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I recently took some time off to unwind the only way I know how, taking to the dense green countryside of South Wales in a rented car for a week away. It wasn't with a particularly inspiring ride, mind - a freshly minted Fiesta complete with a whopping three cylinder, 1.0 engine complemented by Ford's EcoBoost turbo technology - but as Outside Xbox's Mike Channell once told me as he heeled and toed his way through one of Milton Keynes' many roundabouts in a loaned Vauxhall Corsa, the fastest car in the world is always a rental car. Taking to the single-track roads that thread across the border between Abergavenny and Hay-on-Wye one crisp, sunny morning, those three pots under the bonnet seemed plenty enough. Teetering towards 60mph with brambles flailing the car at either side and the rough tarmac dipping round a corner towards an unknown abyss, the speed limit all of a sudden seemed a little too generous, the thrill of the open road tipping towards out and out fear. That's all part of the pleasure of driving, though, where the right time and the right place can make up for being behind the wheel of not necessarily the right car.
Playing Forza Horizon 2 soon after, I was hoping to recapture a little of that. The original Horizon did a better job than most of bottling the wonders of the open road into a video game, tying it together with a neat string of systems that made it, to my mind, one of the driving games of its generation. Horizon 2 does just as good a job and in the expanses of its southern European countryside I reckon there's one of the best excuses yet to invest in the new generation.
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