Preston Plourd

A very wise man once said that things get better with age, and the Forza Horizon series is no exception.  Forza Horizon 6 has arrived on PC and the Xbox Series consoles, and as evidenced by the sales and high review scores, this is an absolutely incredible open-world racer that any kind of auto fan can enjoy.  But what makes it so awesome, you might ask? Well, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to talk about it in the way that I know how.

Like the previous games in this series, Forza Horizon tasks you with building a massive collection of cars and winning a lot of events in a big street racing festival.  And at the request of many fans, this festival takes place in Japan this time around.  If you follow street racing manga and anime, you’ll understand why this series’ community has been requesting this so much.

If you’ve played a Forza Horizon game before, you know what kinds of contests to expect — Circuit races, point-to-point races, drift competitions, time attack, hide-and-seek, you get the idea.  And because the setting is in Japan, you can also race in touge races, albeit without Eurobeat music in the background.   You also have the option of working for a food delivery service if you want some more credits.

The game has very good graphics just like the previous Forza Horizon games, and the folks at Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios did an admirable job at making this depiction of Japan look as realistic as possible.  Another part of the game that looks spectacular is, of course, the car models. On the subject of car models, there are over 550 cars, with more coming via paid DLC.

The Forza franchise has a history of great sounds, and that continues in this game with awesome engine noises and satisfactory voice-acting.  Also, just like other open-world games that have racing in them, the soundtrack is divided into multiple radio stations.  My favorite station is Horizon XS, which features rock and metal artists like Rise Against, A Day to Remember, Turnstile, and Linkin Park to name a few.

There are many things to do in this game if you’re playing alone, but if you’re in need for some online fun, Forza Horizon 6 has the usual options that you’d expect from Forza multiplayer.  I haven’t played much of it online yet, but from what I’ve played, it runs very smoothly with little to no lag.

Everyone knows that before Electronic Arts rose to sports game superstardom, companies like Konami were the go-to’s in the aforementioned genre.  Konami’s Double Dribble was a huge hit, and the company quickly looked for another sport to tackle.  Knowing that big companies like Activision had dabbled into ice hockey, Konami decided to hit the rink themselves, and thus came one of the greatest arcade hockey games in existence, the one and only Blades of Steel.

Released to the arcades in 1987 and skating onto platforms like the Nintendo Entertainment System in the years that followed, Blades of Steel may look quite simple compared to today’s hockey games, but it’s dangerously addictive thanks to its arcade DNA.  You have your basic exhibition and tournament modes, eight fictional teams, and three difficulty levels to choose from, those levels being labeled Junior, College, and Pro.  Once you hit the rink, you’ll notice the controls are both simple and tight, though controlling the goalie with the up and down buttons on the D-pad might be disorienting at first to those who are more experienced with more modern hockey games.

You know how fighting results in both teams getting penalized? Well, in Blades of Steel, that rule’s out the window.  When two players bump into each other three times in a row, a fight starts, and only the loser goes to the penalty box.

The NES version is obviously less powerful than the original arcade version, but the graphics and music of the former are still very good for a 1988 release.  The voice clips on the NES are sometimes a bit difficult to hear, but that’s forgivable.