I am in love with Forza Horizon 6's Nissan Silvia

Forza Horizon 6 has learned at least one neat trick from Ridge Racer. It's learned that for a certain kind of racing game, something that's dreamy yet exactingly arcadey by turn, it's quite nice to ghost around a corner every now and then and find something dramatic happening overhead. In Ridge Racer this something was often a jumbo taking off. In Horizon 6, it could be one of those chunky helicopters with two sets of propellors, or even a group of jet fighters flying in formation. But games are as prone to inflation as everything else. At one point, I crested a hill and a huge space rocket launched. Not bad, Horizon. Not bad.

But back at the very start? Reader, back at the start I got two synchronised bullet trains all in the space of about a minute. I'd turn the corner and they'd rush past, swift and low, bound for the gleaming distance. Welcome to Japan.

If you're familiar with Forza's Horizon games you'll be at home here, I think. It's the same basic deal: arcade racing spread across a generous tourist-tuned open world. And it all starts with the same kind of going-to-the-festival thrill as the earlier games too. A handful of mini-events kick you back and forth between highways strung through forests one moment and a full-on snowy mountain descent the next. Futuristic concept cars with daringly minimalist tail lights are swapped out for a banana yellow Porsche. Duck into the accessibility menu and there's the same world-beating options for dialing in the experience. Duck into the character creator and you can still add prosthetics before you choose your pronouns.

In other words, Horizon wants to be a breezy holiday, and everyone is welcome. Even playing locked at the 30fps "quality" mode for the demo build (a 60fps "performance" mode will be available at launch) it's a Sunday afternoon bubble bath kind of affair. The engines roar and the petals fall and your earthly worries melt away.

And as those bullet trains suggest, the game's intent on delivering everything you might expect from a game set in Japan. I've been messing about with the current demo build offering a decent suite of events and a large chunk of open world, and I'm delighted by the range and detailing on offer. I expected highways carpeted with pink blossom and gleaming flyovers. I expected busy electric town facades and constant views of Mount Fuji. All present as you'd want them to be. But a cross-country ramble takes you from rutted muddy paths to the golden sands of a beach and the opportunity to race, weightless, across turquoise water. Elsewhere a forest gives way to a lakeside with little houses stood around the edges, peaked roofs giving the horizon a tart scattering of sharp points.

This is all lovely, and in that classic Horizon way it manages to convey scope and scale while dealing in clever contractions. Deep in Tokyo itself, I passed the Tokyo Tower and the Shibuya Crossing in under forty-five seconds. They both felt entirely like themselves and neither felt rushed or squashed together. But in a game in which you often find yourself tooling between events, there won't be so much travel time that you'll be tempted to switch to auto-drive.

Image credit: Xbox Game Studios / Playground

Japan is the eye-catching part, then, but the cars themselves are the core of the game. I loved trying to contain that yellow Porsche's power as I rattled around hairpins in a tutorial about cornering that was really a tutorial about drifting. When I switched to a 4X4 challenge later on, the GMC I was in charge of felt like a steroidal hearse, conveying so much weight through the pad that I was afraid to even turn for the first ten seconds. Minutes later, as we lumbered over flooded rice paddies, I worried that gleaming beast would sink into the water and never emerge.

But the heart wants what it wants, and it turns out that my heart wants a 1989 Nissan Silvia K's. Here is a slick urban delight, its body the colour of evening skies that announce the arrival of a summer storm. It's the car that I chose when the campaign started, and I quickly grew to love its air of 80s-tinged menace. It's fast while feeling as solid and consequential as a refrigerator falling from a third storey. You can turn pretty sweetly in it if you're trying a timing lap, but it still comes off like the kind of thing a mid-level businessman might once have used therapeutically to run over squirrels in the Mulholland Hills after a movie deal went south.

Image credit: Xbox Game Studios / Playground

What is probably clear from all this is that I like cars and the thrilling ways that games can make you feel in their presence, but I don't have any kind of knowledge of them. This is why Horizon is the Forza for me, I guess, because it's a holiday from too much seriousness whilst also being built so carefully that anyone from an idiot to an expert can have real fun here. It's also why I can appreciate the parade of cars the game offers, even in the early moments. I can tell that an apple-red Celica is a very different thing from a Nissan GTR with a gigantic spoiler, because of how they both feel. And alongside that I can get an idiot sense of what Horizon's baseline feel is, too.

These cars are slickly connected to the road but they're eager to turn. There's a little Valium in the mix when you accidentally fly through roadside fences and their splinters barely trouble the air around you. But there's a willingness to punish, too.

That's a crucial thing in a racing game, isn't it? Yesterday, I took the Silvia into a narrow, right-angle-heavy road race on the busy streets of Tokyo and I was fine right up until the rains came, and then? Then I was sliding around like melting ice cubes spilled on a coffee table. I had made an error and the game had noticed. I was assuming that because Horizon is a welcoming game I could play it with a casual spirit. Not true. And that's very good news.