There's just something about a road trip. Something about getting behind the wheel with nothing but you and the open road ahead of you that stirs something inside of you. Forza Horizon, the newly released latest installment of Turn 10 and Microsoft's award winning racing series captures that feeling perfectly -- it takes the fine tuning and solid mechanics of previous installments and allows users to take the top down so to speak, dropping them into an open-world that they're free to motor around in to their heart's content. The result is quite the fun racing experience that may lack some of the depth of previous games, but still deserves to be played.

"...feels completely new and unique to itself."

It should come as no surprise that Forza Horizon is as stunning as it is because it's made from a literal all-star team from the racing game genre. The game is developed by Turn 10 and Microsoft Game Studios, but much of the credit has to go to Playground Games which features talent from studios like Codemasters, Bizarre Creations and even Criterion Games. The influences of games from these legendary studios is evident throughout the Horizon experience, but rest assured that this is no cheap rehash of previous ideas, Horizon takes those ideas and melds them into the Forza formula to make something that feels completely new and unique to itself.

On paper your goal is Horizon is simple enough, win the Horizon Festival Championship, an all out celebration of music and cars held in Colorado. The Centennial State ends up being a perfect setting for Forza and the new open-world style of Horizon. The state's differing roads and towns offer a great variety of locations and stipulations. One event you'll be racing around the corners of small town streets, while another you'll be navigating the twists of a mountain top or putting the pedal to the floor in a wide open desert. Forza Horizon comes packed with a ton of content, and its small details like this that make it rarely feel old and repetitive.

"...makes it feel like sitting in the driver's seat..."

True to the pedigree from previous games (and that of the games from the famous producers), Forza Horizon feels, handles and plays just like getting your hands on the real life versions of some of these high performance cars. Each car handles like you'd expect it to, and there's a certain weight to driving these beasts that actually makes it feel like sitting in the driver's seat and as a result, there's a bit of a learning curve to the game, but you'll feel like a driving ace when you master a certain vehicle. There is a bit of a sense that the game doesn't quite known what it wants to be, since it's clearly the most arcade like of the series, but it still rests firmly in sim territory, but that's easy to forgive when the game's mechanics are so well done.

It's also easy to forgive the game's small faults when you take into account just how much detail is put into the smallest things in the game. Cars and environments look absolutely stunning, and the development team went as far as to even ensure specific parts were correct and look authentic. For the first time in the series, Forza features night driving which makes the cars look even cooler.  When using the view that literally puts you behind the wheel lets you look at the authentic and illuminated dashboard. Everything from the lights to the reflection the car gives off in certain elements in stunningly gorgeous -- and the roar of the car's engines is nothing short of mesmerizing.

Forza Horizon feels like the racing series near and dear to so many fans of the genre with the rules stripped down. If Forza 4 was  “pure car pornagraphy” as I once referred to it, Horizon is an unabashed love letter to car culture and the feeling you get with just the pedal down and nothing but open road in front of you. Those who spent hours tinkering with their ride may be a bit disappointed by the lack of options here, but that's no reason not to get back into the driver's seat.