Press Your Luck-style board. Prizes range from in-game cash to million-dollar cars. This is a smart, fun way to add a bit more excitement to the progression process. As for Mods, they’re a lot like Titanfall’s Burn Cards. You have three slots you can place them in, and you can buy more packs (think of them like Magic: The Gathering cards) by spending in-game credits. Many of them, at least early on, are one-time-use, low-level Mods like +6% to your braking for a single race. But things like Crew Mods, which improve your stats, or Dares, which can earn you more XP for completing races under certain conditions, can be used infinitely. Mods seem to add a nice bit of variety, unpredictability, and customizability to Forza 6, which should come in handy around hour 20 (or 200).I didn’t get a chance to sample the league-based 24-player multiplayer modes, and hopefully Turn 10 gets the economy system right at launch this time around. Oh, and I noticed that some of the game’s information about the Tesla Model S P85D in Forzavista mode is out of date, but otherwise my brief time with the gold-master build of Forza Motorsport 6 left me little reason to doubt that my copy of Forza 5 may soon become expendable.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Podcast Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.