“Forza Horizon 3” is way more than just a really good racing game. To call it so would be doing it a tremendous disservice. “Forza Horizon 3” is just a great video game.

It’s an open world adventure that doesn’t forget what fans love about the main line racing franchise: the accuracy and glorification of cars.

“Forza Horizon 3” is the perfect ‘What if?’ game. What if a realism focused racing franchise did an insane shift in to open world playground, marrying the classic with the adventurous.

It’s a fantasy come to life. Exotic vehicles, wild locations, and no consequences for however you want to combine the two. You want to take a Ford Raptor down a mountain river? Drag race down an airfield in some of the fastest cars ever made. Go off-roading in a Lamborghini? “Forza Horizon 3” hands you happily hands you the keys and says “Go for it.”

If you wanna get down in the oil and crank the gears you can, adjusting tire pressure and differentials to maximize things like speed and weight distribution. But, at the end of the day, simple stats and color coded numbers get you where you where you want in a pinch. Horizon is gorgeous in how it simplifies even complex mechanics like engine replacement, getting players back in the drivers seat with a specially tuned car for exactly what you’re using it for.

And that’s exactly where you want to be.

South Eastern Australia is filled with hills, mountains, forests, waterfalls and coastal and country roads. Opportunities. It’s a playground, both literally and figuratively. Each area seems like it was hand crafted to host races, stunts, and mini-games. Even so far as elegantly leading players from event to event, as if the whole world was sculpted for racing pleasure.

I didn’t find a single boring road on the map, curves, banks, sharp turns, hills, ramps, lakes, bridges you name, it’s as they all flow and cross over into each other.

You can stick the asphalt and push speed to its limits, bound through flower fields and sand dunes or crash into ocean waves on the beach.

Honestly, most of my time with the game was spent just…driving. It’s very rare a video game is able to deliver what’s most fun about it in every moment you play it. Which might be why I so constantly get lost in just the world, stopping at every speed trap and challenge I see.

Progression is constant with everything you do, so there’s no pressure to always be racing or making progress. You’re always progressing, always gaining experience and fans thanks to skill chains and a map densely populated with things to do. Which means you’re always having fun, and always finding news things to do just by exploring. The more you play, the more races and challenges dot the map.

This is the kind of video game that always makes me smile. Because it’s really just about playing. There’s freedom in exploring, but it’s also in the racing and challenges. “Forza Horizon 3” tailors events on the map to what you’re driving, or sets you up with vehicles you need, so there’s never any hassle to switch cars and most of the time you get to pick how to take on a race and how quickly you unlock more of the races you like.

You can pick up play “Forza Horizon 3” for 10 minutes or 12 hours and have a genuinely fun time either way.

The Forza franchise has always been stood out to me in it’s ability to make players like me understand what it is about car culture that makes people love it so much. The lineup of dream cars and events that let players scratch fantasies from their car bucket lists’s is enough to make anyone understand the joy elected by an engine roar or a tire screech.

With that classic ‘Forza’ energy behind it, Horizon 3’s marriage of racing precision and open world adventure is nothing short of brilliant, closing the gap between Kart Racers and simulations and amounting to so much more than either. It’s the perfect fusion of the classical…and the adventurous.