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...