FH5, Series 23, Week 2

No treasure hunt this week. Boo hoo! I so don’t miss you!

That meant starting with the weekly challenge and being briefly beguiled by the Eventlab tiles functioning properly. But back to the weekly, which was easy money.

The photo op. was the waterfall where the danger sign is. I can never find the waterfall except after much aimless wandering round the right area.

Easy was the theme this week as I went smashing the latest collectible in Plaza Azul.

The first Eventlab was Sherwood Forest Raceway, which was a looping stone-lined course. The player needs to follow the mini-map because there’s a junction which would have them turning left or right (it’s right). Oh, and this was B700 modern rally. Again. I like rally cars, but modern rally is a small, rather dull set of vehicles that’s all too frequent in the game. The reward was some silly statement that no one will ever use. Probably.

The second Eventlab was Mulegé Grand Prix which was heavily predicated on the circuit race. It was nice to drive on proper roads and not whatever surface they often use in Eventlab creations. The SWS was two-thirds good.

I’d already practised the PR stunts. The Jesko was just the ticket for the speed trap and gave me an excellent SWS. I PB’ed the trailblazer in practice, and in spite of a slightly iffy line, I completed this first go in the Hoonigan RS200. The SWS was a third very excellent, and two-third crap. The speed zone was a monstrous pain in the arse. Hoonigan RS200 again. The trick was to maintain speed and momentum round the long curve, but it took so many attempts. The SWS was one-third good and two-thirds utter rubbish. Just the result I like from the pain of doing this.

It was back to B700 pickups and 4x4s for Rocks and Roll [sic]. I opted for my ready-made CJ5 Renegade which apart from that awful cross-country circuit on the outskirts of Guanajuato, absolute walked all over the rest. The reward was a 2020 Supra, and while I don’t need another one, this is a prize I can salute.

It should come as no great surprise that I picked the FE 911 GT3 RS for Trailing Dirt and swept the board without any problems. Another reward to salute – the 911 Turbo S.

The third seasonal, Show Off, was A800 open-topped cars. Ah, the Lotus Elise 190, and I went RWD. The car made short work of all three races, and we got another decent reward for once – a McLaren GT. All right, it’s a 570S pretending to be a different car.

I used the Shelby Cobra for the HW drift zone. It worked, but I thought it might’ve been the wrong choice.

For It’s Snow Joke, you had to drive something S1 900 from Sweden. As the races seemed to be all those ice hazard courses, I thought the Volvo 252 Evolution would be the ticket, but when the race began, half the field was in Koenigsegg CC 8Ss and the other half in Ageras. (And just to make this an even greater travesty, the Volvo would’ve had the lowest PI by quite a margin.) I stopped the race and switched to the CC 8S, getting a good wheel spin from the second race. In truth, the car should’ve been on snow/off-road tyres for the third race, but I don’t know the individual races well enough to say, “Oh, that one” and “Where’s my snow tyres?” The reward was the 2017 Camaro, which had me saluting. (No, it’s only the ugly old American muscle cars I [mostly] can’t abide.)

And then it was off to Sierra Nueva where the PR stunt had to be one of the more annoying danger signs. The trick is to slow slightly before the small jump ahead of the main one (a slightly less extreme version of the motorway jump in FH4). It only took me about three attempts, and I PB’ed it, which was not expected, but sometimes the game physics waft cars along. The SWS was mediocre.

The seasonal was Light up the Night. B700 unlimited buggies. Of course I chose the Alumi Craft (the older one) because I’m a bluff old traditionalist. Decent performance out of the old girl and the reward was clothing. I can’t wait to feel the sensual touch of silk caressing my rough, boyish skin provoking spasms of excited ecstasy. [Spare me the bollocks. –ed.] I can’t help but wonder about the name of the seasonal because all the races were in broad daylight.

The HW Pontiac Firebird is a puzzling car. I had a squint at it after unlocking it and assumed that it was a drift car (too much power, too little handling, too few gears). But it’s a track toy (wait, what?! moment) and the perks are for road racing. DUBS tried the car a bit more extensively and decided it didn’t work for anything – not drifting, not drag racing, not anything else. I only had to look at the tyres to know their grip was rubbish. The Vūhl was the same when it was introduced in Horizon 4 ahead of the launch of Horizon 5, and there are one or two other cars with non-standard slicks that have about the same level of grip as an oily medieval friar. Might be all right round the HW Goliath.

There was a patch for the game this afternoon which has been causing a lot of people grief. It seems that the issues are affecting players who are also part of the xbox Insider programme. But when I went into the game this afternoon, Lugar Traquilo and La Casa Solariega were both for sale. This might be a consequence of the patch and will probably be gone by the time I return to Mexico. However, for anyone passing through who has already bought both houses, don’t buy them again. It confuses the buggery out of the game.