

Thankfully, the rest of the game lives up to expectations. Xbox One X – Where’s my performance mode? Out of curiosity, we also booted this up on PC with a traditional hard drive for the game to run from and there’s no loading gap. That still left us with blank loading screens, but the wait dropped to 13 seconds on Xbox One and 9 seconds on One X. We’ve timed this first one at 37 seconds on both Xbox One machines, and because it cropped up, we loaded the game onto an external SSD. This didn’t happen in Forza Horizon 4, that’s for certain. On both Xbox One consoles, however, it unexpectedly cuts to a black loading screen. On Series X there’s an instant jump from gameplay to cutscene and then back to gameplay in another part of the world. The snag comes when you hit the first transition point. You drop from a plane into a volcano and get to take in some of the incredible scenery that Forza Horizon 5 offers as you race down its side, the game looking great on One X and decent on original Xbox One while hitting their identical 30fps targets. So, what about the last generation? Well, first impressions are mixed, and this comes from the montage of racing action that starts the game, a staple of the Forza Horizon series. In the right hands, this console can absolutely live up to Microsoft’s original pitch. For 9th November, the game will be updated to run at 1440p 30fps in Quality mode, and dropping to 1080p 60fps for performance mode. We don’t have an Xbox Series S with which to test, but from the game’s spec sheet, it will be offering a similar experience to Series X. Xbox Series S – Where Quality means 1440p I’ve barely noticed a single hitch while racing around this world. The great news is that whichever mode you choose to play in, you are getting perfect performance. This game has some exceptionally boring frame rate comparisons.
