FH5, Series 52, Week 3

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Treasure hunt. Burnout near start to the test track, with the treasure chest in Playa Azul. ¶ Should treasure hunts remain in FH6? I think the problem is with the whole economy of the Forzathon Shop, where the money is rare, and initially difficult to acquire, which can be frustrating when the car may be one that probably won’t become available for a long time afterwards. The treasure hunt is a nice early-game boost, but if you play the game long enough, you’re only doing it for the playlist (and #ForcedEngagement).

The weekly challenge put me in the Lotus Exige S for the first time in ages. The challenges were the usual straightforward sort of thing. Move along, nothing to see here. I must go back to the Exige and see what I can do with it.

Eventlab (1). Woodsman’s Wonderland. B700 retro rally. (Not again.) Marks off for an overlapping layout on the mini-map. A lot of marks off for a hairpin that vanishes into the background because it’s impossible to see where the turn actually is.

Eventlab (2). Johonua. I like the layout and I like the length. The surface is terrible, but that’s a Horizon problem not a creator problem. If the surface could be smoothed out, this would be a decent circuit. ¶ FH6 needs to keep Eventlab, but from my perspective, surface creation needs fixing. For example, thinking way back to Quake III, meshes with control points to which textures could be applied. Seamless welding.

I used the BMW X6M for the PR stunts since it’s the only SUV I have at the top of B class. I one-shotted all three of the PR stunts. Two rubbish SWSs and one that was one-third good and one-third very good. ¶ I expect the PR stunts to remain in FH6. It doesn’t seem likely that we’re going to get anything new, or one of the expansions would probably have had a new PR stunt.

I also one-shotted the HW PR stunt for a one-third very good SWS.

The RA PR stunt was the slight pain you’d expect because it seems that you randomly fail the jump by crashing into trees which you can break. Seriously, game?

The Trial. Was für ein Pain im Arsch. I don’t really like super GT cars because they’re fat and overpowered. I did worse because I went with the MB AMG SL65. An AWD SL65. In my first attempt I came 2nd round Estadio (1st human) and 1st in Tierra Próspera, but it went to Los Jardines, where I was the sole, surviving player. I could catch the first three drivatars and only needed to overtake one, but the car was unwieldy, and I was pushing it too hard. I quit just at the end of the race. On my second attempt I quit in Tierra Próspera because of atrocious driving from my teammates, which would’ve deprived us off the win. On the third attempt I switched to then AMG GT-R (which has no front aero) and came 2nd in Estadio because of late incompetence from another player, and 3rd in Tierra Próspera while watching the players ahead of me being incompetent through the corners.

Afterwards, I rebuilt the SL65 as an RWD car with (S1 880) and without (S1 850) weight race reduction while leaving the engine alone. It definitely improved the driving experience either way. I’m out of practice with AWD road cars, but this one is a particular barge in that configuration.

FH6: races

I don’t expect the types of races in FH6 to be any different. I hope we might get some proper-length (fictional) motorsport tracks. I wonder, for example, whether Fujimi Kaido in FM8 was a test run for its inclusion in FH6. I hope we don’t end up with a stadium full of annoying carting tracks.

Race lengths need addressing. The road circuits in FH5 are too short if I can get round most of them in about a minute, whereas all the scrambles are longer (why?) The Colossus and the Gauntlet were all right in FH4, but have, I think, got stupidly long in FH5, and will probably be stupidly longer in FH6. I used to do both races quite frequently in FH4, but rarely ever touch them in Horizon 5. I do the Goliath a bit more often in FH5, but nowhere near as much as I did it in the previous game. What’s missing is the intermediate-length stuff which we sometimes see in Eventlabs.

I think the other problem with longer races is that they don’t suit lower-class cars unless you’re a bit of a masochist. I did the Goliath in FH4 in something D class (Morris Minor or VW Beetle?), which took me 20 minutes to complete. I’ve never tried the same in FH5. Right, I have something to do.

If the circuits are going to remain short, the number of laps needs to be increased; or if you go into a seasonal, you can choose the number of laps instead of the default three.

Horizon Tour

I blow hot and cold with these. They’re not as varied as you might expect, appearing to be generated from a grid of the same three sets of races with different sorts of cars so that you can have Camaro vs. Mustang or Chevrolet vs. Dodge, but the same three races twice over. None of the newer races are included (although spare me the nonsense races in the stadium).

Sometimes you’ll get some Horizon Open try-hard in a cheatmobile; sometimes you’ll get a bunch of utter amateurs in stock cars; a lot of the time, it’s inexperienced players who think every corner is a drift zone and probably wonder why I catch them or pass them at that point.

Last night, it was a mixture of the second and third sorts. Since this is a team event, I made no real effort to race against the other players, but won all three races by being a more competent driver.

I’ve got to the point where I’m inclined to go into events in cars that are built, but not top of the class to see how well I can do. My S1-class Macan is in the middle of the range, but I win off-road races quite a bit in it. I did some dirt racing in my 1997 Land Rover Defender (A716) and was miffed when the only other player quit the race on the first lap even though we were in 1st and 2nd by then. I wanted to see how I might fare in a car that was well off spec.

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