FH5, Series 46, Week 1

This week’s treasure hunt was… but first a word from our sponsors, Horizon Realms – playpen opportunities to annoy you to a greater or lesser extent. All your favourite Evolving Worlds™ are packed inside minuscule spaces with maximum opportunities to lose skill chains. Horizon Realms, coming to a PC, xbox, PS5 (delete as applicable) near you. What was I talking about? Oh, the treasure hunt. Do some jumps in the Pontiac Firebird.

The weekly was the return of the 1983 VW Golf GTi. It had to include a Street Scene race, and the Street Scene race had to include the inappropriate Porsche Rallye (pronounced “Dakar”). Yes, I won, but that Porsche Dakar… sorry, Rallye, has a tendency to pop up in all the wrong places and being one of those cars that the drivatars make you hate (e.g., the Supervan 3 in FH4) even though it’s quite good. (Aside: I don’t think the Porsche Rallye [Dakar? –ed.] is that good, being too overpowered and too underhandling.) I somehow managed to knock out an ultimate skill chain without it taking half an hour of aimless driving about.

I thought the danger sign was probably doable in a stock 2008 M3, but I upgraded it a little and then kept crashing into some farm buildings. The Mexican Ministry of Health and Safety need to have a word with the Horizon people about there they locate their danger signs. This rapidly became a repeated exercise in annoying that got me a one-third good SWS. Same bloody speed trap again, but this time in a B700 Subaru. Same tactic (i.e., head straight at said speed trap). Another one-third good SWS. I used the wrong class of car for my first attempt at the drift zone. I’m tired, I missed the finer details. I get irritated because I do this. Used the FD Mustang in the end and got a rubbish SWS. Screw you, game.

Rivals was back this week, but only one, in the SF90 round Playa Azul. At night. Gods! This is why I voted for the series that doesn’t get us lumbered with night races.

Eventlab. JCO Project Refinery Race. Another sodding night race. Marks off. Props – marks on. Track layout – marks off for irksome bent hairpin and 2nd/3rd gear racing.

A photo in Guanajuato got me a third (?) SF90. Actually, this might be my fourth one. I’ve lost count.

I used a Nissan for the HW drift zone. Again, I missed the fine print. My Pulsar got the job done and was rewarded with a one-third very good SWS.

The RA PR stunt was the same one as last week. Pulsar to the rescue again and achieved on the uphill run. This time I got a one-third excellent and one-third very good SWS.

Everyone was driving Tank Pools in the Trial. I think only two of us had properly built ones. I was on the second row for Reservorio and surprised myself by blasting past everyone else apart from the two drivatars in the lead. I nearly caught William, but there just wasn’t enough race. I was on the front row for Sierra Verde and blasted my way into the lead. I ought to have won, but when we got to that sharp left-hander at the start of the last sector, the player behind me was clearly eager to shove his way past, and my attempt to clip the checkpoint, keeping him on the outside of me, failed. Ironically, the rest of the field was so far behind that I restarted in 3rd without any risk to a podium at all. Job done.

Unfortunately, there are three seasonals this week, which means doing those or going through most of the dailies to get another Backstage Pass which, in truth, I don’t really need.

Horizon Realms

Basically, there are little more than a collection of drift zones because in several cases it’s the only effective way to amass points. There’s a (general) correlation between the complexity of the layout and the number of points you can score. I scored over a million points in a couple of these, but the Stadium Maze was impossible unless there’s some trick to racking up points. The Ice Rink was a low-scoring round because you really need something off-road with the right sort of tyres. I kept sliding past Christmas trees and snowmen in my Hoonigan Mustang (a terrible choice). Winter Wonderland was also problematic because of unexpectedly solid objects and rather sharp slopes which act more like walls. Possibly this is another Realm which would be best done with an off-roader. I even lost points from hitting a Christmas tree (as far as I could tell).

The barriers round these areas are only visible when you get close to them, which has probably resulted in a lot of players losing points from crashing into a barrier that wasn’t there half a second ago.

The Stadium Track isn’t great, being another tiresome 2nd/3rd gear race. In fact, I wonder whether it’s Winter Wonderland re-dressed. I must check. Probably less dreadful in B class cars or lower. For example, the new Nissans might be all right round here because they’re also so feeble.

I’m not sure what the purpose of free mode is exactly unless it’s to do things such as listening to a radio station for five minutes in a certain arena.

Another feature of Realms is that the accolades are boosting Forzathon Points which, I guess, is to give new players a leg up. I quite possibly passed 88,000 FPs this afternoon because of this largesse.

New cars

I’ve had a little play with all of them, but doing Realms took a fair amount of time, leaving none for any of them apart from some pootling in free roam. Yes, I did buy the Nissan Retro Rides Car Pack for the sake of completeness. D’you really think I’d clamour for these cars to be added to the game? Were they added to entice GT7 players to try Horizon 5? Are this week’s daily races in GT7 going to feature the dullest cars in the game to celebrate the arrival of FH5 on PS5?

Anyway, I’ll have a proper play with all the new kit tomorrow.