Forza Horizon 4 is getting a free battle royale mode, and it actually looks pretty cool

Forza Horizon 4 has announced a new battle royale mode, The Eliminator. It isn't the first car-based battle royale. Or the second. Or even the third. It is, however, the newest—and it honestly sounds refreshingly different. The Eliminator mode is free and will arrive on Thursday, December 12, which is, like, tomorrow, at 10 AM Pacific. Watch the announcement trailer above.

In The Eliminator mode, up to 72 players can join a session together, beginning the match with low-level cars (such as a 1965 Mini Cooper) and then "eliminating one another in head-to-head races to earn upgrades and a chance to pick up faster cars," reads the YouTube trailer description. "Arena walls contract throughout the game, forcing players closer together until a final white-knuckle race among the survivors determines the winner."

'Rare car drops' with better cars can be found in the world during a session of The Eliminator, and challenging another player to a race is accomplished by finding them on the map, pointing your camera at their car, and honking your horn. That will kick off an instant head-to-head race to a marked spot on the map—a race other drivers will be able to interfere with by ramming you or your opponent (or both) if they want to influence the outcome. If you lose the race, you're out, but if you defeat your opponent you'll be able to upgrade to a higher level car.

There are 10 different levels of cars to earn as you progress. When the shrinking circle closes around the last dozen or so players, a final finish line appears somewhere in the world and everyone remaining must race to be the first one to reach it. Matches of The Eliminator should last around 15 minutes.

You can watch some gameplay below from a livestream earlier today, starting at about 28 minutes in.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.