FH5, Series 28 and 29, preview

Could do better.

Fast and Furious dlc – more overweight, overpowered American barges. Yes, I’ll probably buy the car pack, but as I said in the previous entry, there are so many cars in the game, I don’t have time for all of them. I’ve neglected other car packs somewhat and I may never try these outside of free roam.

Four expensive, copy-and-paste Autoshow cars that seem to be intended – as AR12 Nick has suggested – to provoke players into shelling out their shekels on the Car Voucher scam. Yes, I called it a “scam”.

The Gordon Murray T50 has piqued my interest. The Valkyrie is probably going to be the Nevera to the Concept version of the car. Same actress, different shade of lipstick. But the whole Secret Santa thing could be vexatious if I end up bombarded with rubbish. After being spared gifts for some time, I seem to have been the target for unwelcome donations. I can only hope we see no more of this in FH6.

A new circuit race, albeit one that only appears in winter. Unfortunately, the layout is – from what I could see – very Eventlab: stop-start-stop-start-etc. Possibly more fun for the drifty boys or the sort of circuit that might be good to the top of B class with plenty of handling. We’ll see.

On the other hand, some of the new Eventlab props such as marker boards are of interest. One of the things that vexed me about FH4 when I first started playing that game was the absence of marker boards. The approach to the left-hand turn onto the bridge in the Colossus is still an exercise in guessing no matter how often I do it. Slap some marker boards in and I might be a little less apprehensive approaching this turn.

Series 29 preview [revised!]

I watched JakeXVX’s video about Series 29 this morning. The series cars are the 2020 Nissan GT-R (my third) and the 2021 911 GT3 (also my third, but the first one fell victim to the terrible save system). A tick for each.

The MP4 12C and the Huayra both get ticks. This morning I had the latter out in FH4 for the first time in ages and rather enjoyed the experience (and passed prestige 7, level 500). The rest of the recycled cars I don’t care much about and would be happier if they’d stayed in FH4.

The new Autoshow cars are clearly a scam because they’re going to be the weekly cars for Series 29. “But, but, but,” you stutter, puce with apoplexy, “how am I meant to acquire them? I only have CR57,000.” Fear not because they’re in the Forzathon Shop. The AM DBR1 is a modest 1200FPs. “Modest? Modest?!” you roar in outrage. “I only have 180FPs because I never see a single HA.” Ahem, car vouchers. “Oh you have got to be kidding me!” If only I was.

Actual game play footage.

I’ve spent much of my time in FH5 this week trying C600 vans and utility to see what works in C class. As I said, I built the GMC Typhoon for dirt racing only to have to tune it for road racing. I wanted to try other cars in this category to see how they fared.

The El Camino was fast in a straight line and a pain to get round corners. I had to add aero to help with handling because the car’s an absolute barge.

The F-150 Lightning was odd because AWD sent it to the top of C class, but other handling upgrades has no effect on the PI. Still had a decent top speed, and the handling was better than the El Camino.

The 2011 Ford Transit ended up being rather slow. It almost got beaten up by a 1965 Ford Transit. I rebuilt it thinking that the changes I made would improve the speed. No.

But in its turn, the 1965 Ford Transit just about got spanked by the 2011 Transit and the F-150 (which properly speaking, ought to have won).

The GMC Vandura was definitely better than the preceding vehicles, but I struggled against an impossibly fast Wuling Sunshine (watch that struggle against the Vandura when I get to it).

The Holden Sandman lost much of its spare PI from the addition of street tyres, and increasing the tyre widths instead had little to offer. If you could’ve built it into B or A class, it would probably have been much better, but this was underwhelming.

It took a lot of fiddling to get the Morris Minor Traveller to C600 (basically it was all down to removing the front bumper). Slow, but the manoeuvring was excellent. Nonetheless, it took three attempts to win against a Wuling Sunshine which then made a last minute push ahead of the finish of Línea Costera.

The 1965 Mini Traveller was much the same as its predecessor, and once again, I won a race by the skin of my teeth after some rather questionable racing.

And that’s as far as my experiments have currently got. Conclusion: this is a vexing class and category. The best starting point might be the lightest available vehicle, wider tyres, and perhaps a little extra power, but as the cars in this game are so unequal, the best starting point could be the fattest car, narrowest tyres and stupid amount of extra power. Not actually fun at all.