The roar of a V8 engine echoes across a canyon carved not from stone, but from a vibrant, impossible orange plastic. A loop-de-loop stands defiantly against a simulated Mexican sky, a titanic structure that defies every law of physics you learned from years of conventional racing games. This is the world of Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels, an expansion that doesn’t just add new cars or a new map; it surgically removes the shackles of reality and injects pure, unadulterated, child-like joy directly into the heart of Playground Games’ acclaimed open-world racer. To score its fun factor is to measure the width of a grin, the intensity of a laugh, and the sheer, unbridled thrill of velocity unleashed.
From the moment your driver is air-dropped onto the new island, the tone is set. The familiar Horizon festival aesthetic is reimagined through a lens of childhood fantasy. The tracks are bright orange and electric blue, snapping together with the iconic C-clamps of the toy sets. The environment is a breathtaking diorama of impossible geography: serpentine tracks wind through lush jungles, over frozen glaciers, across arid deserts, and around the caldera of an active volcano, all interconnected by a network of plastic and fantasy. It’s a masterclass in environmental design, creating a cohesive world that feels both part of Mexico and entirely separate—a pocket dimension where Hot Wheels rules supreme.
The core of the Hot Wheels experience, and the primary source of its immense fun, is the complete reinvention of driving dynamics. The new tracks are the star. This isn’t just driving on roads; it’s piloting a missile on a rollercoaster designed by a sugar-fueled genius. The loops, corkscrews, half-pipes, and massive banked curves demand a new approach. Gravity becomes your frenemy. In a loop, you must maintain enough speed to avoid plummeting into the abyss, feeling a genuine pull in your gut as you crest the top. On the half-pipes, you learn to use the vertical walls to scrub off speed or set up for a perfectly executed transition, a skill that feels immensely rewarding to master.
The new mechanics are brilliantly implemented. The "Orange" tracks provide immense grip, allowing you to take those banked curves at ludicrous speeds you’d never dare attempt on tarmac. The "Blue" tracks are the ice of this new world—frictionless and treacherous, requiring delicate throttle control to avoid spinning out into the skybox. Then there are the magnetic tracks, which lock your car in place, allowing for insane inversions and providing a surreal, weightless sensation as you defy gravity itself. The learning curve is steep but incredibly satisfying. The moment it all clicks, and you’re threading a 300mph supercar through a series of alternating orange and blue corkscrews without a single scrape, is a peak gaming thrill few other experiences can match.
This DLC is a love letter to speed. The tracks are designed to facilitate and celebrate velocity. Long straights are punctuated by massive boost pads that launch you forward, and the elaborate layouts are built to maintain momentum. You’ll find yourself regularly breaking the 270mph (435 km/h) barrier, speeds that feel genuinely terrifying and exhilarating on these precarious plastic pathways. The sensation of hitting a booster at the end of a straight, rocketing up a near-vertical incline, and catching air off the top is a constant adrenaline rush. It taps into the fundamental fantasy of Hot Wheels: the dream of taking these miniature cars and sending them flying in a glorious, chaotic arc.
The car list is a perfect curation of fantasy and reality. While you can bring any car from your main-game garage, the expansion wisely introduces a selection of 10 new vehicles, most of which are iconic Hot Wheels originals. Getting behind the wheel of the twin-jet-engine 2012 Hot Wheels Bad to the Blade or the sleek 2000 Hot Wheels Deora II is a nostalgia trip of the highest order. These aren’t just reskins; they are meticulously detailed, fully realized vehicles that feel unique and powerful. The inclusion of extreme machines like the 2021 Hennessey Venom F5 and the 2020 Formula Drift #151 Toyota GR Supra ensures there are meta-relevant choices, but the real joy is experiencing the fantasy cars in the world they were born for.
The progression system is classic Horizon: accessible and rewarding. You start with a low-class car and must earn medals in events to unlock new license classes and eventually gain access to the highest-tier, gravity-defying Goliath circuit. It’s a satisfying journey that forces you to adapt to the new physics gradually. The new Danger Sign and Speed Trap events are perfectly suited to the environment, often launching you off a loop or through a series of boosters to achieve a top-speed target.
If there is a minor critique to the fun factor, it’s that the sheer predictability of the perfectly grippy orange tracks can, after many hours, remove some of the challenge that defines the base game's road racing. The skill becomes less about car control on a slippery surface and more about finding the perfect racing line on what is essentially a guided track. However, this is a deliberate design choice to facilitate the fantasy, not an oversight. The challenge comes from the track layouts themselves—the timing of your boosts, the management of your speed through loops, and the precise transitions between surfaces.
In conclusion, scoring the fun factor of the Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels expansion is a simple task. It is a resounding, explosive, gravity-defying 10/10. It succeeds not by being a complex simulation, but by being a perfect execution of a fantastical concept. It understands the assignment completely: deliver joy, speed, and wonder. It rekindles the feeling of being a kid on the floor, imagining the incredible stunts your little car could do. Playground Games has bottled that lightning, scaled it up to a breathtakingly beautiful and massive playset, and given us the keys. It is, without a doubt, one of the most purely enjoyable pieces of downloadable content ever created—a triumphant celebration of play that reminds us why we fell in love with racing games in the first place.
