New DLC for the critically acclaimed Forza Horizon 5 has recently dropped, and its title says it all -- Rally Adventure. The new content takes place in Sierra Nueva and features six unique biomes and myriad challenges as well as all the open-world driving any good offroader can handle.

Forza Horizon 5 features the largest number of racing events of any Horizon expansion in an exciting new career, where you’ll get to join three rally teams and take on timed point-to-point Horizon Rally stages and traditional Horizon Races, complete with navigator callouts as your co-driver assists from the dynamic Horizon Rally Helicopter. Sierra Nueva also introduces several new biomes to explore including the town of Pueblo Artza, a huge Abandoned Quarry perfect for some Gymkhana action, epic deformable Sand Dunes, the tight and twisting Desert Gorge, rolling Green Hills, and an entirely smashable Palm Forest. You’ll even find the remote village of Cráteres Secos nestled into a breathtaking crater.

In addition to the new playspace and its offroad-centric biomes, 10 new cars have also been added to the game's already extensive livery. This is the second major content drop for the game and is available as a standalone purchase of $20-odd USD (roughly $30 Aussie dollarydoos), or is included in the game's premium model if that's how you purchased it. The DLC is not a part of the game's Game Pass access, however, there's a discount currently running for the "Add-Ons Bundle" at just $30 USD (around $45 AUD) running through to April 3.

Forza Horizon 5 just got a new visual update on PC, bringing in-race ray-tracing for reflections that you can see whilst racing. At launch ray-tracing was limited to the car showcase, so adding it to races is a pretty big update. And with that NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 has been added to boost performance.

Plus two new presets, "Ultra" and "Extreme" for RT reflections for your car in Free Roam, Races, and the addition of Drivatar reflections in Photo Mode. Very cool.

The update is available now and you can read the full patch notes here.

Forza Horizon 5 just got its first major expansion and it's safe to say that it's a pretty awesome one, with Hot Wheels adding new biomes and an impressive 212 kilometres of Hot Wheels tracks set high above the clouds in Mexico. There's also new story content with Hot Wheels: A History of Speed that covers the history of the little cars as you perform stunts and complete challenges.

Of course it wouldn't be an expansion without some new cars, and there's 10 new ones to collect here - including the 2013 Hot Wheels Baja Bone Shaker.



What's even cooler is that EventLab features a new Hot Wheels Creation Kit that has "over 80 track and stunt pieces that can be instantly snapped together". The Hot Wheels expansion is available now as part of the Premium Edition for Forza Horizon 5 or as a separate $29.95 AUD purchase.

One thing to take note of in the trailer and announcement for Forza Horizon 5's first expansion Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels is that it's "all in game 4K footage", a testament to just how gorgeous the open-world racer is on Xbox Series X|S and PC. And yeah, adding giant Hot Wheels loops and tracks to Horizon's digital Mexico is a sight to behold.

The expansion releases on July 19 for $19.99 USD or as part of the Premium editions of the game. One of the cool features is that you'll be able to design and build your very own Hot Wheels circuit "with over 80 distinct, snappable track pieces" and race using 10 new Hot Wheels inspired cars. Check it out.


Here's Mike Brown, Creative Director of Forza Horizon, Playground Games breaking it all down - piece by piece.

Hi, Horizon Hot Wheels Park

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The new Horizon Hot Wheels Park has some of the fastest, most extreme tracks ever in a Horizon game, including more than 200 kilometres (that’s around 125 miles for our non-metric friends) of twisting, looping iconic orange track. Explore a sprawling Hot Wheels open world with new driving experiences such as gravity defying magnet tracks as well as ice, water flume, and rumble tracks.

We’ve also added four new biomes, including the rugged Giant’s Canyon; the Ice Cauldron where frozen tundra drips into the glistening molten lava; Forest Falls which takes you high above the tree canopy and over epic waterfalls, and finally, the visually stunning Horizon Nexus, where the Horizon Festival is suspended among a web of Hot Wheels tracks.

Become a Hot Wheels Legend

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Players can complete missions to unlock special Hot Wheels Heats events and celebrate the history of Hot Wheels in a new five-part Horizon Story. Along your journey to becoming a Hot Wheels Legend, look out for new Accolades, Bonus Boards, Floating Piñata collectibles, PR Stunts and new Hot Wheels Seasonal Events which contribute to your overall Festival Playlist completion.

And, in a first for Forza, join friends and play the entire expansion from the very beginning in co-op. You can also compete and take on the world in Horizon Open, or team up and race a team of Drivatars in Horizon Tour. Free Fast Travel is also immediately unlocked for all players at the Horizon Hot Wheels Park, allowing you to quickly reach your friends no matter where they are located on the map.

Dream It, Build It, Share It

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We’re also so excited to see what players dream up in EventLab, where you’ll have the freedom to design, build, and share using the new Hot Wheels Creation Kit.

We’ve added over 80 new track and stunt pieces that instantly snap together thanks to new improvements to the EventLab toolset. New props included within the Hot Wheels Creation Kit can be easily attached to each other with a button push when using the Blueprint Builder.

Once you’ve built your dream Hot Wheels creation, make sure to share it for the entire community to discover and play. We can’t wait to see what you bring to life!

Those Cars, Though…

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We couldn’t bring you a new Hot Wheels adventure without new cars. We’re excited to expand the Forza Horizon 5 fleet with 10 incredible new to Forza cars, including four new Hot Wheels scaled up to life size.

One of my personal faves is the 2018 Chevrolet Hot Wheels COPO Camaro, which is inspired by the first ever Hot Wheels Custom Camaro from 1968.

On a final note, Playground and Xbox note that since launching last year Forza horizon 5 has seen over 20 million players jump in and race within the first six months of release. This is without a doubt one of the best and most popular Xbox franchises and Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels is shaping up to be a very special expansion.

As per a tweet by Phil Spencer Forza Horizon 5, which is available now across PC and Xbox consoles (including Xbox Game Pass), is the most successful Xbox Game Studios launch to date. With over 4.5 million players and counting it's a testament to the brilliance of what developer Playground Games has done.

We've invested for years in Xbox so more people can play. With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life. Largest launch day for XGS game, peak concurrent 3x FH4 high. Thank you players & congrats to @WeArePlayground

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 10, 2021

As per our full review.

Forza Horizon 5’s digital Mexico is not only expansive, but stunning in its sheer beauty, diversity, and scope. You can drive anywhere, on-road and off, and drive with others convoy-style via seamless co-op. For the simple pleasure that is driving, Forza Horizon 5 nails it.

As the latest and greatest entry in the series to date we also had the chance to sit down with Playground Games ahead of the launch to talk about the series' evolution and what it took to create such a stunning open-world.

“Right from the very start of development, one of our goals was to make the biggest and best Horizon game yet,” Mike Brown, Creative Director at Playground Games says. Forza Horizon 5 is the latest entry in the critically acclaimed and popular open-world racing series, and with its digital representation of Mexico it’s also the most ambitious Forza to date.

Outside of overhauling and improving how each of the 500-plus real-world vehicles looks and handles, it’s the first Horizon to take advantage of Xbox Series X and S hardware. Not to mention the latest in PC graphics technology from NVIDIA and AMD. And with that it pushes the size and scope of what an open-world racer can be.

“From a design side, when you're building an open-world that you want people to spend time in and to explore there's real challenges,” Mike continues. “You can't just make a space 50% bigger and be like, great, player’s are going to love it. You have to make sure that there's a good reason for the size. That there's always new things to see, new areas to explore, and that it isn’t a case of, for lack of a better term, copy-pasted areas.”

Be sure to check out the full massive interview here.

As per our in-depth interview with the team at Playground Games we talked about the numerous changes brought to Forza Horizon 5 thanks to the added power of the Xbox Series X and S consoles and modern PC hardware. Turns out, by switching to a main platform with SSD storage -- it helped fundamentally change the design.


With the arrival of the Xbox Series X and S consoles and the shift to faster SSD storage, not to mention SSDs being common in the PC space, Forza Horizon 5 allowed the team to make fundamental changes to the design based purely on how fast things load.

“The Xbox One was our lead platform, it's where most of our players were, so we had to design around the fact that it could take a while to load things,” Mike Brown, Creative Director at Playground Games says. “One example of that is when you arrived at a race we defaulted to keeping you in the car you were already in. And we would then load in cars that were similar to that car.”


“That wasn't necessarily the best experience because we have 500 cars and the game's great when you're jumping between different cars and you're seeing all those different driving experiences,” Mike continues. “But, when you change cars on the base Xbox One it incurs a load. We've always designed around that limitation to not have a player sit through that long load heading into a race.”

“That’s not a problem anymore, [in Forza Horizon 5] we give you a lot more cars earlier in the game than we ever did. Not only that but the game will prompt you to change cars much more often than it ever did. One, because we believe the game is more fun when you're jumping between different cars and having different driving experiences and experiencing that diversity. And two, because we are designing around the SSD and knowing that PC players and everybody on the Xbox Series X and S now has an SSD.”

Our Full Forza Horizon 5 Interview

Ahead of the game’s launch we had the chance to sit down with the team at Playground Games to discuss the development of Forza Horizon 5, and take a peek under the hood to talk about the tech driving it all.

A snippet from our massive interview.

“Right from the very start of development, one of our goals was to make the biggest and best Horizon game yet,” Mike Brown, Creative Director at Playground Games says. Forza Horizon 5 is the latest entry in the critically acclaimed and popular open-world racing series, and with its digital representation of Mexico it’s also the most ambitious Forza to date.

Outside of overhauling and improving how each of the 500-plus real-world vehicles looks and handles, it’s the first Horizon to take advantage of Xbox Series X and S hardware. Not to mention the latest in PC graphics technology from NVIDIA and AMD. And with that it pushes the size and scope of what an open-world racer can be.

“From a design side, when you're building an open-world that you want people to spend time in and to explore there's real challenges,” Mike continues. “You can't just make a space 50% bigger and be like, great, player’s are going to love it. You have to make sure that there's a good reason for the size. That there's always new things to see, new areas to explore, and that it isn’t a case of, for lack of a better term, copy-pasted areas.”

In terms of activities and things to see and so, Forza Horizon 5 is just about overflowing with possibility. A single and multiplayer dream come true for fans of all things four-wheeled. Races, drifting, stunts, working together to smash pinatas in a fun little mini-game. But, as we’ve seen across previous entries, exploration is also a key part of the picture. That thing where you’re discovering new and wondrous digital locales. On that front Forza Horizon 5 takes everything to the next level.

Our Full Forza Horizon 5 Interview

Forza Horizon 5 is the latest entry in the critically acclaimed racing series. Except it’s not really a racer, it’s a celebration of cars, driving, and exploring via taking the scenic route. Even if that route begins on the edge of an active volcano, or at the base of an awe-inspiring waterfall. The digital Mexico, as recreated by Playground Games, is nothing short of stunning. And a showcase for Xbox Series X and PC hardware.

A snippet.

Forza Horizon 5’s digital Mexico is not only expansive, but stunning in its sheer beauty, diversity, and scope. You can drive anywhere, on-road and off, and drive with others convoy-style via seamless co-op. For the simple pleasure that is driving, Forza Horizon 5 nails it. And that’s before it gets all game-y and you’re stopping to take on a jump challenge, drive through a hidden board, or take part in a multiplayer mini-game where the goal is to drift like you’re summarising the entirety of Initial D in a couple of minutes.



Built to take advantage of high-end PC and Xbox Series X hardware, Forza Horizon 5 is without a doubt a visual leap forward for racing games and the series. The environmental detail is exceptional no matter if you’re going 10 km/h or 200 km/h, and seeing the level of detail in everything from a roadside shack to a giant cliff-face is awe inspiring.

Our Full Forza Horizon 5 Review

Ahead of next month's launch we got to play a preview build of the latest Horizon four-wheel adventure on Xbox Series X. Forza Horizon 5 is set in a vibrant hyper-realistic digital Mexico, and it's many and impressive biomes might just be the next solid step forward for the series.

A snippet.

With the vibrant backdrop you have a greater sense of Forza Horizon’s arcade and accessible style here, where co-op, story, exploration, and competing in activities or going off in search of a hidden car come together. As is the series’ way there’s introduction and story stuff to wade through before Mexico opens up proper though even in taste form the intro is such that you can head off and explore and see the different biomes Forza Horizon 5 offers. Of course, here at AusGamers we have a soft spot for the Australia-based Forza Horizon 3 - but calling this a direct sequel to that is to highlight the diverse look and feel of our home country as a digital play-space.

The Mexico here is nothing short of next level for the series. The opening Showcase drops you off into an active volcano where in a few short minutes you’re driving a supercar into a giant epic Tatooine-style sandstorm. Or, if you’re of the sort, a Darude. On Xbox Series X hardware you have the option to play at a native 4K 30fps with visual settings cranked or a smoother variable 60fps that looks basically the same. Albeit, benefitting from that smooth 60fps bump this console generation has welcomed with open arms.

Our Full Forza Horizon 5 - Hands-On Preview