FH5, Series 37, Week 4

With the return of the academic year I’m probably not going to be posting entries till sometime on Saturdays. I have a fair amount of time on Friday between lunchtime and my return to school to get much of the Festival playlist done, but I also have P1 and P10 classes and on some occasions, am likely to prefer a nap.

The treasure hunt, as I discovered, wanted you to add a new part to your Ford Focus. I tried adding a part I’d already bought, but the game was having none of it. But in reality, I assume that this was another attempt to force players to use the Test Track which, I feel, has nothing practical to offer.

I ended up doing a wreckage HA because there was one near the location of the treasure chest.

The weekly was in the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Job done, but drag racing and drifting?

The Audi S1 had no problems with the speed zones. I switched to the 2012 Mini JCW for the Trailblazer because in testing it had no problems hitting the target time and then some. What happened? I kept botching the run even though I knew exactly where to go. Two rubbish SWSs and one that was one-third good and one-third excellent.

The seasonal, Guanajuato at Midnight, was where I thought this week started getting lazy. B700 hot hatches again. I suppose I could’ve driven something different, but the Vauxhall Corsa VXR was ready to go from previous, recent outings. Tunnel Run again. It was all fairly straightforward and my one encounter with a traffic car didn’t actually inconvenience me. Don’t know what an Audi RS5 has to do with hot hatches. Let the punishment fit the crime.

Ditto Euro to Go! I was back in one of my 2016 BMW M2s. It’s about time the unfamiliar car categories can be found so that we’re not scratching our heads wondering what’s eligible. I assume this was really AWD super saloons. Oddly enough the 2009 BMW M5 was only my second one.

I took a photo. I got a stupid horn. I’ve been doing quite a bit of Horizon Tour recently and have at times been irritated by the knobheads and their annoying novelty horns.

I survived the Eliminator at the end of which I got a very good wheel spin.

For the Trial I picked the 2013 Audi RS7 mainly because I’d used it for dirt racing in FH4. I sort of had doubts because I thought it might be a bit of a barge, but as I was on the front row of the human grid for Cordillera, I won the race. The only cockup was that final corner where I braked too late. I don’t think anyone saw me. I was on the last row for River Scramble and came 2nd after passing the players in 3rd and 2nd places. They were slowish through corners rather than incompetent. However, it was a solid team performance with clean racing throughout.

I started the HW PR stunt with a more-or-less stock Dodge Charger Challenger Hellcat SRT TT RS GT3 Barge (or whatever its name is) which ought to have been fast enough to do the speed trap, but was terrible through the loop. I switched to my ATS-V and the job was done for a rubbish wheel spin.

More laziness with the seasonal, Speed and Style, as I was in the F12 tdf again. Another purple HSV. Could be my third. Again.

I one-shotted the RA PR stunt in my 2018 Ford Mustang and got an SWS that was one-third very good, and one-third exceptionally excellent.

The seasonal was Run Raptor Run. The reward was a third 2011 Ford Raptor. I’ve never driven a single one of them. I used the Porsche Macan, which was all right. A little bit slideways [sic!] at times, but otherwise a decent performance.

And that’s the end of Series 37… But wait, there’s more.

Eventlab. Yes, the tiles were broken again and didn’t come right till I restarted the game. A lot of people aren’t fond of Cathedral Circuit (personally, I don’t mind it because it’s good practice for taking tricky corners). SZ 2.11 took Cathedral and made it more annoying so that if you disliked the course in the first place, you’ll hate it even more.

Ark Seacoast Drift Town was a brilliantly built setting with an utterly terrible course. I had to restart it when I ended up back on the start-finish straight because you could do that and miss a whole swathe of checkpoints. There were plenty of opportunities for crashes at intersections, which I managed to avoid. One lap would’ve been enough. No, it would’ve be one beyond my tolerance. One-third excellent SWS.

And that really is the end of Series 37. As I said, this week felt lazy. Series 38 looks to be the same. I’m approaching the point where I do enough of the playlist to get the new car and nothing much else apart from the dailies. If the second series car or second weekly car is worth it, I might put some extra effort in. I need to think about this.

What’s going on with Horizon 6? Another year away (i.e., autumn 2025)? Announcement when they have their xbox conference or whatever it is in June? I’m used to new games taking progressively longer to appear (Quake - Quake II - Quake III, etc.), but Horizon 5 does feel a bit like a dying horse, and there’s a lack of anything about Horizon 6.