FH6, 4th to 7th sessions

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 encounter any egregious drivatar behaviour in these races, but it’ll probably be there somewhere.

Dirt racing

Ditto the Gauntlet, which I only unlocked this morning. Some of these sorts of race still feel like karting tracks, and I’ve noted the excessive appearance of 90° turns. There’s one in a village to the north-west, where it goes 90° turn – short straight – 90° turn, a pattern which is then repeated later in the race, but with a longer straight. In the main, most of these courses seem all right.

FH6 seems to be much like FH5 in that on scrambles, I’m well outpacing the drivatars.

Off-road racing

Will the Titan be like Horizon 4 – a massive bucket of vulture puke – or like Horizon 5 – a uniformly good experience unblemished by quirky drivatar behaviour? Unfortunately, it’s in off-road races where the drivatars are at their cheatiest. I had some screamingly irksome encounters with the Ariel Nomad, the RJ Anderson Trophy Truck, and that ridiculous lifted FE 370Z (? can’t recall).

Off-road also races seem to suffer from an excess of jumps, and in one case, the drivatars kept punting me even when I was in the air. I can imagine a lot of races being ruined by players yawing in midair (see also Physics, copy-and-paste).

There are also some features of off-road races that remind me of FH4, with sharp turns at the bottom of slopes.

Street Scene

Largely ignored so far because it doesn’t contribute anything to progression. Nonetheless, I wonder what the density of AI traffic will do to these races.

Drag racing

Ugh. I’ve never understood the point of these. I tried the drag strip at the spaceport – several times as I lowered the level of difficult to Tourist because of some cheating drivatar on three wheels in the RJ Anderson Trophy Truck who still won.

Time attack

I’m not sure whether I’ve done all of these, but think they’re mostly all right as circuits because they look like motorsport tracks. Some of them can feel like karting tracks, and in fine fashion, PGG had to have S2-class Extreme Track Toys around the Ambleside Village Circuit of these as a wristband event. Scream!

Racing and car types

It seems the game has tweaked the cult of Anything Goes by having races such as Total Rally, which seems to mean that any kind of rally car is eligible, but nothing else. This will partly impede the exploiters, preventing them from using the CLK GTR in races where it doesn’t belong.

PR stunts

Same old same old. Possibly, there will be some I won’t be able to three-star till I have more suitable cars in my garage. There are some DSs where the three-star target is massive from a run-up that won’t work with anything short of the Jesko. I’ve already been looking for alt. approaches to some of the PR stunts to try and improve my chances. I’ve already encountered a DS which registers 1.5m jumps for some bizarre reason (bottoming out?) The only way I was able to one-star it was by slowing down ahead of it. I’ve only done one Trailblazer and that was on the spur of the moment.

I also note that at least one SZ in Tokyo is best done from only one direction because you’re otherwise driving into traffic on the approach to it.

Handling

Worse than FH5, I think, although views on this seem to be inconsistent. There is a definite tendency for the front and rear of cars to want to swap ends, although I assume that I’ll eventually get the hang of this. I’ve yet to try any of the time attack cars because in theory, they ought to stick to the road; but LMP cars in FM8, which should’ve been grippy, were as one reviewer said, anything but. By the looks of it, it’s another case of you-can-drift-in-anything.

So far, I think, most of the dirt racing has been in wet conditions, which has made sliding into walls an occupational hazard.

The drivatars

Very inconsistent as usual. Definitely aggressive, race-ruining little bastards at times. As in previous games, I often get past them round curves, corners and downhill sections, but otherwise languish on the straights.

AI traffic

Utterly barmy. I can understand why there’s so much of it, but I think it’s too much and likely to be annoying when players are attempting various PR stunts. It seems to have been programmed to stop at intersections in case (?) a player might be driving through; or it stops when a player is in the vicinity. As I’ve already said, it seems to like to take itself out. It also randomly fades in. I’m in favour of a slider to regulate the density to obviate potential frustrations.

Rewards

Not so many wheel spins or SWSs. The progression rewards from those two journals are frequent, but usually complete rubbish (i.e., horns, emotes, silly phrases). The rewards from wheel spins are infrequently good (e.g., the FE Mustang was my latest one this morning), but mostly just petty cash.

Graphics

The game has my settings on High. There are some oddities such as the way in which reflections on water are rendered in. Wet surfaces seem to be a little too shiny. The lens flare out of tunnels has been toned down in that it appears to have a shorter transition phase. So far, though, I’ve not seen any glitches, and the game runs well.

Overall

Progression is rather like progression in the expansions in FH5, being a (mostly) brief interlude to accessing the full content of the game so that we can then get down to the real business of FH6 which ought to be racing. I think having unlocked Legend Island this morning, I’m now going to largely do as I please rather than as the game would please me to do.

The new map is refreshing and has a lot more character than Mexico ever did. I’ve already noticed some easily overlooked details (Easter eggs if you like) such as pictures in the rice paddies (which can be seen from the faulty DS I mentioned above).

As one YouTuber said, FH6 does seem to be a copy-and-paste job, and I’m inclined to agree, but I wasn’t really expecting anything else, and certain aspects of the game make it feel like FH4.5. It’s a decent addition to the series.