Occasional Tales

I already had the 1999 Lotus Elise, hence there was no immediate need to do the seasonal. In fact, this has been quite a good week overall for getting new cars from wheel spins (and pictures of cars that have otherwise eluded me). I wasn’t sure of the point of 3 laps of Shimanoyama now that it’s a formal drift circuit. The photo needed to be taken inside Shirakawa, but the exact location appears not to have mattered. Unlike Horizon 5, it seems that when someone else breaks a mascot, it’s gone till it respawns. I managed to get 12, but had to go away and do other things before returning to complete the job. In Off-road Scramble , I drove the car to win the car. Taiyaki wasn’t the pain that it can be, but the drivatars seem to be less prone to aiming for apexes these days. I used the Ginetta Junior to do Toys on the Road . Tokyo Railway Sprint was at night, which was a nuisance because I don’t tend to bother with sprint races and don’t know the course that well. I managed to one-shot ...

I couldn’t even begin to guess where the chest for the treasure hunt was. I spent an hour fast travelling round the Ito Region for possible locations before I googled it and found that it was beside the railway line south of the junction that’s south of Ito Airfield. I’d been through the area several times without luck and for some reason, other players weren’t appearing on the map no matter how close they were so that I couldn’t identify the correct place by looking for a cluster of grey dots. Colossally annoying. I did Cross-Country Heroes because I’ve never got the 2020 Defender and had no intention of buying it if I was going to get it as a reward. Two of the races had to be the least cross country races in the game with that asinine thing at the docks and then the ridiculous one in the city. I assume that after the disappointing and irritating CC race in Guanajuato as a sad replacement for the one in Edinburgh, PGG decided to stick one in Tokyo, which is an urban area, not a rura...

The new update arrived this morning. Quite a few of the comments on Facebook were the usual whine about Japanese cars. No, the topic is the British Automotive update. Focus, children. What are we getting? A new Bentley Continental (probably marketing), but I still want to see the GT3 version return from FH4. An old Ginetta GT40 Junior that already looks rather retro as if it came out of those Cars films (the current one looks better, but is marketed “for 14-17 year olds”). Is this going to be better than that awful E-Type wannabe from FH5? But where’s the GT4 car or the G56? And from the antique end of the paddock, some old Vauxhall Astra. Let me listen. No, I can’t hear anyone screaming for it. The FE Jaguar XJ-S is probably going to be an undrivable mess without a drivetrain swap, although controller players will be all right. I’ll probably have to buy the standard XJ-S (which I had out in FH4 and as usual, the drivatars were all in the same car). I expect that Drift Attack will be o...

I went Geoguesser on the treasure hunt, assuming that it’d probably be down one of the green lanes in Tokyo. I was right, and even picked the right lane just near the Raku Raku icon. I’d not driven the Honda e previously, and it didn’t surprise me that there was no racing event in the weekly since EVs are typically weak in races. I also used the weekly to deal with the photo challenge, which was another round of me: “There’s the mascot.” Game: No, wrong place . Me: “What about here?” Game: Fine . Me: “What’s the difference?” Game: Don’t ask questions. The Forza gods have spoken . Are unlimited buggies starting to be the off-road equivalent of B-class modern rally? I was back in the Ariel Nomad for Unlimited Buddies , although I admit it’s my only properly built A-class car in this category. Oh, and what absolute larks! All night time races. I had to close the curtain or the glare created too much contrast to see properly. This also reminded me why I’m even less fond of cross-country ra...

I looked at the map, looked for an SZ, and pretty much fast travelled to just the right spot to find the treasure. It’s under a section of the SZ on this week’s Festival playlist. The weekly started slightly badly. I got the Autozam, but started upgrading it before I’d driven it. I then went to the Autoshow to buy a new one even though it was a reward for one of the seasonals (but I’d forgotten it probably was). In fact, it was only about CR36,000 and hardly what I’d call a reward. I did Bandai Azuma for the touge race because that’s the A-class one. At least the photo was merely taking a picture of a cult car somewhere on the Edamame Circuit and not a picture of some infantile mascot which you can only get if you place the car in just the right position. Micro Circuits was back to one of those vague car categories for which you can’t search and the options offered by the game will only cover the eligible cars in A class. I chose the MG Metro 6R4, which I turned into a road racer as...

I started this season with a combination of the weekly and the seasonal, Scenic Nights , for some irony racing, using the i20N to win another i20N. I upgraded the car to the top of B class, but that barely made any difference to the overall performance at all, and pumped it up to S1 class for the final weekly task. This was, in truth, a mistake because as I said last week, Edamame is awful for anything much above B class. As for this weeks photo op., go into the stadium, find that ridiculous mascot, and snap pictures until the game decides you’ve done. There appears to be a specific location, but it should work regardless so long as the mascot is in view. The collectibles were a nuisance because like FH5, they’re not all in the stadium or around its external circumference. There’s one with the roadside cars, there’s one across the road under the arm of a digger, and a whole bunch on the baseball field which is just near the stadium. As I discovered, if another player gets one before y...

I’d seen the location of the treasure on Facebook. Fast travel to the Shimanoyama Circuit icon, and the treasure is in the garages to the left. The weekly challenge was in the weak and weedy Toyota JPN Taxi. I’m sure it’s iconic. I drove it without wasting any money or effort on it. For the picture at the station, park on one of the roads outside. The location for the photo of the Wuling Sunshine is the field south of the start of Sunflower Charge . The Nissan Be-1 seemed to be a good choice for Small but Mighty , although probably absolutely anything eligible was. It was a bit of a pain to take the lead round Shimanoyama . Edamame is a silly karting track, continuing the tradition of terrible stadium circuits started in FH5. And what was the reward? A Honda S800. I’m sure that it, too, is iconic. For Dango Dashes , the choice was modern or retro supercars, which they could’ve stated directly rather than some vague, meaningless category. I picked the 2-23 Audi R8 Coupé. Still can’t t...

As usual, I started with the treasure hunt. I knew roughly where I could find it and then had to narrow down the exactly location to the end of the track above the waterfall with the view of the temple(/pagoda). The weekly was doing things in the Fiat Abarth 131, which was a favourite of mine in FH5. The challenge to get three ultimate wreckage skills was the usual random sort of thing. There’s probably a good place to go and do this, but I don’t happen to know where it is. I took a picture of a Lamborghini and got, er, something. Rickets? Probably. I picked the G Wagen for Out of the Loop , but feel this was probably a mistake. It was understeery round the annoying Kawazu Nanadaru spiral. I went too fast into the turn at the bottom of the hill in Cherry Field Trail . Crash! Bollocks! The good thing about this seasonal was that three missing cars came out to play, and I got snaps of them. For It’s Snow Problem At All I went with another old favourite from FH4, the Range Rover Sport S...

Meanwhile, somewhere in Hokubu… This damned treasure must be somewhere. I should’ve paid more attention to the screenshot on Facebook that gave its location. I’ll drive around a bit… And round and round… I’m worse at navigation than Odysseus. I eventually find the spot in north central Hokubu, not too far north of the Flower Run ST . Some arse is half hiding the treasure chest with his car. I expected to have to do a seasonal to get the Lamborghini Huracán for the weekly. Instead I had to do the spending-my-money. I randomly drove about and eventually, randomly got a great skill chain. Did my two laps of Soni and took a picture. Then it was off to the castle for a photo. Once again I resorted to the 458 Speciale for Play Time . I was all right round Narai-Juku , but have probably only done the Venus Sprint once, hence I did it badly. The conditions weren’t exactly ideal for racing in S1-class cars. I drove the 2005 MX-5 for Spyder Sense . Again, it was unfamiliar courses in the dark ...

We start with the weekly in the Alfa Romeo 4C. Why did we have to do a drag meet? What does this car have to do with drag races? (As Alcuin might’ve asked under the right circumstances.) The rest was the usual sort of stuff. The photo at the golf course wasn’t just a matter of taking a pic of the Maserati Ghibli. It seems that the car had to be on a green with sand traps in view. Or something like that. The collectibles are easily collected by driving from one end of Ine to the other. Rally Up and Go! saw the return of low-spec modern rally cars, but was für ein Laugh – cross-country racing. Wind Farm and Soni Highlands were awful with their jumps, one of which flipped me, and on the second attempt, I let the car flop over, thus offering the drivatars the chance to overtake me. I didn’t need the 4C, of course, as I’d already got one. Scenic Scrambles was another seriously?! moment. Super saloons doing dirt racing. Perhaps it’s a thing. I whipped out my… – steady, ladies – 2018 Au...

The treasure was obviously at the spaceport, where I roamed round and round, unable to pin down exact location because some Jeremy (Hunt – rhyming slang) was (deliberately) parked on top of the chest. This seems to be a new thing in the game to annoy players. I don’t appreciate having my time wasted like this. I had to do the Trial to get the Ferrari Dino because I didn’t want to buy it and end up with two, driving neither very much. My first attempt at the Trial did not go well. I tried an old favourite, the Renault Turbo 5, which just wasn’t up to the job, and quit before the end of the first race after the drivatars muscled back past me. I switched to the Celica for the second attempt. I was fifth on the human grid on Airfield and managed to claw my way to 5th to contribute to a team win. I was in second place at the start of Hokubu and finished in 2nd, somehow keeping up with the player who had comfortably won the first round. I’ll note that the car category was misleading. It sa...

I knew about where the treasure chest would be at the tip of the north-east peninsula. The weekly in the Ariel Nomad had me PB the golf course TB twice. For the CC race I did Yahikoyama and ran into a bug. On the big jump the nose of the car bounced upwards and it spun round on its rear wheels just as it pleased. I used a DS for the photo op., just missing a randomly stationary traffic car as I approached the jump. Mud, sweat and gears said “total buggies and off-road”. I thought “total” meant “anything goes”, but the game then said “unlimited” I ended up back in the Ariel Nomad. Poor labelling once again. If only PGG might employ a literate intern. The reward for Are ya winning, S1? was the Ariel Nomad, which ought to have been the reward for Mud, sweat and gears , and the Ford GT or something similar should have been the reward for this. I immediately suspected that Horizon Play (“three awesome air skills in a rally monster”) was forcing players to go CC racing because in those th...

The treasure is to be found in the far north-east of the map next to a chalet on a straight-ish bit of road. I wonder how many players ever go into the north of the map in free roam and how many only ever go there for a specific purpose. I mostly only ever pass through that region when I’m doing the Goliath. The weekly was in the Lancer Evo VI. Three laps of Sekibe got me into the top 10%. The SZ was annoying because you had to three-star it, not just get three stars across multiple attempts. I added another stupid phrase to my limited in-game vocabulary from taking a photo of a rally monster from the 2000s. B-class modern rally has reared its ugly head again in Stray from the Path , but this time in cross country races. Seriously? Who in their right mind would use a rally car in a CC race? But wait, dear reader, there’s more because I’d only just been doing Snow Forest and Oka yesterday. See below. Naruo CC struck me as being unreasonably wide. The Honda NSX-R GT was an absolute m...

I had to start with the seasonal On the Trail to get the GMC Syclone so that I could do the weekly. This was the start of me building cars which kept being the wrong year. Old person problems. The weekly was all right, although spare me the Street Scene races. I took a pic of a Jag from the 90s, and then went smashing bamboo, which got me the Crown Vic and the FE S-Cargo (following on from the FE MB 150E the other day). I dealt with the Evolving World car meet and a picture there. I’m inclined to observe that they could remove the car meets in a future update, and no one would miss them. uox populi cum uocibus magnis uox omnium non est as they might have said in Latin. Cosworth your Worth was my second attempt to use the wrong car even though it was eligible in all other respects. I ended up driving the 1995 Corvette ZR-1, which was another stock+ car (i.e., minimal scope for upgrading, and thus piss-poor handling). I wasn’t overly impressed by the inclusion of Soni, which is little...

It was easy enough to determine the location of the treasure chest from the picture (beach east of the spaceport). I did the new Hokubu car meet. Don’t see the point of this feature, which seems to have been added because a few vocal sorts were mistakenly believed to speak for everyone. Clearly most players are wary of these things. The weekly. Well, that was a little embarrassing. I’m so used to having the car that I didn’t consider that I could get it from doing the Street Runner seasonal. In truth, the Delorean’s so cheap from the Autoshow that buying it was no great bother. The tasks for the weekly were no great bother, either. I think the Delorean was also eligible for the photo. Another stupid phrase ticked off my bucket list. For the drag race, the target time was 21 seconds, which I just managed to do in the 911 Turbo 3.3. I’m sure some people willingly do these drag meets, but this feels like another forced engagement task on the playlist. I managed to one-shot the Deep Forest...

According to tradition and a fear of bugs, I started with the treasure hunt for which I got an A for completion and an F for dignity since I toppled over the edge of the building and landed roof-first on the chest. Later, I saw a video of what we were supposed to have done, which involved jumping to the lower floor of the building and then jumping obliquely across a gap. Later, I saw a video of my method. I hadn’t previously tried the RAM 1500 TRX, which was the car for the weekly. It was heavy and not much inclined to turn. Went over to the spaceport for the photo op. For the ST I started with the 2020 Supra which, I think, with a clear run I could’ve hit the target. Casting about for the right car, I lighted on the NSX-R GT. Engine swap and not much else, and managed to hit the target without too much rewinding for the excessive amounts of traffic impeding me. I one-shotted the TB in the WP Evo VIII, and then one-shotted the DZ in the Acty. The wheel spins were excellent (although I ...

I started with the weekly in the 2020 BMW M2. Not my favourite version of the car in FH5 as I preferred the 2016 model. That was all straightforward. I followed the weekly up with the picture of the car in the baseball stadium. In my hunt for vending machines to smash for the collectibles task, I found three alongside each other. Easy win, I thought until it became apparent that I’d managed to find the three indestructible machines in Tokyo. For the DS I used the Honda Trophy Truck, which rather neatly dropped down a class when I added snow tyres, although it took several attempts to get it all quite right. I one-shotted the SZ in the 2011 GT-R Black Edition (stock, I think). One very good wheel spin, a car (the Audi RS4 Avant), and two rubbish wheel spins. Let’s see, Be a Good Sport . Street Scene. Scream! By the way, Tokyo City Docks Charge isn’t a charge. It’s mostly wriggling and wiggling. When in Roma featured two sprint races, Oh joy. Oh, hang on, I can change the level of diff...

Once again, the location of the treasure was obvious. Middle of the north-west part of the golf course. I got my free SWS – yes, only one a week in FH6 –, which I’m mentioning because BlackPanthaa got exactly the same SWS in the video in which he was grinding away to unlock the FE BMW M2, viz. Colin McRae’s Ford Focus, the BMW 850 CSi, and some petty cash. The car for the weekly challenge was the Nissan Silvia K’S. I still have no idea what the K’S is supposed to stand for. Kiss? (Because vowels are devoiced in Japanese between voiceless consonants.) I felt the drag meets were #ForcedEngagement, but I supposed it spared us the bollocks of Bowie Knife99 and his wretched friends being impossible to beat regardless of the level of difficulty. The photo has to be done at the base of Tokyo Tower. I PB’ed the TB in spite of an absolutely dreadful run across the golf course. For the DS, a slightly built Honda Trophy Truck ended up being the way to go, and I one-shotted the SZ. And what did I...

Oh, gods, here we go again. I started with the treasure hunt and quickly realised that the place to go was Kinkaku-ji Temple. Of course, I started with this in case it’s still buggy. The weekly in the GR86 was all right, but if I click on an SZ as my destination, why doesn’t it acknowledge that I’ve arrived at my destination when I pass through the map marker? The touge race appears to be what happens when an SZ makes a baby with Street Scene races – a foul and hideous monster emerges, hissing and spitting. The photo at the Festival site got me a horn to go with all the other stupid, cretinous, retarded horns that the collection journal spews at you. I did Hot Like Summer in the Renault Clio Williams. Seemed to be a good choice. As I now know, the seasonals are no longer locked to a particular level of difficulty. The main nuisance is switching from one to another after you start a race because you have to quit the race. The old system which let you tune the car at the start of races ...

The Colossus I set the drivatars to Average and ended up in last place, overtaking a couple of the drivatars and merely getting 9th in visual range. Nothing I tried was effective, and the few place where the AI had to slow down didn’t help because I was never close enough to make a move on them. I repeated the race with the drivatars on Tourist and obviously won the race, but at what level would I get a fair race? I feel the Colossus has issues. In FH4, it was a slightly longer sprint race of about five to six minutes. A bit technical, but that was a good thing. I liked it in winter because it was mostly clear of snow. In FH5, the Colossus was too long to be a fun diversion, and I largely ignored it. In FH6, it’s merely a high-sped circuit with an occasional tighter turn. Because the track covers the whole width of the course, I don’t know what a good line might be. It’s clear there are alt. paths to take, but to what extent they might help, I don’t know as of yet and may never do. V...

Introduction Rather than bore you even more than usual with my activities in the game over the past couple of days, I thought I’d offer some commentary bordering on a review – at least of the game so far. Progression If I’d had the time, the gold wristband could’ve been unlocked in about two days. The progression from purple to gold was a bit grindy because having done all the races, I had to do a bunch of PR stunts which, as usual, irritated the hell out of me. Anyway, I’d got as far as the DZs when I unlocked the sprint to Legend Island this morning. Progression through the gold wristband is probably even grindier and may not be completable at this time (i.e., Evolving World stuff); or it’s down to the trivial content such as Horizon Promo or Stories or Roads etc. Road racing I’ve yet to do the Goliath and the Colossus , but most road races seem to be all right, although there’s nothing as far as I recall like Edinburgh Station Circuit or Plaza Circuit . So far I’ve not...