Drive Beyond Horizon is a game that perfectly nails the fundamentals of an arcade racer. The cars are beautiful, the sense of speed is thrilling, and the core driving mechanics are tight and responsive. Drifting around a corner in a custom-tuned car while the dynamic rain starts to fall looks and feels fantastic. The customization suite is also a major highlight, offering deep options to make your car truly yours. However, the game is held back by a crippling lack of ambition. While the open world is massive and gorgeous, it feels strangely "hollow." It's less a world to be explored and more a giant "checklist" of icons (speed traps, drift zones, repetitive races) that feel more like chores than fun. Furthermore, the game plays it incredibly safe. The "rookie-to-legend" story is generic, and almost every feature feels borrowed from other, more innovative racing titles. Verdict: It’s a technically polished and fun game for a weekend, but it lacks the creativity or identity to be truly memorable. It's a fun drive, but one you've probably taken before.

Early Access titles are becoming more and more frequent in todays gaming landscape. Drive Beyond Horizons offers a new and fresh approach to the "fix your car up" open world survival title. With some base mechanics similar to The Long Drive, this title adds an ambitious change of pace with a beautiful open world and survival elements that you have to manage, on top of maintaining your vehicle, and progressing throughout the map. The reason this title is receiving a 6 right now is due to the instability of the latest build. Frequent crashes, no clipping bugs, and collision errors that only make sense in a game development trial and error session has tied my hand to give DBH a lower rating than I normally would. A promising sign is that the development team is consistently pushing out hotfixes and patches for the early access version. I remain optimistic for the full release and applaud the development team for undertaking such an ambitious project. Well done.