Horizon 5, 6 months at a time

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 for about six months and then good for another six months, and then it tailed off again. The Hot Wheels expansion lasted about two days, and then lasted a little longer when I was trying to recover my lost levels partly because I’d lost all my progress in it.

I foresaw something like this before Horizon 5 came out, but thought I’d lose interest in Horizon 4 much sooner. No, I’m still playing the game over a year after the launch of Horizon 5. I suspected that the two games would be too similar. Because FH4 was my first Horizon game, it was novel and held my interest. FH5 isn’t novel (too many copy-and-paste cars, for example) and can’t hold my interest in the same way that it would if I’d not played the previous game. I don’t know how I’d feel about the series if I’d also played Horizon 1-3, but might feel that the whole franchise has gone far enough.

This brings me back to the mysterious second expansion which, I predict, probably won’t save the game for more than a couple of days. My guess is that it’ll repeat the progression system of Hot Wheels which, I foresee, will be in Horizon 6. It’ll probably be an island again. Not sure about the focus. Fortune Island was largely about the Needle, off-road and dirt racing. The drivatars were more like the little monsters we see in Horizon 5, perhaps by about half a notch. I’d like to see the return of proper racing tracks like the Falcon Speedway from Lego Valley (and am disappointed that such a locale never made it into FH5). The question is what feature destined for FH6 will be tested in the second expansion. A crossover with Forza Motorsport to promote the new game? Who knows.