FH5, Series 58, Week 4

The week of the rubbish SWSs.

This week’s treasure hunt was a dirt race in a retro rally car, with the treasure just outside Horizon Wilds. I now have over 180,000 FPs. No point in buying another Sesto Elemento as I have three. I think the two others are both gifts. At least one is.

The weekly was in the Nissan Pulsar, which is a car I like except when it’s in some annoying Street Scene race. At least I have two, which meant that one was ready for dirt racing, and I’d obviously used it on the previous occasion because I didn’t need to spend money on an engine swap for the final task.

Eventlab returned with Rally Trail. I have to applaud the creator’s dedication to everything apart from the course itself, which was worse than deranged spaghetti.

It took a couple of attempts to do the DS because I bounced and flipped on landing. It was the week of the irritating SZs, too. Couple of attempts to get the one near Mulegé (the International Scout proved to be idea). It was also my choice for the DZ. And for all of this I didn’t get a single decent SWS.

I did get a horn from taking a photo. It’s a horn I probably already have, and there’s something that FH6 might do, but probably won’t. If you already have the reward, the game will 3D print a biscuit for you instead. The only problem is that I don’t have a 3D printer, or the ingredients for biscuits, and can’t say that I’m overly fond of them – biscuits, that is. Actually, they’re rather dangerous because I’m inclined to scoff the lot of them and then regret my life choices. Also, you should… [Oh do be quiet, you rambling old loon. –ed.]

I one-shotted the HW PR stunt and got another rubbish SWS.

The RA PR stunt had to be that annoying DZ in the north east of the map, which I eventually managed to complete in the FE BMW X5; and another rubbish SWS followed.

For the Trial I chose the Macan Rally Raid, which makes me wonder what the off-road category, much diminished in FH5, is going to be like in FH6. I started River in third and blasted my way through the field to 1st. I was fourth for Cordillera and came 2nd to the player who’d been 2nd in the first race. I might’ve won because he was in a fast T6 which he was struggling to handle. He muffed the final corner, but would probably have overtaken me anyway. I slowed a little to let him have his victory.

FH5, my final series

European Automotive has won the series vote, which will also be my last series in FH5. When FH5 came out, I predicted that having played a lot of FH4, I’d find the new game a bit of a shrug, and that may be why there was a period of time when I did little more than the Festival playlist, the dailies, and almost nothing else. I also continued to play FH4, sometimes spending more time on it than FH5.

This time, I’ll uninstall FH5 partly because I don’t see myself ever playing it again and partly because it vacuums up a fair amount of space on my SSD.

I’m looking forward to a new map that isn’t mostly flat, mostly brown, and edged in green. As for the rest, I’ve already said that I’m expecting more of the same. There will be the new stuff, and the departure of the old (Super 7? I’ve never done it once in this iteration and have never been tempted; HAs are out).

FH6, achievements

The achievements list has been published. As was immediately noted (often with glee), nothing for the Eliminator or Hide and Seek. As far as I’m aware, these will be back to blight us, although I hope they won’t be in the Festival playlist, or can be safely ignored if they are in it.

FH6, car list

Drip, drip, drip, I think. I hope that it’s with the intention of updating old car models rather than annoying people who just have to go back to some previous Horizon game if they want a turn in some missing vehicle. I hope we don’t get told that cars from previous instalments are “new”, although they stopped making that claim on the forums some time ago.

FH6, spec racing

This got mentioned in AR12 Nick’s video when he was interviewing Torben. This is going to be racing in stock cars as a means of levelling the playing field without resorting to ranked racing. Seems that cars will be changed weekly (?) and the only difference will be in the colour you can choose. It’s tempting, but I can see this probably favouring controller players. It’ll depend on the cars and other restrictions.

PGG also seem to be trying to prevent the usual dirty driving by linking skills together among players in such races. Whether that’ll make any difference to how players behave in races, I don’t know.

While this is the replacement for the Wild West of Horizon Open, I hope Horizon Tour will return, but without the drive between events because of the larger dimensions of the map.

FH6, Festival playlist

Turns out this might be a little different after all, with exclusive cars being accessible after the event. No very specific details, but, it seems, there will be fewer frustrations for people who arrive late to the game or miss a week for one reason or another. Besides, if you’ve paid for the game, you ought to have the opportunity to do events to unlock cars rather than have some interminable wait for a.) the series to be randomly repeated or b.) for the car to be dumped into the Backstage Pass when FH7 is on the way.

FH6, Forzathon Live (or whatever they call it)

FLs will be returning. I quite enjoyed them in FH4, but hope that they’re scaled like HAs in FH5. I did a couple of FLs by myself, but could only complete two rounds at most, and once did one of the more forgiving FLs in Edinburgh with another player, which we completed in the very last second.