Occasional Tales

After finding that I wasn’t the only player to find that the drivatars were misbehaving in the Formentor seasonal, I did some testing. For my first building, I added race weight reduction first, and then other upgrades after that. It got me a PWR of 0.303 and the following results for the races: San Juan: 04:09.275 [+0.667]. I was about a second and a half in the lead when the back end slid near the end of the race, and the drivatar closed the gap. Desierto: I forgot to record the time, but I was a goodly distance ahead of the drivatars at the end of the race. But it was a scrappy race at the start with mush sliding sideways from one wall to another. Mulegé Scramble: 03:53.504 [+9]. A much greater gap than I was expecting. My second build was max. engine, but that still left me enough PI to add other components. I also added aero because of awkward shortcomings, but ended up with a PWR of 0.362. San Juan: 04:10.393 [+8]. Not dissimilar to the first result, but the Formentor outpace

That was the pain that was. The treasure hunt – always start with the treasure hunt in case it fails because you left it too late – was three new pathfinders, starting with Tulum. I’m sure I went through the gate to trigger it, and then I followed the path of red balloons only to find nothing was happening. The second time, I drove down the road and bumped into the finish in about 30 se­c­onds flat. When I started the pathfinder from Guanajuato, I couldn’t see any of the balloons or any hint as to which way I should go. Thanks for frustrating and annoying me, game. I got that done after I doubled back to the start, which was when I spotted the red balloons. The weekly in the Series III Land Rover went off without any issues. First pain of the week – a showcase remix. I loathed these things in Horizon 4 and am glad that they’re generally not part of the Festival playlist. This just proved that point. I set the game to the easiest difficulty and still nearly lost the race when the fat Am

And some other stuff. The details of series 21 are out. Yeah, off-roading. Shrug. Some new pick-up trucks (cue baffling fanboy hysteria about them; Quote from Facebook: “This month is Huge!”). Two repeat exclusives, an Extreme E and the terrible Morris Traveller. There are other, thematically relevant exclusives which could’ve been included as seasonal rewards, but they’re nowhere to be seen. There’s an update to photo mode (don’t care), but what about an update to the painting tools? And looking ahead to series 22, more new rims (which we don’t need), but no sign of tunable stock aero or different, tunable rear wings. Even NFS: Most Wanted (2005) had more wings than the Horizon series even if they were purely cosmetic. I’ve driven the Porsche Mission R. The problem with EVs is a lack of gears. Most of the time I played FH4 it was in automatic, hence I didn’t need to pay any attention to gears. But now that I use manual with clutch, it’s all about the gears. I know what gear I need to

That was the week that was. And the series. From the picture, I guessed that the treasure hunt required you to three-star a speed trap in the McLaren F1 GTR (or whatever it’s called). I did it. I got my treasure. And then the game informed me several times that I’d completed the treasure hunt, especially as I went through the speed zone on the motorway. I had the message about give times, and I may be a decrepit old nitwit, but even I don’t need to be reminded of this so many times. The weekly in the 812 Superfast was a doddle. Good car, too. Nice to drive. I did the photo shoot in the Aventador J, which is another Lamborghini that I don’t drive often enough. The jump into Mulegé was a colossal pain because although I was getting the distance, the car kept going nose down, arse up and flipping when it landed (no, aero was not always co-operative). In the end I managed to keep the car flat and get it to land in a gap. I managed to PB the speed trap and the speed zone without intending t

 I began with the vagaries of the treasure hunt, taking a guess that we were meant to win (?) a road race in a track toy. The weekly started without any problems, but the outcome of the race at the drag strip didn’t register until I clicked on the tile and scrolled through the events. This was a task that should’ve taken about ten minutes in total, but the bug delayed my glorious progress. The Eventlab tile was text-free again, but was live once I left my home. Five laps was a bit much on a surface that didn’t seem best suited to overpowered cars. I PB’ed the jump by miraculously dodging the trees, and one-shotted the speed trap and drift zone. I disliked the game originally forcing players to use a particular type of car in the worst possible class, but I wish it would do PR stunts like Horizon 4, leaving me to choose the car. In spite of the car exploiters in their Bone Shakers in Horizon Open, I managed to come 2nd round Plaza Circuit, which I attributed to my preference for cars th

Good out of the box. I’m seriously impressed by the Porsche 935. All I did to the car was tune it (not something I’m especially good at, but my approach works for me). As usual, I took it to the HW Goliath. The Huracán STO was a disappointment in that the drivatars were all over it whether it was RWD or AWD, and I was expecting much the same with the 935. Well, I’m sometimes wrong. A normal race round the HW Goliath has me on a best lap that’s about 45 seconds ahead of the drivatars’ best lap, and that’s what I had by the end of the race; hence I’m seriously impressed by the Porsche 935. I’ll admit that this is the sort of car I want to see more of in the game – the sort of lineup you get in ACC rather than the stock cars that your dad, granddad, and rich uncles and aunts drive every day. I’d still prefer the game to have free roam between proper motor racing circuits. The next series of FH5 would appear to focus on off-roading, which I feel is a little too soon after the so-called Ral

More or less painful. I started with the Horizon Promo or whatever it’s called these days, and did the daily at the same time. The weekly challenge probably took about ten minutes unlike the FH4 weekly which had to be grindy just to be a pain. I PB’ed the speed trap, but the SWS was rubbish. The Trailblazer is the easiest one in the game, and the SWS was not quite rubbish. The speed zone was a pain. I tried the MB CLK-GTR because of the grip and turning, but it lacked the speed. I ought to have opted for the Rimac, but the Jesko managed to com­plete the task – eventually – and PB it. Another sort of all right SWS. I hated every loathsome minute of Street’d Lightning . If I wanted to race in the dark, I’d stick a paper bag over my head or switch my monitor off. At the end of it, I got a wheel spin – a rubbish wheel spin. Buggy Bug World featured cheating drivatar bastards. I opted for my B700 Alumi Craft Class 10 which is a decent off-roader, but the races got to Guanajuato and a bunch

 It’s all about the PWR. Now that we have the Huracán STO in FH5, I thought I’d try building all of them to S1 900 and racing them round the Horizon Festival Circuit over five laps. It did not go well in that the 2014 Huracán had the most scope for modification, while the STO had the least and drove like a pig. It was a good example of why the PI system in Horizon games is so appalling because S1 900 ≠ S1 900. The 2014 Huracán had a power-to-weight ratio (PWR) of 0.498, but the STO could only manage 0.418 to hit the same PI. (Aside: in FH4, the game is all metric, but in FH5, I have power set to hp, but the rest is metric; the PWR figure still provides the same sort of information.) I did a little experiment in FH4 this morning, building the Huracán and the Huracán Performante to nearly the same PWR, the former being 0.478 to the latter’s 0.477, and racing them in the Colossus. Al­though I took some corners a little badly in the Performante, it was only about two seconds slower than th