FH5, Rally Adventure

-

I didn’t even have to wait for the fat lady to sing.

In spite of having other things to do over the past few days, I’ve managed to complete enough of the Rally Ad­ven­ture to unlock the events on the Festival playlist and do them. It wasn’t quite the time-sucking grind I was expecting.

And that feels like the end of the expansion. Yes, I’ll finish off the events that are specific to the other two teams (I’ve completed Apex Predators), but I’m in no rush to do them.

Sierra Nueva is more rugged than the main map, but doesn’t really offer much that’s different. There are some mesas, and the roads (as I’ve noted already) are all corners. There’s a ruined church, but I assume that PGG were forbidden from adding Aztec and Mayan ruins to a fantasy map.

The twisty roads lead me to observe (as others have already been doing) that there’s something about the physics. Normally, I pride myself in being able to take corners competently (which means no drifting or slam­ming into barriers; well, avoiding such things as much as possible), but I was taking corners less well than I usually might. Some of this might be down to a lack of familiarity with the map, but the problem seemed worse when the road surface was wet. I’ve been wondering whether PGG are experimenting with handling for FH6 and perhaps the delayed FM(8).

It’d be nice if there were readable course notes so that I might know what sort of car would be best for me to use in a particular event.

The racing is all sprints. The boss races are only boss races, locking you into racing against one opponent in a specific car. I haven’t tried the Goliath to see whether it’s similarly limited. This reminds me of Lego Valley, where such limitations were frustrating because they limited the replay value of certain major races.

I took the rally route to complete the races, and ma­n­aged to be a decent distance ahead of the opposition by the end of the race. The races I’ve done against the drivatars don’t suggest that they’ve been altered, but corner physics might have some impact.

The cars are all off-roaders apart from the No. 4 Ford Focus. This is not to say that they’ll be rubbish, but they feel niche. The EV version of the F150 makes my pee-pee shrivel.

I had to do some of the PR stunts a few times to three star them, but I didn’t have to do them so many times that I was getting ragingly irritated. There are, at least, no trailblazer events. Good because they’re mostly a sodding nuisance. On the other hand, I did a couple of the “do X and then do Y in Z amount of time” events, which have a trailblazer-like element to them, and found the map was easier to traverse than I was expecting.

Ultimately, I don’t think this has much longevity. I’ve reached the point where I could ignore everything that I’ve not done and visit Sierra Nueva once a week to do the events on the Festival playlist. I did all that was demanded of me by Hot Wheels, and apart from doing the Goliath there to recover lost levels after the reset incident in August 2022, I only do the HW playlist events. And if there were no playlist events for Sierra Nueva, it’d be just like Fortune Island in FH4, which I’ve not visited in a very long time because there’s no compelling reason for me to go there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FH5, Series 37, Week 4

-
With the return of the academic year I’m probably not going to be posting entries till sometime on Saturdays. I have a fair amount of time on Friday between lunchtime and my return to school to get much of the Festival playlist done, but I also have P1 and P10 classes and on some occasions, am likely to prefer a nap. The treasure hunt, as I discovered, wanted you to add a new part to your Ford Focus. I tried adding a part I’d already bought, but the game was having none of it. But in reality, I assume that this was another attempt to force players to use the Test Track which, I feel, has nothing practical to offer. I ended up doing a wreckage HA because there was one near the location of the treasure chest. The weekly was in the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Job done, but drag racing and drifting? The Audi S1 had no problems with the speed zones. I switched to the 2012 Mini JCW for the Trailblazer because in testing it had no problems hitting the target time and then some. What happened? I kept ...
Read more

FH5, Series 38, preview

-
Lazy. My thought – to anticipate my post about the final week of Series 37 – is that Series 38 looks a little lazy. The Forzathon Shop seems to be alternating between HW and 10th-anniversary merch. Yes, I’m sure newer players will be delighted to be able to acquire such items if they missed out on them. Four new cars in the playlist. The 1995 Mitsubishi Evo III seems to be a refugee from that popular Forza Motorsport which everyone is playing [ They are? –ed.]. I’m hoping it’ll be decent on dirt, but I already have my go-to Evos for seasonals in the game. I’m also not sure about the 2022 Subaru WRX now that I’ve heard AR12 Nick give it a shrug. Again, I have my preferred, ready-to-go Imprezas/WRX/STi Subarus. Is this like an SUV in that it looks like it ought to be out in the countryside, but never ever strays off tarmac? In other words, it’s a saloon car that aspires to be a rally car. As for the Toyota Chaser, I admit I’ve never heard of it. I assume that it’s a rival to the Nissan ...
Read more

FH5, Series 30, Week 2, The Trial

-
It started badly. I was thinking about practising the three races, but decided to simply get on with it. There were three of us, including one player in a Lexus LFA. In spite of coming 3rd in Granjas , it was a major team loss. I came 1st in Callejera , leading a team win. Somehow in Cruce de Valle I ended up in 6th place to another team loss even though I thought I’d made better progress than that. The problem was the player in the LFA, although I can’t say why beyond guessing they lacked the competence to handle the car. I immediately joined a new team and took 3rd place in Granjas (1st player) and 3rd in Callejera (1st player after starting in last place). Job done. I could see the two drivatars ahead of me, but could do nothing to dent their lead. However, the rest of the team was somewhere behind me in full support in both races. And that’s a third LFA in my garage. The two attempts to do the Trial were utterly contrary. In the first one the drivatars seemed to be overwhelmingl...
Read more