Forza Horizon 5 is in an absolutely dire state right now with most of its multiplayer functionality completely non-functional, players being banned for 8 000 years, performance issues, constant crashes and more.

But none of that is being fixed today, instead we get some new cars and fun content centred around the holidays.

Yes Series 2 has arrived in Forza Horizon 5 bringing with it a snowy holiday makeover to Mexico. The game world has been updated with festive decorations, snow and snowmen that can be driven over to earn points.

Accompanying this is a Secret Santa system where players can give cars to each other. Forza Horizon 5 already had a system in place to give other players cars, but this new system – accessible through Mulegé – will have a community goal to unlock content.

“When gifting a car from the Forzathon Shop, choose from up to five of your friends to be the recipient or become a Secret Santa for a random player. You can send one gift a week and another on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Look out for special deals on both of those occasions courtesy of our old friend Tommy Bargains,” reads the update notes.

“As players participate in Secret Santa, the community will unlock two special rewards: the Santa outfit and the 1962 Peel P50. Progress on both is tracked in-game, so check back often for the latest updates.”

The Peel P50 is a favourite car in the Forza community so it’s good to see it back. Our favourite thing to do with the Peel P50 in Forza Horizon 4 was to use a livery to make it look like the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe and annoy other players with irritating car horn noises.

Ah, good times. Too bad players now live in fear of the aforementioned permanent bans for liveries and multiplayer is so broken that you barely see any other players.

The update notes don’t try to sidestep the game’s many problems, mentioning them directly right at the end.

“With the latest Forza Horizon 5 update released on Dec. 3, we began rolling out fixes to tackle some of the issues highlighted in our recent community update. We understand how frustrating things are for you right now. Please know, we appreciate you for sticking with us as we work to roll out fixes as soon as we can. Stay tuned to Forza Support for the latest updates and known issues,” it states.

From playing the game ourselves the 3rd December update fixed very little and actually made certain aspects such as decreasing open world populations of both real players and NPC cars. We’ve also seen other players rightfully complain that the update worsened performance and increased hard crashes.

We’ve heard this tone of “understanding frustration” before so we’re not convinced by this promise to roll out fixes.

New content for Series 2 / the holiday season

New cars for Car Pass owners