Interesting, good review's overall. It looks like another solid Forza game, but it seems like it's not doing anything new and isn't quite perfect.
After reading the reviews that didn't hand out a 9 or 10, it seems like 8/10 is about right and fair considering it's few faults, while still delivering a good racing game.
Well, like any game there will always be room for improvement. But to say it is not doing something new is not quite accurate.
The jump in things from Forza 5 is pretty huge. 26 tracks vs. the 14 or so that F5 came with. 24 cars on track versus the 16 in F5. The menu, car selection and upgrade screens all have changed and upgraded. They added rain and night time which is entirely new for the mainline series.
With all that said, as a person that has been there day 1 for every Forza game, including Horizon series, I can easily list things that I think they need to do better on. I will list a few here:
1. More variety in the time of day settings for tracks. While night and rain are on select tracks, for those that are not part of these, they should have at least 1 alternate TOD setting to choose from.
2. Pit Stops should be made to be useful and not pathetic like they have been since Forza 2 (Forza 1 still has the best pit stop set up in the series).
3. Time Compression/Wear & Tear/Fuel compression. So if you are running a 20 lap oval race, you can have fuel and tires wear down at an accelerated time so pit strategy can be a factor, which is a major part of "ALL" major motorsports.
I know they will probably never have dynamic TOD since they target 1080p/60fps (Rock Solid), so giving non night/rain tracks at least one additional TOD setting would be very welcomed.