Gaming, you could say, is as much a state of mind as it is an activity – it’s all about what you can relate to. “Language Games”, as an ethical philosopher I once studied at college briefly put it; you’ve got to talk to people using the rules and language they understand. If someone threw out words like ‘Racing’ ‘authentic car listings’ or even just ‘cars’, I’d personally probably tune out at that point. But if you used words like ‘open-world’ ‘dynamic’, ‘content rich’ and ‘free-form’, well, that I can get behind.

Forza Horizon, more than any other Forza game, is going to have a bit of a struggle for recognition we think. it’s got the Forza angle, with all the cars and the racing etc… but it’s being packaged in a way that traditional Forza fans might not recognise or be able to relate to, and as for everyone else, they’ll still find it hard to look past the fact that it’s another racing game. The trick though is how you perceive it – Forza Horizon (A spin-off as opposed to a true sequel) does things quite differently from the other games, but in an interesting way that will hopefully do it credit.

At the end of the day, this is what the game comes down to – you and the other guy(s)

Personally, I’m not a big racing game fan, but even I found myself enjoying Horizon as I sat down for a hands-on session with the latest build. The game revolves around a car festival set in Colorado – a setting chosen for its diverse range of environments, from the Rocky Mountains to the south, the Great Plains to the East, as well as forests, rivers and canyons: the perfect place for a game that has a wide range of car types. The ‘Horizon Festival’ is a big car show that forms the lynch-pin of the whole game, and you as the player must compete in different kinds of racing events in order to try and win the grand-prize.

That’s the over-all goal – there are plenty of steps to do on the way. As the player, you play as the quintessential ‘new kid’ who’s basically a nobody, but someone who works their way up to (hopefully) take the title from the long-standing winner. A key component of Horizon is your popularity with the crowd – the more popular you get, the more events you’re invited to. You basically gain popularity by doing fancy driving – drifting, near-misses, going fast… almost everything you do, even if you’re just driving from A to B, will net you points that contribute to your overall popularity rank, which as we mentioned grants you access to more and more events.

The events themselves are what make the game so varied – sure, most of them are essentially running around a track, but these tracks can be anywhere, from normal roads, to up in the mountains, to the desert, and you could be doing anything as well. There’s showcase events, which usually focus on a type of car or a maker – for example we played in a Mustang event early on in the game where you have to drive a Mustang car in a race vs. a Mustang propeller aeroplane. There are other events such as off-roading, standard races etc… and of course the ‘main’ events which progress you through the story.

From what little we’ve seen so far, Colorado makes a good setting for the game

Of course the game is just as much about the cars themselves than it is about playing the game- Dan Greenwald has stated before that he wants to bring about a ‘culture shift’, where he wants car lovers to become gamers, and gamers to become car lovers. It’s one of those promotional phrases that often gets latched on to, but you can see elements of this philosophy within the game. Even the Horizon festival itself, and the fact that you need to pay attention to what cars are eligible for what race types, and then which cars within that category are going to be better, it’s all geared towards getting you interested in the finer points of automobiles.

There’s a lot to look forward to in Horizon: we believe the fact that it’s doing something different for a change will help break the monotony of yearly releases that games like these go through – and at the end of the day it’s still a Forza game. A lot of the core racing mechanics will seem very familiar, and as we said the setting and the different focus will present something new and interesting to the players, as well as being challenging. As I said, I’m not much of a car-game person, but I’d happily give this a try. Forza Horizon is due out on Xbox 360 on October 23rd, 2012.

Most Anticipated Feature: It’ll be the late-game gameplay that will make or break this title, so will be interesting to see what they give you there.