Forza Horizon 6

The most-upvoted negative review of Forza Horizon 6 has 2,011 helpful votes and 0.4 hours played. The second has 1,922 votes and 1.7 hours. Neither reviewer got far enough to have an opinion about the driving, because — by their account — the game wouldn't run.

Both report the same thing: that Forza Horizon 6 requires Microsoft's data collection to be enabled, and that players who block that traffic at network level, via a debloater or a PiHole, cannot play.

I can't verify what is collected or why the dependency exists, and I'm not going to characterise it as spyware because two reviewers did. What's reportable is this: it's the single most-endorsed criticism this game has, it comes from people describing a game that wouldn't start, and if you run network-level blocking on a Windows machine, that is the thing to check before you spend NZ$119.95.

It's also the third variation on the same 2026 theme I've hit today. Delta Force's top complaint is a kernel anti-cheat that outstays its welcome; Spider-Man 2's is a PlayStation runtime installed without asking. Publishers keep shipping infrastructure alongside games, and players keep making it the most upvoted thing on the page.

The game is magnificent

Now the part that matters if none of that applies to you.

Forza Horizon 6 moves the festival to Japan, and the map is the best thing Playground have ever built. Mountain switchbacks, neon city streets, coastal roads, forests that turn gold as the seasons rotate — it is consistently gorgeous in a way that makes simply driving somewhere the point. A 161-hour reviewer, writing positively in July, calls it "the best Forza Horizon game, and one of the best racing games out there period," adding that the physics feel great and it's "much better optimised than FH5."

That optimisation note matters. Performance appears in only 8 of the hundred most-helpful negatives and stuttering in 4 — remarkably low for a 2026 open-world release, and a contrast with Assetto Corsa EVO, which I reviewed earlier today and which is still fighting its own frame rate nineteen months in.

The driving remains the series' great trick: immediately accessible, deep enough to keep tuning for hundreds of hours, and forgiving in a way that makes a bad corner funny rather than punishing.

What players are annoyed about

The car economy. Twenty-one DLC entries, and a 36-hour reviewer captures the specific irritation best: "Showing recommended cars for races that I have to pay real money for does not feel good in a game I paid full price for." A 110-hour player who calls this their game of the year still filed a negative review over it. When a game costs NZ$119.95 and then points at events you can't optimally enter without paying again, that lands badly regardless of how good the driving is.

The AI. Twenty-two of the hundred negatives mention it, and the charge is specific rather than vague: on higher difficulties the AI is described as having speed and grip the player's car simply cannot match, making certain long races unwinnable by legitimate driving. That's a design decision about difficulty scaling, and racing audiences have never liked rubber-banding dressed as challenge.

Things that didn't change. A 125-hour reviewer with 1,435 votes lists complaints carried over from Horizon 5 unaddressed, singling out Steam integration and the awkwardness of joining friends despite this being a native Steam release. For a sixth entry, "still not fixed" is a fair thing to be tired of.

Where it stands

The trajectory is good. Negative reviews ran 63 in May 2026, the launch month, then 26 in June, 10 in July and one so far in August. Of the 100 most recent English reviews, 84 are positive.

Playground are running it properly: weekly community calendars of player-run events, seasonal car unlocks tied to the map's changing seasons, a third content series and hotfixes through July.

The verdict

Forza Horizon 6 earns a 7.5, and it's a 7.5 with a 9 inside it. As a driving game it's the best in its class, in the best setting the series has had, running better than its predecessor — if you just want to drive beautiful cars through beautiful places, nothing else competes.

The score reflects the conditions attached. A full-price game that upsells cars inside the events you already own, AI that wins by fiat rather than skill, a sixth entry still carrying its predecessor's networking complaints, and a telemetry dependency that has stopped some buyers playing at all. None of those are about driving, and all of them are about buying.

Get it in a sale, and if you block Microsoft telemetry, resolve that question before you pay rather than after. If you want the same driving with fewer strings, Forza Horizon 5 is heavily discounted these days and still excellent.