Forza Horizon 5 on the PS5 Pro provides the best console experience

Forza Horizon 5, developed by Playground Games, has made an impactful entry on Sony's PS5 and PS5 Pro, complemented by Panic Button's skillful porting. The game offers a seamless transition from Xbox Series X to these consoles, emphasizing its open-world allure and diverse locales. A pivotal element in this port is the game's adherence to high-performance standards: it achieves 60fps in performance mode and 30fps in quality mode. The Pro version introduces slight visual enhancements, such as increased foliage density and ray-traced reflections, specifically on player vehicles in performance mode, showcasing Panic Button’s technical finesse.

The PS5 variant mirrors the Xbox Series X closely, delivering solid performance with minimal graphical discrepancies. The visuals remain virtually unchanged between the two platforms, maintaining identical foliage placements and terrain details. Oliver Mackenzie notes the absence of significant visual differences in most gameplay scenarios. The transition to PS5 marked a successful migration for the engine, which was not originally designed for PlayStation consoles, maintaining a full 4K resolution capability.

A notable feature of the PS5 Pro is its capacity to match the quality mode’s lush foliage detail at the enhanced frame rate of performance mode, an improvement over the base PS5 model. The PS5 Pro's foliage is denser and extends further into the distance, with less pop-in, enhancing visual depth in the game’s expansive environments. However, the Pro model has been flagged for a peculiar issue: activating photo mode during races in quality mode results in crashes, which could affect user experience until addressed in a patch.

The PS5 Pro edition sets itself apart with ray-traced reflections, significantly affecting the visual portrayal of the player’s vehicle. Reflection details can be seen in mirrors or chrome surfaces, adding realism, although opposing vehicles do not share this enhancement. The base PS5 shares a similar visual setup in quality mode, but lacks the real-time ray tracing applied during active gameplay.

Forza Horizon 5's PS5 release is a high-quality execution, meeting the graphical and performance expectations set by the Series X. Despite the hefty save file size, the technical presentation is polished, highlighting the efforts of Panic Button and Playground Games. Gaming enthusiasts continue to await further improvements and expansions within this franchise, with the current version proving a robust addition to Sony’s console repertoire.

Sources: Digital Foundry, Eurogamer