Occasional Tales

I’m still here, but I oughtn’t to be. I started with the PR stunts this week. Muffed my first attempt on the danger sign in the Jesko, but got a two-thirds good SWS from the second attempt. I one-shotted the speed trap and got a one-third good SWS. The speed zone was a sodding pain in the arse. I tried with the Jesko even though I knew it’d be way to fast to be any good. I tried the F40 Competizione without any success and eventually completed the task in the Koenigsegg CCGT. I blasted my way through Rivals. Normally I’m a bit cautious because I don’t usually need to worry about not defeating my opponent, but today it was all pedal to the metal even in the Mission R. The photo was where the wheels started to fall off this week’s shopping trolley. I took a pic of the 812 Superfast outside Buenas Vistas, but later found that the tile was still live. I took the picture again, completed the job, but think I got no points. The treasure hunt also proved to be faulty. I got five near miss ski...

Well, I was wrong about the cars. It seems that the Noble M600 will not be series or seasonal reward car in Series 44. Like recent series, the Backstage Pass remains the 80% reward, but I’m pretty sure that the only car I don’t have more than one of in the new list is the Koenigsegg Agera RS (but the reward is going to be the Agera; I believe I have two already). As for the rest, I have at least two of each. (Aside: I’ve just learnt that the 2012 BMW M5 is in the Autoshow; I must confess that it’s a feature of the game I either ignore or use as a classification system.) I now find that Max had posted lists of new series cars on the forums, but I missed that… because the list (which I found earlier this morning) was buried in the thread. Are the missing cars going to be part of the Backstage Pass vote? Or will they be in the Forzathon shop? Or will players have to wait for their random inclusion in revised future series? What will they do if the Extreme E series turns up because that wa...

I started the week with the weekly challenge in the ugly 1993 Ford SVT Cobra, a car that wouldn’t have looked sexy and desirable even back in the 90s. I’d seen there were problems with painting the body of the car, but, it seems, the dot on the tile wasn’t turning yellow to indicate completion, while the text at the bottom said the task had been completed. I did the race and the weekly was done. I went to the Street Scene Festival site and smashed some cubes, which got me the 80% series car. PR stunts. In the Cobra again, but this time C600. I one-shotted the danger sign and managed to front flip on landing. The SWS was one-third very good and two-thirds good, a most unusual outcome. It took a lot of attempts to do the Trailblazer. I know the best strategy, which is to head through the gate at a shallow angle, swing right through the trees (if you don’t go right enough, you’ll get savaged by the game’s feral logs), follow the road, and cut corners. I still have a theory that there’s a ...

I was looking for some videos on my old laptop at school yesterday when I came across a video of me playing Most Wanted (2005). I think I was probably testing the game bar to record a video about six years ago (?) when I had that game installed just before I bought Horizon 4. I see that Ericship111 posted a video about FH5 ending too soon. Ending? Another matter. The video I found had me wondering why I played MW (2005) so much even though it had no Festival playlist, the roster of cars was minute, and nothing new was ever added to the game. The game has some progression (which – little reminder – can’t go on forever) in that you did events to unlock new parts of Fairhaven and to challenge rivals on the Black List before dealing with Sergeant Cross and the Corvette Squad. What made the game replayable for me was the police pursuits even though I reached a point where I knew all the tactics to evade them or boost my score because Sergeant Cross would sit behind me in the docks just out ...

Treasure hunt. I did a figure-8 round the crates at the Street Scene outpost. No drifting required. The treasure is not far from the stadium to the south-west. I think I have about 69,000 FPs. Nothing to spend them on, not even Backstage Passes. The weekly in the 2016 CTS-V passed without any issues, although some players may need to buy a new one to spend the credits to get it into S1 class. As I had a second, unused one, that wasn’t a problem. Eventlab, Chemical Plant . Totalitarian use of props. Points off for a night race and a terrible circuit. Points on for at least restricting the race to C-class hot hatches. PR stunts. I added front aero and heavier rims to get the CTS-V to the top of S1 class. The danger sign was a nuisance because on my first attempt I got the distance, but landed on a rock. Got it on the second attempt by aiming slightly to the left. Start from the Lookout Circuit turn (I’ve decided that a long run-up doesn’t really help, especially on that deceptive right-...