FH5, Series 57, Week 4

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 I started with the treasure hunt. Do a DS in any Supra. The treasure is in the castle car park.

The weekly was in the 1997 Honda Civic Type R. Mine was in A class, but revving like it was S2 class. I rebuilt it, and more or less got the same thing. Probably best in B class. I did the photo in Ek’ Balam because it also took care of the photo challenge.

I one-shotted all of the PWR stunts and PB’ed the DS in the International Scout. I also got a three-car SWS for the DZ, but sold them as I’m fed up with the absence of any expressions of gratitude from recipients of the decent cars which I’ve been giving away. (Gifting is an aspect of FH5 which, I hope, we never see again.)

I also one-shotted the HW and RA PR stunts, but the latter got me a rubbish SWS.

Eventlab (1). Touge Battle. Night time. Ugh. Annoying, narrow course. Ugh. Props fairly decent.

Eventlab (2). Cobra Drift Park. Stupid, ridiculous layout, which I think I cheated to complete because I was suddenly going in the wrong direction.

The Trial. I opted for the Subaru 22B, which turned out to be a decent choice. There were only four of us, three in race-appropriate cars and a clown in a 1974 Honda Civic, which was very fast but uncontrollable. Third in Cordillera and came 2nd. Solid win. Second off the grid in Cascada and came 3rd. Another solid win with the player in the Civic riding on our coattails.

I might do one of the seasonals to make up the points deficit, but probably won’t.

Road Trip won the vote. I’m not bothered either way as I care for this option as little as I care for the other.

Name that tune

I played another round of Name that tune, but went off in a slightly different direction. There’s a user on the forum complaining about drivetrain swaps. Drivetrain swaps! Waaah! AWD! Waaah! Waaah! Shouldn’t be allowed. Waaah! Waaah! Waaah! I can still go faster than players in AWD cars.

All right, as a keyboard player, I stuck to AWD for the entirety of FH4. Early in FH5, I decided to mostly stick with stock drivetrains. It’s only when some cars have too much power and not enough handling that I switch to AWD on road-going vehicles. I like RWD because I have better manoeuvrability, but I have no problems if players want to use AWD. On dirt or off-road, I’ll only use AWD.

But this got me thinking. What if I raced versions of my own AWD and RWD cars against each other. I started with the Nissan Z. The RWD version beat the AWD version. The Subaru BRZ was the same. I then looked at the PWR of the two versions and found – not surprisingly – that the RWD car had a higher PWR. The only way for the AWD car to match it was to add extra power to get the car into low S1 class. I did eventually do a better lap round Estadio in the AWD BRZ by about a second, but can’t guarantee that I could consistently repeat such a feat.

Once again, I can’t help but feel that the PI system is a load of old wank because what we have is equal cars in unequal classes.

FH6, customisation

Where was all the depth that we were promised? As I feared, this was somewhat superficial. The acid test for the new rear aero will be the 911s because the traditional Forza aero sits too low and isn’t wide enough or big enough to suit such cars. Also, we didn’t see the spoilers which are applied to the older cars in the game. Are they going to be the same or have they been updated? Do I care about different rims front and rear? Nope, but I’ll guarantee that sooner or later there will be a daily which requires us to do this. A hundred more rims? They could reduce the number of rims by a hundred. A new category of rims. What? We don’t know, but perhaps as the common guess suggests, race rims.

We know there are some new colours, but where’s the new painting and vinyl editor with graphics program functionality? Decals on windows? Touch me improperly, missus! With this particular feature, I have to wonder how it wasn’t a thing a long time ago since it was found in Most Wanted (2005).

I hope the FE cars won’t all be clown cars made to look extra ridiculous, and I hope what we’ve seen might be less naff to drive than they look. (Unlike FH4, I don’t regularly drive any of the FE cars in FH5, and can only immediately think of the BMW and the Mini. The Meyers Manx, too? Gods, they’re not memorable, are they?)

And what about upgrades and tuning for cars? What’s going on there? I thought this was meant to be a car-racing game. [Aren’t they naïve when they’re old? –ed.]

Garages sound like dolls houses with cars. If I understand the garage correctly, players will still need to wade their way through the usual sort of car list because only a few cars can be displayed in each location.

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