It’s certainly an exciting time for racing fans on PS5, but there are a couple of caveats with Forza Horizon 5’s PS5 launch. First, there’s the kicker. Players have to link a Microsoft account upon starting up the game, a process that other Xbox-to-PlayStation games like Sea of Thieves has required. Unfortunately, there won’t be the added benefit of cross-progression from a PC or Xbox save to PS5. There is cross-play between PC, Xbox, and PS5 versions of the game, though, so that’s nice. On the PlayStation side of things, a PS Plus subscription is required to take part in any of the online features of FH5. When enabled, Forza Horizon 5 allows up to 16 online players at a time in the game world. The multiplayer offerings are rather extensive, ranging from a battle royale mode called The Eliminator to a large suite of mini game challenges from smashing pinatas to zipping around obstacle courses. Forza Horizon 5 has a single player offline mode too, of course, but you won’t be able to engage with the robust auction house or try out other players’ custom tracks, in addition to the aforementioned modes.

I don’t think there’s been a more ideal time to jump into Forza Horizon 5 than now. The game originally released back in 2021 and has benefited from a wealth of updates and fixes. I’m disappointed that the $59.99 base edition of the game on PS5 doesn’t go the distance with the inclusion of the Hot Wheels and Rally Adventure DLCs – those have to be bought separately in addition to the numerous Car Packs. Still, the base package here is staggering. The game includes well over 700 cars and that number goes up past the 800 range when we include DLC, so you’ll not be wanting for variety.

And there’s even more new content to look forward to. The PS5 release of Forza Horizon 5 coincides with a new free content update across the game’s various platforms. Horizon Realms has been positioned as the big central addition with the update. Realms features 11 of the most beloved environments from Forza’s Evolving Worlds seasonal rotation. A new permanent Horizon Stadium Circuit is also coming to the game in addition to the 11 seasonal returning Realms locations.

And for gearheads, there’s a total of eight new vehicles added to the game via update, though four of them (including the exhilarating Lamborghini Revuolto) are rewards for clearing Horizon Realms achievements. The other four cars are from the new Nissan Retro Rides car pack. As with all car packs, there’s a dlc sticker price of $4.99 attached to it.

For PS5 players, the most exciting ‘update’ comes in the form of DualSense support. Turn 10 has confirmed full DualSense and DualSense Edge functionality, with adaptive trigger feel for threshold braking and surface conditions. If it performs like Gran Turismo 7 or The Crew Motorfest, heavy dirt roads will amp up the vibration intensity tenfold and the accelerator and brake pedals will have a realistic tension translating to the triggers.

Luckily for PS5 players, Forza Horizon 5 isn’t the only racing game getting new updates. Gran Turismo 7 is a PlayStation exclusive well and truly anchored to the PS5 and it’s still receiving new updates three years after release. GT7 is currently on its 28th free update. Since its launch back in 2022, hundreds of additional cars and a handful of circuits have been added. The game currently features 532 vehicles and 39 tracks (not counting different configurations).

All of GT7’s content (including all updates) is available free of charge once you’ve bought the game. PlayStation racing fans suddenly find themselves with a nice advantage: access to Sony’s premier exclusive with Gran Turismo 7, as well as the recent Forza Horizon 5 port. It’s wild that in 2025 Sony players have access to one of Xbox’s flagship exclusive racers in addition to Sony’s Gran Turismo juggernaut, but here we are.

Sim racing fans have GT7 and Assetto Corsa to play on PS5, but what about the open world crowd? Well, there’s actually been quite a handful of quality open world racers within the PlayStation ecosystem even before Forza Horizon 5 joined. The Crew Motorfest, while featuring a far smaller map than the The Crew 2‘s vast United States, features the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Maui. What’s impressive is the recently released free Maui update, which adds the new island as well as a range of new Playlist challenges and new vehicles.

Another fun open world racer is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, a game struggling with its online offerings despite a rich and varied Hong Kong Island map. Despite being hot off the heels of its initial release last year, TDU: SC already has a significant update which includes the Ibiza island map, smaller in scale though it may be from TDU 2‘s Ibiza. Now with Forza Horizon 5, PlayStation racing fans have three marquee open world experiences to test out the world’s fastest and most desirable cars around in.

Kart racing fans have their share of quality games to choose from too, even if Mario Kart isn’t one of them. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a frenetic and fun Mario Kart alternative that uses its PlayStation branded IP to great effect. Team Sonic Racing and the upcoming Sonic Racing Crossworlds provide that same flavor of kart racing fun that the very best in the genre are known for. And then there’s the plethora of third-party arcade racers on PS5. Need for Speed has been oddly silent about a new entry, but NFS Unbound comes highly recommended if you’re into cop chases and real-life car brands with some of the most impressive exhaust sounds in gaming. Hot Wheels Unleashed 1 and 2 are also a ton of fun with the custom track creation and satisfying physics (which even let you fly off the track).

PlayStation’s racing ecosystem is perhaps the strongest in gaming at the moment. The prospect of other Microsoft exclusive racers like Forza Motorsport coming to PlayStation is now highly likely. Sony racing fans now have their pick of Xbox and PS games racing titles to choose from. And what’s more, there’s not a single racing genre underrepresented on PS5. I just wish there would be less of an emphasis on microtransactions and season passes with today’s racing games, but that is an industry-wide issue that exists regardless of console ecosystem. Between their pick of GT7, Assetto Corsa, Forza Horizon 5, The Crew Motorfest, TDU Solar Crown and a wide array of arcade racers, PlayStation players have a veritable buffet of fun driving games to enjoy.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As the name indicates, Rally Adventure is all about rally racing, from off-road tracks in the dirt to races spanning the region. It offers some 38 miles (61 kilometers) of roads to navigate with inclines and jumps. The expansion also has several new racing events, as players join three rally teams and compete in Horizon Races and Horizon Rally stages.

Further adding to the realism is the Horizon Rally Helicopter, which provides callouts from your co-driver. If that weren’t enough, there are new rally parts and body kits, an anti-lag system, launch control as a new driving assist option, and 15 new punk rock songs. For more details, check out our review here.

#FH5Rally is out now! Get the full Expansion here as part of the Premium Add-Ons Bundle! https://t.co/Xv1N2YzdKr pic.twitter.com/VctpG9dv3G

— Forza Horizon (@ForzaHorizon) March 29, 2023

In Rally Adventure, you’re dropped into a new open world map- Sierra Nueva, a location that’s tailor made to accentuate the expansion’s sole focus, which, as the expansion’s name implies, is rally racing. There’s plenty of dusty trails, muddy off-road tracks, and rolling sand dunes. Much like Hot Wheels’ map being populated by a plethora of straights, loops, and more, Rally Adventure’s roads are all smartly designed around hairpin turns, bumpy trails, and water features to splash in and out of.

"Rally Adventure feels very much like an extension of the base experience, but though it lacks the flair and uniqueness of the incredible Hot Wheels expansion, it still manages to deliver an absolute blast of a racing experience, proving yet again that the series’ core strengths are still as compelling as they have ever been."

Where the environments themselves are concerned, there’s decent variety on offer here. With a massive abandoned quarry, small towns, a desert, a forest full of palm trees, and more, Rally Adventure exhibits the same environmental variety that Mexico did in Forza Horizon 5’s base experience. By its very nature, it doesn’t boast the sort of bombastic visual splendour of the Hot Wheels expansion and ends up falling into the “more of the same” category, but though it’ll be familiar to anyone who’s clocked a decent amount of hours into the base game, more of a good thing is certainly nothing to scoff at in this case.

The racing events themselves that the expansion offers up are also predictably enjoyable. The vast majority of events come in two varieties that players can freely choose between- you can either participate in a regular race against opponents, or you can make it a rally event where your goal is to pass through all of the splitgates quicker than others who have raced on that track. Rally Adventure is, of course, all about rallying, so that was what I went with the majority of the time, and it proved to be a fun experience that sufficiently set it apart from what Forza Horizon 5 has to offer for the most part. In particular, racing through rally events with the driving line turned off – which is what the game recommends as well – made each of them a blast to play through, and paying close attention to my co-driver’s notes while navigating a track’s twists and turns lent a very different flavour to the proceedings.

Whether or not I enjoyed it as much as regular racing events in Forza Horizon 5 or its Hot Wheels expansion is a different question. This is obviously something that’s going to depend on your personal tastes. For fans of rally racing, Rally Adventure’s events will bring plenty of enjoyment, but for those who play Forza Horizon for its high-speed thrills, like I do, mileage my vary. That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time racing through the expansion’s immaculately crafted rally tracks and watching my car get caked in mud and dirt – I absolutely did – but personally, I prefer regular races more. There is, of course, the option to make every event a race, but given the fact that the tracks are specifically designed with rallying in mind, that just doesn’t deliver the same adrenaline-fueled high-speed racing action.

"Racing through rally events with the driving line turned off – which is what the game recommends as well – made each of them a blast to play through, and paying close attention to my co-driver’s notes while navigating a track’s twists and turns lent a very different flavour to the proceedings."

Structurally, Rally Adventure feels a little bit restrictive, which was an issue with the Hot Wheels expansion as well. After you’re done with the introductory events, the expansion lets you choose between three different teams, each specializing in a different kind of rally racing, but once you select a team, you’re locked into that choice. Participating in (and winning) activities and events scattered throughout the map does contribute towards unlocking the other two teams as well, but the progression feels much more linear than the open-ended nature of Forza Horizon 5’s base experience, where you were free to do pretty much whatever you wanted right from the start. Thankfully, progression is still pretty quickly paced, so you never feel like you’re stuck on a single type of activity for too long, and the expansion constantly keeps unlocking new activities for you to tackle even within a single team.

Outside of its main racing activities, where its open world is concerned, Rally Adventure packs in a lot of content that’ll be very familiar to fans of the base game, or even the series at large, with things such as danger signs, speed zones, and drift zones, while each of the three teams also has smashable objects scattered throughout the open world, which are effectively reskinned versions of bonus boards. This was an issue with Hot Wheels as well, but I am a little disappointed in these activities. Rather than being reskinned and reused versions of activities from the base game, I would have preferred activities that were built specifically around the expansion’s unique hook and mechanics, and there’s definitely a feeling of diminishing returns here that’s hard to shake. Is aimlessly driving around in the open world still fun? Absolutely it is, especially when you’re leaving a trail of wreckage in your wake as you zip through an entirely smashable palm forest, but it’s undeniable that it mimics the base experience a bit too much.

"Taken as a whole, Rally Adventure is a meaty, varied, and enjoyable package. If you’re sticking only to the critical path, you can blast through it in anywhere between four to six hours, but if you take it upon yourself to engage in all of its side activities, discover all of its roads and areas, get behind the wheel in all ten of its new cars, and win every single one of its events, that can easily to climb to 10 hours or more."

That said, taken as a whole, Rally Adventure is a meaty, varied, and enjoyable package. If you’re sticking only to the critical path, you can blast through it in anywhere between four to six hours, but if you take it upon yourself to engage in all of its side activities, discover all of its roads and areas, get behind the wheel in all ten of its new cars, and win every single one of its events, that can easily to climb to 10 hours or more. And given how fundamentally fun the mechanics of Forza Horizon 5 are, you know that the vast majority of that is going to be an enjoyable experience.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

PREMISE

Where the Hot Wheels expansion was about loops and vibrant and colourful tracks flying high up in the air, Rally Adventure, as its name suggests, will turn its attention first and foremost to rally racing events. Players will be participating in a new Horizon Festival that will see you taking your roster of vehicles through a variety of races across dirt and dust and off-roading romps, with a co-driver guiding you through to the finish line.

OPEN WORLD DETAILS

As you’d expect Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure will also add a completely new open world map for players to drive through, as tends to be the case with every large scale Forza Horizon DLC. This time, we’ll be headed to Sierra Nueva, a land that Playground Games has crafted for the sole purpose of off-road racing. As is expected from the series at this point, Sierra Nueva is also going to have plenty of variety in the environments that it encapsulates, with the developer promising “rich vegetation, incredible vistas, and a great mix of asphalt, dirt and deformable sand roads.” The full map has also been revealed, and while we don’t know exactly what its size will be, it does seem like there’s going to be plenty of real estate for players to race through- though obviously, this being an expansion, you shouldn’t expect anything on the same level as the base game’s Mexico, where size is concerned. How large Sierra Nueva is in comparison to the Hot Wheels map remains to be seen.

LOCATIONS

Details have also been revealed on a few of the main locations that will be found in the open world of Sierra Nueva, and again, it looks like there’s going to be plenty of variety on offer here. There’s Pueblo Artza, a quaint town surrounded by rock formations and surrounded by tall, lush hills. Then there’s Desert Gorge, a canyon characterized by technical, swirling roads, a wood bridge, and more. The area known as Green Hills, meanwhile has plenty of untamed open spaces with a mixture of vibrant plant life and water features, making for some pretty muddy driving. Then there’s Palm Forest, which is exactly what its name suggests, and has a stream, a waterfall, and a multitude of palm trees, every single one of which can be smashed through. There’s the Abandoned Quarry, where players will get plenty of opportunities to perform some high flying stunts. Finally, there are the Rugged Dunes, a desert area with fully deformable sand roads, pre-deformed tire tracks, a large crater, and, as per Playground Games, some “hidden” surprises.

CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE

Those who have experience with Forza Horizon 5 will find the Rally Adventure campaign’s structure pretty familiar. To start things off, players will sign up with one of three teams- the Horizon Raptors, focused on dirt racing and off-road events, led by Alex; the Apex Predators, who are all about technical and high speed asphalt rally races and are led by Alejandra; and the Grit Reapers, who are led by Ramiro and focus primarily on street style night races. Players will compete in eight races and some PR stunts in each team, before taking on each of their team leaders, which will ultimately unlock a special Goliath route.

EVENTS

Forza Horizon games and expansions are pretty much always guaranteed to come with a bevy of content, and it seems like Playground Games is intent on one-upping itself with Rally Adventure, which, according to the developer, has more racing events than any other Forza Horizon expansion to date (though the exact number hasn’t been confirmed). These will span dirt races, night races, asphalt races, point to point Horizon Rally races, multi-car Horizon events, and more. For each event, you’ll receive support from a co-driver who’ll follow the action from a helicopter that’ll be following you. At nighttime, the helicopter will also use a massive flashlight to light the road ahead for you.

VEHICLES

Including the base game, all of the DLC, and the Hot Wheels expansion, Forza Horizon 5 currently boasts a massive roster of over over 650 vehicles, and Rally Adventure will be adding another ten cars to that list, all of which, as you might expect, will be catered to the style of racing that is featured most prominently in this expansion. The ten cars being added to the roster with Rally Adventure are the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum, the 1973 Hoonigan Volkswagen Baja Beetle Class 5/1600 ‘Scumbug’, the 2001 Ford #4 Ford Focus RS, the 2022 Alumicraft #6165 Trick Truck, the 2021 Polaris RZR Pro XP Factory Racing Limited Edition, the 2020 Jimco #179 Hammerhead Class 1, the 2019 Jimco #240 Fastball Racing Spec Trophy Truck, the 2019 Casey Currie Motorsports #4402 Ultra 4 ‘Trophy Jeep’, the 2021 RJ Anderson #37 Polaris RZR Pro 4 Truck, and the 2021 Alumicraft #122 Class 1 Buggy.

CUSTOMIZATION

Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure will, of course, also allow players to customize and finetune their vehicles in a number of ways, including some new features, some of which Playground Games has briefly detailed. You can expect new rally parts and an anti-lag system with flame effects and audio effects, while launch control has also been added as a new assist for all cars to help you get a better start to your races.

HUD

New HUD elements will also be visible on the screen in Rally Adventure during events, including a pop-up at each timed splitgate to let you know if you have improved, lost, or maintained positions, new on-screen icons for notes called out by your co-driver, and a mini leaderboard where you’ll be able to see your and your competitors’ positions in the race. Those who want to turn these HUD elements off will have the option to do so, while the expansion will also let players turn off the driving line in Horizon Rally events for a more authentic rally racing experience.

EVENTLAB

EventLab is a part of the Forza Horizon experience that players often pour a massive amount of time into, and it’s an area where, as you’d expect, Rally Adventure is bringing some new things to the table. A new collection of EventLab props will be included in the expansion, including flags, civilian vehicles, branded barriers, and more. All of these new props and objects will be available to all Forza Horizon players, regardless of whether or not you have the expansion.

PRICE

And how much exactly will Rally Adventure cost? Like the Hot Wheels expansion, Rally Adventure is priced at a price of $19.99- and also like Hot Wheels, it’s not included with Game Pass. In addition to being available as a standalone purchase, it’s also included in the Forza Horizon 5 Premium Add-ons Bundle, the Premium Edition, and the Expansions Bundle.

Taking to Twitter, the developer recently revealed the full open world map of Sierra Nueva, the setting of Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure. Playground Games has previously confirmed that the new setting will feature a number of notable locations, including crates, and abandoned quarry, desert tracks, and an entirely smashable palm forest, all of which will serve as the backdrop for a new rally-themed outing. Check out the map below to get a glimpse of all of that and more.

Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure is due out for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC on March 29. The list of the expansion’s ten new cars was also recent revealed- read more on that through here.

That's a lot of rally racing. Think you're up for it? #FH5Rally pic.twitter.com/HkXDCjfQkW

— Forza Horizon (@ForzaHorizon) March 3, 2023

Of course, in addition to all that, the expansion will also be adding 10 new vehicles to the game’s already massive roster of over 650 vehicles, and Playground Games has revealed what those new cars will be in a blog post published on the official Forza website. The full car list for the DLC is as follows:

• 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum
• 1973 Hoonigan Volkswagen Baja Beetle Class 5/1600 ‘Scumbug’
• 2001 Ford #4 Ford Focus RS
• 2022 Alumicraft #6165 Trick Truck
• 2021 Polaris RZR Pro XP Factory Racing Limited Edition
• 2020 Jimco #179 Hammerhead Class 1
• 2019 Jimco #240 Fastball Racing Spec Trophy Truck
• 2019 Casey Currie Motorsports #4402 Ultra 4 ‘Trophy Jeep’
• 2021 RJ Anderson #37 Polaris RZR Pro 4 Truck
• 2021 Alumicraft #122 Class 1 Buggy

Meanwhile, the developer has also revealed plenty of new screenshots that showcase the expansion’s new open world setting and the aforementioned new vehicles. Check them out below.

Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure will launch on March 29 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.

Set in the rugged new location known as Sierra Nueva, players will drive over massive dust trails and deformable sand roads while exploring several new locations, including “dramatic” craters, an abandoned quarry, and an entirely smashable palm forest.

Players can also expect 10 new vehicles to join the game’s roster, not to mention a new career built around routes in Horizon Rally and Horizon Races events, with three rally teams available to join. Check out the trailer below for your first look at the expansion.

Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure is set to launch for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC on March 29. If it’s anywhere near as good as the Hot Wheels expansion was, we’re probably going to be in for a treat.