The Forza Horizon 5 achievement list (make sure you click that link to see the list in its entirety) is varied, offering numerous achievements that we’ve seen in previous Forza Horizon games and a fair few new ones. We’ve got hundreds of collectables to seek out, (there’s definitely more of a focus on taking photos in FH5), Stars to earn, and even an achievement for FH5’s love-it-or-hate-it battle royale mode, The Eliminator (deep down, you knew it was coming).
As with all Horizon games, we’ll be wheel-spinning off the start line with the obligatory ‘Welcome to México‘ achievement for arriving at Horizon Festival Mexico, which is worth 10G. It’s a staple achievement we’re used to seeing in each Horizon title after completing that awesome first showcase race that introduces us to the campaign. Returning from FH2 and FH3 are different festival sites, called Outposts in FH5, and we have five of them to unlock with an achievement tied to each. Each Outpost relates to a different style of racing or activity (road racing, dirt racing, cross country racing, PR stunts, and street racing) and offers new challenges to unlock once built.
It’s clear that this base achievement list has been designed so that we explore every inch of what Forza Horizon 5 has to offer, including some new and exciting additions. The ‘Show Me Your Moves!‘ achievement requires you to check out the new crazy EventLab feature by playing an EventLab event created by another player. EventLab is essentially a level editor and is similar to Super7 in some regards but more powerful, allowing you to place objects and create races complete with your own rules and objectives across a variety of different modes. The achievement is an easy one to unlock for sure, but it’s clearly been designed to point everyone in the direction of the new feature in the hopes that the Horizon community will start building some of their own imaginative levels. There’s also the new Horizon Arcade mode, which has two achievements tied to it: ‘Icebreaker,’ which requires you to participate in an Arcade event and ‘Unlimited Prowess!,’ where you to complete round three in all five themes of the Horizon Arcade. The Arcade features over 130 mini-games which are spontaneous public events that happen dynamically across FH5’s map. ‘Unlimited Prowess!‘ could prove a bit tricky, depending on how often they spawn and how many Arcade challenges are included in a round. Then there is the new Horizon Tour mode with two achievements attached. ‘Tourist Attraction,’ a simple achievement that asks you to complete your first Horizon Tour event and ‘Front Runner,’ which requires you to finish five Horizon Tour races “ahead of all Drivatars.” Horizon Tour allows you to meet up with five other players and participate in co-op races against AI Drivatars. The ‘Front Runner‘ achievement could prove to be a tough one to unlock, considering that you’ll need to complete five of these races, beating all other Drivatars — it will be interesting to see if lowering the game’s difficulty will make this one easier or not.
Sticking with Drivatars and difficulty, one achievement that sounds particularly challenging is ‘Unbeatable Triumph.’ To unlock this achievement, you’ll need to win six different race events against Unbeatable Drivatars — only Forza Horizon and Forza Horizon 3 have had difficulty-specific achievements similar to this one. If Unbeatable is anything like Expert difficulty in Forza Horizon 4, you’re definitely going to need to channel a mixture of your inner Sebastian Vettel and Ken Block to pop the achievement.
Steering away from AI opponents, we have one achievement that will surely strike fear into those that detest any form of battle royale mode or game. Forza Horizon 4 introduced The Eliminator — a battle royale mode where 72 players compete to be the last driver standing by racing against each other in Head-to-Head events in an open area that shrinks over time. In FH4, the title update that added The Eliminator brought with it 15 achievements related to the mode, some of which are extremely tough. In FH5, the ‘Chicken Dinner‘ achievement asks you to win a round of The Eliminator, which isn’t as hard as the ‘Heads Up‘ achievement in FH4, but it will require some skill and patience to pull off. FH4’s equivalent achievement, ‘Last Car Standing‘ has only been unlocked by 4% of tracked TA players who have started the update and sits with a 5.30 TA ratio.
Now, a Forza Horizon game wouldn’t be complete without a bunch of collectable-related achievements, and by the looks of things, Forza Horizon 5 has more than enough to keep us busy for hours on end. A staple achievement that has featured in Forza Horizon is one that requires you to drive down every single road in the game. The ‘Ride and Seek‘ achievement in FH5 asks you to do just that. Considering FH5’s Mexico map is 50% bigger than FH4’s UK playground, you can likely expect to spend even more time with your progress tracker stuck at 99% while trying to find that tiny bit of annoying road you missed when you accidentally spun off the track. ‘The Noisy Cartographer in FH4 has been unlocked by 73,000 tracked TA FH4 players, which is around 22% of the 338,000 players on TA who have started the game. We can likely expect similar figures for ‘Ride and Seek.’ Also returning from previous FH games is an achievement that requires you to find and smash all the hidden Bonus Boards. There are 250 in Forza Horizon 5 compared to the 200 in Forza Horizon 4, and flinging your car through all 250 will net you the ‘Complete Collection‘ achievement. FH4’s equivalent achievement, ‘Official Horizon Board Game,’ has been unlocked by 41,000 tracked TA gamers and sits with a 2.87 ratio (those ones found on top of buildings and barns are a right pain to get, aren’t they?). Sticking with the theme of hurtling your vehicle through things, we have the brilliantly-named ‘Cactus Makes Perfect‘ achievement, which seemingly takes inspiration from FH4’s LEGO DLC achievement Swamp Gas from a Weather Balloon. To unlock ‘Cactus Makes Perfect,’ you’ll need to smash through 500 cacti during Mexico’s wet season. Depending on how long the wet season lasts in FH5, this could take a bit of time to grab this one.
Also on the collectables front, we have the ‘Mogul‘ achievement, which depending on how generous Playground Games is with Credits in FH5, will probably take a fair amount of grinding to unlock. The achievement requires you to purchase all seven player houses dotted around the FH5’s map. In FH4, to unlock the ‘Crowning Achievement‘ achievement, you needed to purchase one of the two castles, with the cheapest costing 10,000,000 Credits. We don’t know the cost of the seven houses in FH5 or how frivolous Playground will be with Credits, but if they come close to the price of that castle, then there could be some grinding involved, though most will probably naturally unlock this achievement in their time with the game. Barn Finds are back too in FH5, and we’ll have to find one less than we did in FH4 — ‘Better Than New‘ asks you to restore 14 Barn Finds in Mexico.
One feature that Playground seems to be pushing with FH5 is the photo mode, and that’s probably because FH5 looks gorgeous. There are six achievements (none of which seem particularly challenging) for taking photos around FH5’s map, some in various locations, some with cars, and some that focus on the game’s various storms.
Of course, there are numerous other miscellaneous achievements in Forza Horizon 5 for completing a variety of different challenges and tasks. One that could be particularly challenging is the ‘Living Legend‘ achievement, which asks you to earn 300 stars from PR Stunts in Mexico. We don’t know how many PR Stunts feature in FH5, but we imagine with that round number there will be 100 dotted across the map, and to unlock the achievement, you’ll need to earn three stars on each one. This is similar to FH4’s ‘Stunt Superhero‘ and FH3’s ‘PR Superstar‘ which both have TA ratios over 3.5.
Trivia
With the Horizon series being all about the fun, Playground has, of course, thrown in a bunch of silly and amusing references with the Forza Horizon 5 achievement list, which range from Star Wars to 19th century literature. Here are some of our favourites:
- Ford of the Wings is clearly a reference to Lord of the Rings, and we imagine that the Eagle’s Perch Danger Sign involved in the achievement will be located on top of or near FH5’s volcano.
- Racing and Pacing and Plotting the Course references lyrics from mid-Nineties indie hit The Distance by Cake.
- Show Me Your Moves! is a nod to the Super Smash Bros. series, particularly F-Zero’s Captain Falcon, who yells this during some of his taunts.
- Chicken Dinner is a definite reference to the famous win quote from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, especially since it’s tied to battle royale mode, The Eliminator.
- How to Race Friends and Influence People is a riff on Dale Carnegie’s famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- Gotta Smash’ Em All — Pokémon reference? It’s gotta be a Pokémon reference, right?
- Ask Any Racer, Any Real Racer is a direct quote from everyone’s favourite racing slaphead Dom in the first Fast and the Furious movie.
- Far from the Mudding Crowd is a one-letter twist on the title of Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, Far from the Madding Crowd.
- There’s Always Money in the Baja Stand — if you’re an Arrested Development, you will probably recognise this one. The achievement name here is referring to: “There’s always money in the banana stand,” a line repeated several times by Jeffery Tambor’s character, George Bluth Sr.
- A Forza Edition to my Collection is a riff on the General Grievous line, “A fine addition to my collection” from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
- I Have the High Ground is another Star Wars reference, again from Revenge of the Sith.
- Unlimited Prowess! — we think this one is another Revenge of the Sith reference, specifically to when Emperor Palpatine attacks Mace Windu, shouting, “Unlimited power!”
What do you make of Forza Horizon 5’s achievement list? Will you be jumping into the driver’s seat on November 9th, or even sooner with the Premium edition? Let us know in the comments below!
