Newcomers to digital rallying can activate a revised selection of assist features to help ease into the franchise.

The physics engine has also been updated, with improvements to aerodynamic and suspension simulation, which makes vehicles feel more accurate to their real-life counterparts. The sim now features 19 locations and environments - breaking out to over 120 rally stages to master - and 22 legendary and historical cars from Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Subaru, Toyota and more. WRC 10 improves over its predecessor with more cars, locations and ways to play, including a new 50th anniversary mode that celebrates and recreates great moments from World Rally Championship history dating back to its inception in 1973. With the Dirt series pushing deeper into the arcade end of the racing sim spectrum, I was glad when WRC 10 debuted to scratch my itch for rallying realism. Note that Forza Horizon 5 is available as part of the Xbox's Game Pass subscription. With over 500 cars to customize and modify, hundreds of miles of road and trail courses, and a large online community, if you pick up just one racing game for the Xbox, this should be it. For example, I know plenty of Forza fans who aren't great racers, but lose themselves for hours just in the photo mode or livery creator.

And players have more freedom than ever to explore only the race types, vehicle classes and elements of the game that they like. Like the previous Forza Horizon titles, Horizon 5 is a massive, open-world love letter not just to racing but to car culture and all things automotive. Thanks to Horizon 5's new dynamic weather system, players can now blast through sandstorms in the desert before traversing into dense wetlands or the top of an active volcano, sometimes all in the same mega race.

A worthy follow-up to my previous pick for the best Xbox driving game, Forza Horizon 5 moves its automotive playground to the beautiful and diverse biomes of Mexico.

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