FH5, Series 19, Week 1

It sort of works.

I decided to do the weekly playlist before continuing to work on the Rally Adventure so that I could then do the playlist events stemming from that while only worrying about the remaining dailies.

I started with the treasure hunt in case that’s still a problem. Today I had to drift down Cara Este in my Shelby Cobra. It was all going well until the car started oscillating from side to side and the overly sensitive game said I’d failed, thus forcing me to repeat the ex­er­cise. The chest was in the middle of the stadium. Even I couldn’t miss it.

Weekly in the HSV Gen-F. Appalling race. Well, there was a race and my driving was appalling, although the car is a barge.

Eventlab(1) was a very arty, neon affair. Eventlab(2) had a city look. Both tiles were live.

Two new Rivals events. One was in the Lexus LC500 which merely reminded me how much I don’t like RWD cars with ex­ces­sive power and no handling. The other car was the Rimac Nevera which is AWD and sort of drivable.

I did a custom Street Scene race in Horizon Open in my Ferrari 360. Things went well until I realised that I’d hit a tight corner or two about which I’d forgotten.

I PB’ed the speed trap. Initially, I approached it from the far side of the river from Mulegé and then re­mem­bered that it’s better to come down the hill on the Mulegé side as a speed boost. I one-shotted the other two stunts.

Horizon Arcade also proved to be no problem, with the connection being much more stable than it has been in a while.

Love at First Night was B class Street Scene, which I did in the 2009 Ford Focus. In spite of this being B class (sluggish and insipid), the races were com­pa­r­a­tively painless.

The FE Porsche 911 GT3RS was just the thing for Cloudy after Midnight and absolutely dominated the drivatars.

Then it was off to the HW Theme Park where the Jesko took care of the PR stunt without any bother, and the Porsche Macan was just the thing for the sea­so­nal championship, Night in Shining Car.

At this point it was back to Rally Adventure, but I need to rewind time a little further back.

When I checked the xbox app the night before (i.e., the 29th), it said that the expansion would be live on the 30th at 2am. It also claimed that it was already in­stalled, hence there was no need to download it. When I finally launched the game last night, it didn’t work. I’d already checked the xbox app, which said nothing. I then rechecked the xbox app, which told me that the expansion needed installing.

Anyway, once it was installed I launched the game and headed off to Sierra Nueva, half expecting it to go CTD on me, but it started without any issues and started shunting me into events. It got as far as the dirt race that starts in the quarry and promptly went CTD on me. I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on the forums about crashes, but seem to have been spared another round of bothersome bugs. I’ve not seen anyone run­ning an RTX 3060 report any issues, but the pro­blems appear to affect 40-series nVidia graphics cards and older xbox models. I’ve not had any of the stuttering out in the desert.

I made better progress this evening and completed the first set of events. The boss race against Alex was odd because the player gets dumped in one of the new off-roaders and he’s in the Polaris RZR. It looked to be very one-sided because the Polaris goes like a re­lent­less rocket and the new Jeep (?) looked like a right chunky boy; but after a time, Alex dropped back and I had a clear run to the finish line.

PR stunts. Danger sign, north side of map. You jump into some woods. The trees are breakable, but they’ll break your jump unless you can land the car in a clear space. I can see this one turning up as a PR stunt on the Festival playlist.

My initial impression is that the routes are all corners, and the map is really best for A class cars or lower. The sound of the helicopter isn’t a major nuisance on speakers, but the dust, especially at night, is a nui­sance. Pace notes don’t sync with what the car is actually doing. Prediction: I’ll complete it and only visit it to do playlist events (same as Hot Wheels).