Forza Horizon 6: First Impressions

I don’t buy many games at release these days and of those I do, very few am I willing to pay for ‘premium’ editions. But, in the case of Forza Horizon 6, after absolutely loving the previous Forza Horizon 5 and its post release content with nearly 200 hours clocked on Steam, I figured – why the hell not?

Forza Horizon 6 is bigger, better looking, better feeling to play and features an absolutely fantastic map of Japan to explore. In fact, a significant chunk of my current 20 or so hours with the game has just been spent driving around and seeing all there is to see in each region of the map. The map is large, yet feels densely packed with a variety of terrain and features.

You might think each region is its own ‘island’ as far as terrain goes, but you’d be wrong. Every single region is like a varied, densely packed little map in its own right. It’s one of several aspects of Forza Horizon 6 that just feels so effortlessly perfect. But it likely wasn’t effortless at all – clearly a hell of a lot of design work went into this map to make sure that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’re going to love every second of it.

Because it’s not just an open world map – it’s race tracks. Road racing, street racing, dirt racing, cross country – the map had to facilitate not only a fantastic open world environment to explore, but also accommodate dozens of varied and engaging race tracks. The fact it does this and does it so well is pretty damn impressive, and probably not as appreciated as it should be because – as I said – it just all feels so effortless.

Forza Horizon 6 just oozes quality. It’s so polished and smooth and so packed with content that you might not know where to even start. But that’s what I like about this new (or old, I suppose if you’ve played some of the previous Forza games before 5 – I haven’t) wristband system that slowly unlocks new events as you progress. It also restricts many early races to specific car grades or classes.

Some might find this too restrictive, but it serves the purpose of preparing you to build up a varied garage of vehicles that are each tuned at different levels and serve different needs. And I feel like that’s even more important in Forza Horizon 6 than I did in 5 because compared to Forza 5, Forza Horizon 6 feels like it leans more heavily into the ‘sim’ part of ‘simcade’.

You really feel the difference in terrain and road surfaces. You really notice the difference in grip and tyre type. You come to see how some races favour cars turned for handling and acceleration and others for speed. There have been races where I struggled to finish within the top 6, only to make a few key adjustments to my car set up and then immediately breeze through the race on my second try.

Proper tuning and car parts for the tracks never quite felt as important in Forza Horizon 5 as it does so here, particularly once you start bumping up the difficulty. I started on Average but have since progressed to Expert where, provided my car is properly tuned I can still win fairly comfortably. That said, there are still odd tracks where the difficulty spikes wildly at times which was also a problem in Forza 5, although I’m sure they’ll all be balanced more over time.

Now, this is only a first impressions post, so I don’t want to get carried away, as tempting as it might be. But as you can probably tell, I’m already loving what I’ve played so far. The game runs absolutely beautifully. I was actually shocked at not only how good it looks but how smoothly it runs. I haven’t dared touch the new customisable ‘Estate’ feature yet – I fear I may end up spending all my time building stunt tracks rather than racing so I’m saving that for later. There’s plenty more for me to see and do. I love the little ‘Explore Japan’ tours that you can go on in particular. I should have a full review up next month – if I can drag myself away long enough to write it, of course.

Now Playing: Ghost Town (VR)

In Ghost Town you play as Edith Penrose, a psychic medium living in 1980s London on a quest to find her missing (and irritatingly whiny) brother. It’s a VR puzzle adventure game by the same developers of The Room VR which I reviewed back in 2021. Ghost Town does feel like a good step up, but not quite the leap I was hoping for.

Like The Room, Ghost Town is a very visually impressive VR game, but unlike The Room, it also offers a full free range of movement within its environments. The environments may be small, but they’re packed with detail and fun to explore. This is also a more narrative and character driven experience than The Room.

In that game, the story was told purely through written letters found within the world. Ghost Town features a voiced protagonist and several supporting characters – including several ghosts you’ll encounter as you progress. Edith is a medium who specialises in freeing trapped souls and you do this by locating items of power that are keeping them tethered to the physical realm.

Or at least, that’s a part of what you do, because the focus of the story is actually finding your lost brother and investigating a mysterious cult. Your adventure takes you through several varied locations, each of which has several puzzles to solve. The puzzles are good, but nothing super challenging, although there is a hint system available if you do get stuck.

As you’d expect in a VR game, the puzzles are very tactile and interactive, often featuring curious mechanisms to play with. There’s a nice mix of puzzles too, each level offering something a little different. And it’s a very polished game. It runs smoothly, looks great and maintains a persistent quality throughout.

So why do I feel it’s not quite the leap I was hoping for? Because like The Room VR, it’s a very short and ultimately unsatisfying experience. I always say games should be ‘as long as they need to be’ and like The Room, Ghost Town ends on a rather abrupt note that feels a little hastily cobbled together. As much as I’d enjoyed the game – and I’d enjoyed I quite a lot – I was left with a rather disappointing ‘is that all?’ feeling.

I completed Ghost Town in about three and a half hours and good portion of that is just wandering the environments or talking to other characters. The puzzle aspect only really lasts a few hours at most. Ghost Town really needed a few more levels to play with, perhaps just focused on Edith’s day job before we really get stuck into the hunt for her brother.

That said, I still had a very good time with Ghost Town and I’d still recommend picking it up on sale.

7/10

Coral Island: First Impressions

Coral Island is like playing a more thirsty version of Stardew Valley. You create your character who returns to their home town of Starlet on Coral Island to take over an old, run down farm. You begin with some basic tools and a handful of seeds but over time, you’ll clear the land, expand your plots, craft materials and new tools and reinvest what you earn so you can earn even more next season.

There’s a ‘dungeon’ of sorts where you fight your way down level by level to mine more rare materials. And there’s a town full of people to get to know, befriend and potentially ‘romance’ by giving them shit they like. There’s even an evil corporation threatening to muscle in on the little local economy. So far, so unoriginal.

What sets Coral Island apart is, primarily, the tropical island setting. There’s a big emphasis on cleaning up the island and surrounding ocean after a recent oil spill and you’re tasked with protecting and healing the land and water. And there’s scuba diving! In fact, there’s a whole underwater map to explore and mer-folk to meet and potentially f**k! I’ve not progressed far enough to meet them yet at the time of writing though.

I figured I’d knock out a first impressions post for this one because it’s going to take some time to play through and I’ll likely be dipping in and out of it around other stuff. So far though, I’m having fun with it! As a fan of Stardew Valley, Coral Island scratches the same itch but it does offer its own unique twist.

Coral Island is an island full of hot singles looking to hook up and that’s undoubtedly one of its main selling / marketing points. I’m more interested in the business side of things but even I can’t deny how hot everyone is. I’d say it’s like Love Island, but with far less Turkey Teeth and fake tan. Also, these people can actually string a coherent sentence together so maybe it’s nothing like Love Island at all.

Everyone has their own routines depending upon the season and their own preferences regarding gifts. I can’t say I’ve really bothered with that stuff yet because I’m more focused on my farm right now, but I’m sure I’ll give it a try later. I’m curious if it works the same as Stardew whereby you just keep giving someone gifts until you get married and have kids.

Seriously, why do these games always just go straight from friend to marriage? On an island full of single hotties, you’d think casual hook ups would be pretty common? Why can’t I bang my way across the entire island? I am joking – mostly.

Now Playing: Terran Armada (DLC)

Terran Armada is a new DLC for Starfield (review), my personal Game of 2023 with more than 480 hours now clocked exploring the Settled Systems. Compared to the Shattered Space expansion of 2024 (review), Terran Armada offers substantially less content, but this is reflected in the £8.99 RRP. And because I owned the Premium Edition of Starfield – I didn’t have to pay anything at all. Thanks, Todd!

As someone who already enjoyed what Starfield offered, I wasn’t looking for this DLC or the accompanying Free Lanes Update (more on that later) to ‘win me over’ or ‘fix Starfield’ or be ‘Starfield 2.0’ which was always a ridiculous notion given that Cyberpunk 2.0 – whilst an impressive update – was primarily built upon months of previous fixes, improvements and additions. Things that, for those paying attention, Starfield has steadily been receiving since release.

The big addition with Free Lanes is ‘Cruise Mode’ which gives you the option to fly seamlessly (more or less – they just disguised the load more cleverly) within a star system. It’s a nice addition and there are fun new points of interest to discover in the void between worlds. It’s hardly game changing, but if you value immersion it’s good to have.

Aside from Cruise mode, there’s also the aforementioned new points of interest, and it appears they’ve also tweaked the generation algorithm so they don’t repeat quite so frequently. There’s a new resource (X-Tech) for upgrading high level gear, new side quests (some really good ones too!), action figures to collect (yes, I will obsessively try to find them all!), new ship modules, a new companion (although not Huong Le!). Oh, and some welcome changes to how you enhance your Starborn abilities.

It’s all Good Stuff and it makes Starfield an even better game in my eyes and one I’m sure I’ll continue to sink time into. But this review isn’t about the free update, but the paid DLC, so let’s focus on that because the question is – is it worth the price? If, like me, you’re a fan of Starfield then the short answer would be – yes. The long answer? That would be a – yes, but – kind of situation.

In Terran Armada you seek to thwart a mysterious invading force from dominating the Settled Systems. I say ‘mysterious’ but you discover the truth behind the Armada fairly early into the DLC. And once you do, there are only a handful of missions to complete in order to stop them.

The bespoke missions – what few there are – are all pretty good. I can’t say I cared for the two ‘collect three of X’ missions that were used to pad out the meagre content though! Because that’s the real problem with Terran Armada – it’s far too short. Yes, that’s reflected in the price, but I think they could have done a lot more with this concept, to truly make it a compelling late game challenge for Starfield.

The idea is that even after finishing the main missions, you can still have Armada ‘incursions’ trigger that are randomised, high level encounters you can farm for loot and experience. But is that all this DLC is really there to facilitate?

Given that the Armada are meant to be invading, they sure do like to ‘invade’ mostly empty systems in bumf**k nowhere. What if the initial attacks were just a distraction to lure the UC Fleet away from the core worlds?

What if, using this distraction, the Armada fleet suddenly jumped in and seized Mars? Using the Sol system as the staging ground for an attack on New Atlantis? What if, with the bulk of its fleet too far out to arrive in time, the UC needed to persuade a reluctant Freestar Collective to send help?

And maybe the player could play a role in that? What if the DLC was about building an alliance to stop the Armada? What if they sent an assassination team to MAST targeting the UC President and you have to help fight them off? What if, when the Armada arrives above New Atlantis, you and the outnumbered UC fleet are on the back foot until, unexpectedly, Freestar ships arrive to break the siege and force the Armada to retreat?

What if you get captured by the Armada? What if you have to escape from one of their ships? What if you have to negotiate with their leader? What if there was a dynamic aspect to the invasion and settlements could fall into Armada hands and change visually to reflect this – banners, security guards replaced by Terran robots etc.

Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I hate seeing a concept like this wasted so badly. Because Terran Armada is great conceptually but very poorly executed. There’s so many ‘what if?’ aspects to it. So many ways it could have offered a truly substantial and exciting piece of content.

I don’t care that it’s cheap or even – in my case – free! I’d have gladly paid double the price to receive a truly meaningful, fleshed out and exciting late game expansion. But that’s not what Terran Armada is and that’s a damn shame. I’m not going to review what I want Terran Armada to be. I’m going to review what it is. And overall – it’s just fine. It’s okay. It’s decent content for the price if you need to pay for it. But it could have been so, so much more.

6/10

Suburban Killbot Year 14

The theme of this yearly update is – who the f**k actually reads this blog? I looked at my blog analytics recently and noticed something strange. For the first ten years – yes TEN years – of this blog, my views were pretty much a flat line with around 2 to 3 thousand views at most across an entire year. But then, in 2023, that changed. My views began to spike to about 20 thousand that year, followed by about thirty thousand in 2024 and leaping to sixty thousand in 2025.

And this year so far? I’m already at around 180 thousand views with nearly 70 thousand of those in the last 30 days! I have no idea why this is, and the Blogger stats page isn’t particularly detailed, so I’ve set up a Google Analytics page to try digging deeper to find out! I’m guessing it’s bots. It’s got to be bots!

Next up: My updated yearly mosaic of my top rated games! I keep saying I need to cut this down to just the 9/10 or above games, but maybe next year, eh?

Now Playing: Doom: The Dark Ages

There are games that I find hard to review because I don’t really have much to say about them. Doom: The Dark Ages is one such game. It’s another absolutely fantastic first person shooter from id Software and a worthy sequel (well, actually a prequel) to the absolutely fantastic Doom (2016) and even more fantastic Doom Eternal.

When I like a game but don’t love it, when I’m frustrated by a game, when I feel a game is great but has many flaws, when I feel a game has untapped potential – I have so much more to say. But Doom: The Dark Ages is just so . . . spotless. It’s so effortlessly great. From gameplay, to visuals, to audio. It’s so perfectly polished, so technically proficient and so mechanically sound that I’m struggling to find anything to criticise.

Doom Eternal was absolute peak – I loved it. But I didn’t want The Dark Ages to just be more Eternal. The amazing thing about this new Doom trilogy is just how differently each of the games feel to play, yet they all retain a core moment to moment structure. I’ve seen a general perception that Eternal was fast and The Dark Ages is slow. And whilst it’s true that TDA is generally slower than Eternal (at least on the default speed settings – more on that later) it’s still pretty damn fast and just as intense.

The real difference here is mobility – Eternal featured a movement system that was very fluid and agile. In TDA, everything feels heavier – your movement, your weapons – you really feel the weight. And that means you take a different approach to combat. Like 2016 and Eternal, TDA is still a game of chaining together kills, one demon to the next – that’s the core moment to moment gameplay structure I was talking about.

But in TDA, you have to be a little more considered and thoughtful about your positioning and approach. Because you’re not as agile, you can’t quickly dodge or manoeuvre when surrounded so you’ll generally want to keep everything in front of you and tackle it head on. You do have a shield dash (and bash!) ability that does give you a quick ‘out’ if you need it, but once again, like the previous games, TDA encourages you to keep on killing because that’s what keeps you alive, your attacks providing a steady stream of health, ammo and armour.

If you’re low on health, trying to dash away to find some is less effective than fighting even harder and killing more demons. And it’s so satisfying being only a single hit away from death, only to trigger a glory kill and push your health back up just enough so you can keep going. Because like the Doom Slayer himself, you just Refuse. To. Die.

Your weapon selection is great – a nice mix of range and close quarters with nearly every weapon featuring an alternative fire mode that’s essentially a new weapon in and of itself. Each weapon can also be upgraded and tweaked with different modifiers. All of them are super fun to use and all of them are viable regardless of the enemy.

Unlike Eternal where weapon switching was a necessity, TDA gives you absolute freedom to tackle your foes with whatever weapon or modifiers you prefer. That’s not to say you won’t discover that some weapons are more effective against certain foes or within certain scenarios than others, but overall, they all get the job done.

You also have three melee options each of which provide different bonuses and your shield runes which also apply different modifiers to your parries. Yes – parries! Because TDA wants you to tackle foes head on you need to be able to block but also parry attacks with your (chainsaw!) shield. Your shield can also be thrown, lodging in an enemy and shredding them apart!

All combined, the combat system is gloriously fun, violent and provides exactly the kind of ‘unstoppable force’ power fantasy playing as the Doom Slayer should. Between bouts of combat you’ll have a few quieter moments in which to explore the level and find various ‘hidden’ collectibles (toys / weapon skins / codex entries) and upgrade materials (gold / rubies / crystals). I say ‘Hidden’ because they’re all clearly marked on your map – you just need to figure out how to reach them.

I played TDA on the ‘Nightmare’ difficulty but what’s interesting about TDA is how customisable the game is with regard to its gameplay. After playing through about nine chapters, I felt like Nightmare was slightly too punishing for me, but that the next difficulty down was far too easy. So what did I do? I tweaked it! I simply lowered the ‘damage taken’ slider from 250% to 200%. And that little tweak gave me the perfect sweet spot that felt just right for me.

And you can modify practically everything – parry window, taken taken / damage dealt, game speed, enemy aggression . . . you can make TDA as fast, slow, hard or easy as you like. Whilst I still prefer more clearly defined (and balanced) difficulty modes, I do appreciate just how personalised you can tailor your experience here.

If I did have one nitpick about The Dark Ages it would be that it is, perhaps, just slightly too long. There are 22 chapters to complete, and I feel like you could cut two of these and you’d have a better paced experience. The two chapters in question are ‘Siege – Part 1’ and ‘Belly of the Beast’. Siege – Part 1 features the largest open level in the game but it’s very much a case of ‘bigger isn’t always better’. There’s too much empty space to traverse and it drags on too long.

Belly of the Beast on the other hand is what you might call a ‘detour’ chapter towards the very end. It’s fun for sure, but it doesn’t feel like anything more than an unnecessary road block to your progress that interrupts the pace of the main campaign. I feel like the game could cut those two levels and you wouldn’t really miss out on anything but you would have a slightly better paced overall experience.

The Dark Ages also features a few levels in which you get to control an Atlan – think a giant mech like out of Pacific Rim. These are fairly short, but fun little diversions to mix up the gameplay. There are also levels where you’ll have access to a dragon you can ride, although it’s primarily used to carry the slayer from one combat zone to another. It’s another fun little addition that adds some variety to your progression but, like the Atlan sections, sensibly doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Visually, TDA looks fantastic and it ran incredibly smoothly for me, even with full path racing enabled. The music is great, but maybe not quite on par with the previous games. There’s also more story to this game in the form of cut scenes and different characters but the scenes are all very short and even if it is, admittedly, a bit flat, I still had fun with it.

Well, look at that – turns out I had more to say about Doom: The Dark Ages than I thought, eh? So I guess all that’s left is to determine if I like it more or less than Eternal. It’s a tricky one, because they do both feel so different to play but overall, I probably still rank Eternal as my favourite, with Dark Ages a close second and 2016 a very close third. But honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of them if you want to play a top tier first person shooter.

9/10