Forza Horizon 5’s Game of the Year Snub Still Feels Like a Missing Gear

I still remember sitting down to watch The Game Awards in December 2021, expecting the Game of the Year category to read like a victory lap for the entire year. Instead, the reveal felt like a well-tuned engine suddenly dropping a cylinder. Deathloop, It Takes Two, Metroid Dread, Psychonauts 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Resident Evil Village were all there, but Forza Horizon 5 was nowhere near the top category. I sat there with a controller still warm from a long drive through the Mexican countryside, and the absence hit me as if the fastest car had been left in the garage during the biggest race of the season.

At the time, that absence was genuinely puzzling. Forza Horizon 5 was the highest-rated new game release of 2021, holding a 92 average critic score. It was the only new title of the year to climb far enough above 90 to separate itself from the pack, while none of the six Game of the Year nominees managed to reach that same threshold. I remember scanning the list and feeling as though I were reading the scoreboard through a fogged windshield. The signal was there, but the awards conversation was not quite seeing it.

It was not just critics who had fallen for Playground Games' open-world racer. Millions of players were driving through its version of Mexico before the game even had its proper launch. Some were so eager that they bought the game outright instead of waiting for the Xbox Game Pass release. That blend of critical respect and raw player enthusiasm made the Game of the Year snub feel less like a simple disagreement and more like genre bias acting as a quiet governor on the engine.

The Nominees and the Missing Entry

The six Game of the Year nominees were all excellent, so this is not a story about tearing down one game to lift another. It is about a category that seemed to treat Forza Horizon 5 as a beautiful machine admired from a distance, but never invited into the final showcase.

Even within the categories it did receive, the game was something of a quiet powerhouse. By the time the show ended, I watched Forza Horizon 5 take home three trophies: Best Audio Design, Innovation in Accessibility, and Best Sports/Racing. Those wins were satisfying, but they also made the top-category omission feel more pronounced. A game could be celebrated for its sound, its accessibility options, and its genre dominance, yet still be left out of the race for the biggest prize.

Genre Bias or Just an Impossible Year?

I have thought a lot about whether Forza Horizon 5 was genuinely snubbed or simply caught in an unusually crowded year. The Game Awards has long treated racing games like a separate ecosystem, praised within their own lane but rarely allowed to merge into the general Game of the Year conversation. This can create a strange double standard: a racer can be the most acclaimed release of the year, sell to millions, and dominate its category, but still be seen as a niche pleasure rather than a universal one.

There is also the timing question. Forza Horizon 5 arrived in November 2021, and within days it had already built an enormous player count. Yet awards voters often need weeks or months to let a game settle. Even so, the numbers were impossible to ignore. It was the highest-rated game of the year, and it had the player base to match.

Looking Back from 2026

Five years later, I still use the 2021 Game of the Year category as a small case study in how awards shows can quietly steer around certain genres. It Takes Two eventually won the top prize that year, and that was a lovely moment for cooperative storytelling. Still, the absence of Forza Horizon 5 from the main list remains one of those odd historical footnotes that feels a little less logical every time I return to it.

At this point, Forza Horizon 5 has had years of updates, expansions, and continued community life. That longevity only strengthens my feeling that the 2021 omission was a missed shift. The game was not just a strong racer; it was a sunlit, dust-covered postcard from Mexico, a place where every corner could turn into a small story. Leaving it out of Game of the Year was like handing out awards for the year in cinema and refusing to nominate the most visually stunning film because it happened to be an action movie.

For me, the legacy is not only about trophies. It is about remembering that a game can top the scoreboard and still be parked outside the velvet rope. The categories it won proved its quality, but the category it missed still says more about the limits of the room than about the car.