Occasional Tales

And other news besides. The weekly was the 1997 Honda Civic Type R. I was hoping to do all the events without having to upgrade and tune the car beyond the first time, but you had to do a Hard Charger skill. Engine swap time, which sent the car into S2 class where it doesn’t belong. The daily was to do a drift zone in a Honda. I went for the usual one on the north-east side of the map and got my five stars in two runs. Eventlabs (1) & (2) were once again quality products, although the touge route was a bit aimless, and in places it seemed that you could probably skip bits. One PR stunt was that annoying Boardwalk jump. I eventually managed to PB it in the Jesko after trying the Hoonigan RS200 which bounced too much. I dislike having to utterly PB PR stunts as this one had me jumping quite a bit further than my original record. I one-shotted the drift zone. In Fly the Coupé (Street Scene; scream!) I started with the the B700 Honda S2000 CR and restarted the first race over and over

The dead and the departed. The Eventlab event tiles were blank when I started the game, but came to life after I left my house. The rivals tiles had vanished again. The weekly challenge went smoothly. I nailed the drift challenge in two runs having made a mess of the PR stunt earlier. Normally I do the weekly early on, but I’d completely forgotten about it until I checked the Festival playlist after all else was done. The Eventlab events were quality pieces of work demonstrating just what can be done with this feature of the game. I managed to complete the touge road without hitting too many walls, but I thought the end was a bit annoying. The PR stunts ended up being repeat-until-done. The drift zone was irritating because I actually got it first time, but slid wide and missed the checkpoint. I was in the wrong Hoonigan Mustang, but kept sliding all over the place. Perhaps the Hoonigan RS200 would’ve been a better choice. I just managed to one-shot the HW PR stunt in the Jesko. The se

 A fuss-free week. This was one of the least bothersome weeks in a long time. The drivatars managed not to be painful. The PR stunts weren’t exercises in frustration. The Eventlab tiles went live after I left my house. I got the 2020 Nissan GT-R for the second time, but because of the game’s unreliable save system, it’s the only one I have. I thought I’d do several races in it, but after three, my interest fizzled again. Like last week, it already feels like the week is over. The daily challenges remain, but will only have an impact on the series. The potentially annoying news was the wipe of the drift zone leader boards. Since I’ve had the game since Day 1, there’s a chance that some of my scores might get culled. It depends on when I three-starred the drift zones because by mid January 2022, I’d probably managed to three-star all of them. Since then, I’ve probably PB’ed a few, but as I don’t care for drifting, I may see some of my scores disappear. But so far, nothing’s happened. Pe

Bored now. By the time the reset in August last year deprived me of seven months of progress in Horizon 5, I was doing little more than the Festival playlist and the daily challenges, and had probably been doing that for some time. After the reset, I was playing the game a lot more because I wanted to recover the levels and money that I’d lost, but that only lasted about six months, and again I’m back to doing as little as possible in the game. Yesterday, I was unable to play FH5 because of some connection issue (the one that claims you’re offline). I tried the game again today, but had no luck until I disconnected the laptop from the router and reconnected it. After that, the game was back to normal, but having done the two outstanding dailies, I sat in my Toyota Celica for a few moments and could think of no compelling reason to continue playing. I may not play Horizon 4 for extended periods these days, but I’ve never gone into the game feeling utterly uninspired. Horizon 5 was good

 What? That’s it? The new series started well. The Eventlab tiles weren’t working, the Forzathon shop wouldn’t load, and Rivals had com­plete­ly vanished. Yes, we’re back to this sort of thing. I did as much as I could without restarting and still managed to unlock the Nissan Z. Everything was working after a quick break from the game, and I unlocked the 80% car. But I looked at the progress bar and felt that the week was over. I’ll still do the dailies, but only towards the over­all total because for the first time in a month, there’s another missing exclusive, viz. the 2020 Nissan GT-R, which is another car that I lost from clicking on the reset button in August last year. I tried the Nissan Z (A800) this evening. Understeery. It’s like an updated 370Z and, er… It’s nice to see a con­temporary car, but this one appears to have nothing to overly recommend it. The second expansion. “It must be Lego because there are Lego cars in the video,” concluded no one in­tel­li­gent ever. Well, i