Horizon Chase 2 – PS5 Review

Horizon Chase 2, developed by the Brazilian-based Aquiris Game Studio, is a follow-up to 2018’s Horizon Chase Turbo. This arcade-style racing game celebrates the exuberant spirit of ’80s and ’90s “blue sky” racers, taking players on a globe-trotting adventure where the tarmac is your playground and the cops are mercifully nowhere to be seen.

The essence of the original game is very much alive in this sequel. The structure remains familiar, with levels grouped by country, each offering a series of races and time trials across three tracks. It’s a straightforward setup, yet it delivers an engaging and fast-paced experience.

The bulk of the gameplay consists of traditional races. Starting at the back of a 20-car grid, you have three laps to overtake your opponents. Forget the subtle intricacies of simulation racing; this game is all about pure speed. The mechanics are designed to ease you into corners, allowing you to focus on navigating through traffic. While this makes the game more forgiving than most driving simulators, it ensures that the fun factor remains high.

Gran Turismo enthusiasts might not find this appealing, but for arcade racing fans, Horizon Chase 2 offers a lot of fun. The game zips along at a breakneck pace, testing your reflexes more than your driving prowess. There’s no drifting or brake management here—just pedal to the metal, avoid collisions, and navigate those corners with flair.

Completionists will find themselves chasing tokens scattered across the tracks. These tokens aren’t essential for winning races, but they are crucial for unlocking additional currency, upgrades, and the game’s coveted Platinum. Missing a token might be annoying as it means going back and redoing the race, but it adds to the game’s replayability and depth and this is hardly a Le Mans racer with most races taking under a couple of minutes to finish.

Time trials, however, might not be as exhilarating. Without AI competitors, these levels challenge you to complete two laps as quickly as possible, collecting time tokens along the way. While these are less thrilling than the main races, their limited presence ensures they don’t detract from the overall enjoyment.

The simplicity of it all is part of Horizon Chase 2‘s charm.  This is the modern evolution of your late ’80s/early ’90s arcade racer.  But, of course, modern audiences demand a bit more and so unlockable cars, customisations and performance upgrades are all on offer.  Ultimately, they’re so necessary (a basic car doesn’t have a hope in hell of winning later events) that really they aren’t optional anyway, so really they’re almost a token addition but it adds a little bit of additional thought to the gameplay.  And there are multiplayer matches and tournaments on offer as well, which helps to round out the package and it’s cross-platform too which should guarantee that the servers stay active.

With all that said though, this is very similar to the first game even if that’s probably for the best.  If you add too much to Horizon Chase‘s formula, it’d no longer have the arcade charm that the series values so much but for some players the lack of real driving physics and dynamics might be a problem.  So, instead of anything too revolutionary in the gameplay department, Horizon Chase 2‘s biggest upgrade comes from the glow up the visuals have received.  While it’s not Out Run to Out Run 2, the improvement in the visuals is impressive here.

This is most evident in the track scenery, with each location having its own unique look.  From woodland areas to cities, each new track brings some lovely eye candy to the game and, well, we’re simple creatures here at PlayStation Country so having pretty things to look at is important to us.  Also important is the fact that the super-fast driving action is silky smooth.  We don’t worry all that much about frame rates but this game must be pumping out a rock solid 60FSP based on how everything moves.  It’s a shame that the game’s engine isn’t set up for any kind of air time though as a bit of that would really inject a bit of excitement into the races and that could have come in useful when the repetitive gameplay starts to drag in the latter half of the World Tour mode.

Ultimately, it depends what kind of virtual driver you want to be.  If you’re more about maintaining the perfect driving line, Horizon Chase 2 isn’t going to be for you, but if you want to weave through traffic at full speed like a dickhead BMW owner on an A-road, then Horizon Chase 2 offers enough to keep arcade-minded racing fans happy for a few days.  Although we have to note that it’s a bit odd having to give your birthdate and email address over to even start the game.  Also, the terms and conditions make for some fairly scary reading that says that they can claim damages from you (for what?!) and revoke the software at any point.  Huh…