FH5, Series 19, Week 4

The pain, the pain.

That I’ve got this far this week is verging on the miraculous. As I said in my previous post, the fans on the Zephyrus died, which had me taking the machine to the local service centre where, I was eventually informed, it would be off for a week. I went through the long, arduous process of reinstalling FH5 on the Nitro 5. The game worked yesterday morning and I started doing the Festival playlist. It then refused to work after lunch, getting as far as the small splash screen, which would sit there in mute defiance before vanishing. I had a sudden thought that the problem was with the D:\ drive. I adjusted the settings and the game ran with some demur.

This morning I had the same problem. The game would get to the small splash screen and then die. When I checked Event Viewer, the message seemed to be saying that parts of the system weren’t chatting, but if I went to Component Services, I could fix it, and did – several times without even a sniff of success. Even editing Registry settings made no difference.

I went and did the daily in Horizon 4 and thought I’d then try FH5 again. It worked. I have no idea why, but wonder whether the real issues is that the game has to be installed on the D:\ drive because of a lack of space on the C:\ drive, and FH5 doesn’t like this state of affairs. Indeed, this seems to be a long-standing issue that MS wants everything stuffed onto the C:\ drive in spite of this being manifestly impractical.

But all this aside, the playlist is done as far as I can currently do it.

I started with the treasure hunt and finished with it. I kept being told I’d been disconnected, and when an HA did appear on screen, I waited patiently. Others arrived with the same intention. The event started. It got as far as the second round when the targets for air skills failed to generate, and then I’d been kicked offline again. It wasn’t until after I’d done everything else and was fiddling with the Plymouth Cuda in one of my houses that a drift skills HA appeared on the map. This time it was solid and the treasure hunt was done.

The weekly challenge was straightforward apart from the last task which really did want you to smash the speed cameras. The GT-R Black Edition is a decent car to drive, too.

I liked the Eventlab events and their styling.

The PR stunts weren’t too painful. The biggest nuisance was the Jesko going head up, arse down until I adjusted the aero. The speed trap was a doddle. The speed zone was the usual exercise in repeating the pain until it went away – just.

For Travel Light, I initially chose the Peugeot 205 Rallye because it’s an actual rally car. After I barely managed to win the Baja Scramble, I switched to the Clio Williams, working on the principle of maximum engine, minimum handling. I won the other two races, but by no great margins. I’m not a fan of C-class racing. Too slow and ponderous while the drivatars are mockingly fast.

I raced the Mustang RTR Spec 5 in Glow Up. Good choice, sound performance. I mean, I loathe Street Scene, but the car made up for it.

No problems with finding the neon tank for the photo op. In fact, I fast travelled to a short distance from it, thus sparing me a lot of tedious trundling around to find it.

I came second in every race in Horizon Tour because the winner was in an A800 Subaru BRAT, mine was 757, and the other players were in stock Maloos (oh dear; excellent when upgraded). I came second in one race (Oasis Cross Country) in spite of missing a checkpoint because of my “precision” driving.

I survived long enough in the Eliminator to complete that task. Yes, the online stuff is generally all right. It’s the connection in free roam that sucks donkey balls.

I finally managed to do the HW and RA events this afternoon. I PB’ed the speed zone in the Jesko. I used the Radical in Burnout the Midnight Oil, but was pipped at the post by the Ariel Atom in the Ram’s Head Sprint. Indeed, the Atom was a pain i’ th’ posterior and probably the car I ought to have chosen.

It took me a couple of attempts to get the speed trap in Sierra Nueva. I should’ve used the Rimac because I learnt a trick with that for the ultra-annoying speed trap in FH4 this week, viz. let it bang off the limiter until you reach the corner and then change up a gear.

Wheel of Time was easily done in the my B700 Lancer Evo VIII.

In essence I’ve done with this series. If I can, I’ll try doing the dailies, but that depends on whether I can even run the game. Every time I seem to have found a solution, it turns out to be no solution at all. I have no guarantee that playing FH4 first will somehow result in FH5 running.