FH5, Racing Car Pack and Series 22

It’s pink and it’s smooth, and I be afraid of it.

The Racing Car Pack wasn’t listed in the MS shop. It wasn’t listed in the xbox app. A lot of people went to the obvious places to get the new DLC for Horizon 5. No, you had to update the game and purchase the new car pack from within the game. Meanwhile, a lot of people were outraged – outraged! I say – that they were expected to pay for this even though it was never listed as part of the Premium version of the game. (And we had the same nonsense with the HW Car Pack which came to FH4 as an extra.)

I tried all of the cars stock. The Emira is nice to drive out of the box even on a keyboard. The Nissan Alti… (whatever) can be tuned, but is – let’s face it – another clown car. Floaty front end. The Pagani Huayra R can also be tuned out of the box, but suffers from the usual problem of being an RWD car with too much power. It also has, I think, the worst cockpit view in the game. The Saleen pickup is another F150, which I took up the side of the volcano to see how off-road it was. It made it to the top, but in 1st gear with a lot of wheezing.

I built the Emira for some racing. I started with weight-reduction components which took the car into the middle of S1 class where it struggled in Descansar Dorado. I then threw everything at it, taking it into S2 class. Too much power, too little handling. I then built the car to near the top of S1 class, but overall, this isn’t that competitive against the drivatars (and therefore, isn’t likely to be competitive online).

I’m pleased to see the AMG GT Black Series is coming to the game at long last and hope I won’t be disappointed. (But where is the AMG GT S?) The AMG SL65 is being recycled from previous games, although it ought to have been in FH5 from launch. The GMC Syclone and Typhoon are back. Shrug. I’m not sure how many times I’ve driven them in FH4, but it pro­b­a­bly won’t exhaust the fingers on one hand. The FD Nissan Z will be another clown car.

The Do(ugh)nut Media Story Part II arrives with a couple of Nissan 350Zs, the Ford Supervan with a Wreckfest livery, and two more clown cars. The story itself looks to be a grind with the usual silly chat about picking the high car or low car when you’re expected to do both branches of the story.

The Test Track is a disappointment as there’s not test track per se. You’re dumped in the middle of the Horizon Festival Circuit with some props, and, er, that’s it. I had been assuming that the Festival Circuit would be the test track, but there’s nothing, not even a timer. Interfacing with the upgrades menu is clunky. There’s this annoying lag (or is that just me? [The comedy ever ends. –ed.]) which detracts from the experience. It would be better if every race in the game had the option to do it as a test track. This was a good idea, but it’s execution is flawed.

I did my usual thing of trying to entice the new cars out for piccies. Some successes, but as I was doing that, I discovered the Barbie Movie cars. I couldn’t recall any mention of these, but I wasn’t necessarily paying attention at the time. At first, I thought they’d be like the vomit-coloured controller car or the lipstick car or the biscuit car. If you buy a Horizon Barbie Movie ticket (region restricted?), you’d get a code to unlock these, but there are slots in the car collection, meaning that we’re all meant to be getting these things.

I wondered whether they were going to be rewards in the Do(ugh)nut Media Story or accolade rewards from that, but it seems not. Someone has suggested that they’re Series 23 rewards, which seems a little odd because the cars are live in Series 22. Barbie-themed Eventlab rewards? At the time of writing, no one seems to know how they fit into the game.

The intersection between Horizon 5 players and dedicated Barbie doll owners must be minuscule. The closest you might get to a substantial overlap is where the former may be the parents of the target de­mo­gra­phic of the latter. In truth, there’s no natural con­nec­tion between the two things, but someone will’ve made some money out of it.