FH6, Series 6, Week 4

The treasure hunt wasn’t too difficult because it was easy to quickly identify the approximate location of the chest (north-west end of Shikasai-no-Oka).

The weekly was in an old favourite of mine, the Renault 5 Turbo, which I drove a lot in FH4 (well, the FE version), but less often in FH5. It’s still a car I enjoy driving.

I took a photo, I got a stupid reward. I think it was a Swiss policeman’s summer underpants; or something that is an iconic part of any racing game.

Dockside Drive was Street Scene racing in S1-class retro supercars. Apart from the first race which was wet, the Maserati MC12 seemed to be a mostly good choice, although I need more practice doing these courses. I can’t help but note that Tokyo Docks Charge is not the most suitable race for high-powered cars with it’s 2nd-gear-3rd-gear corners. Once again, the reward was a car that’s irrelevant to the category of cars that we used in the series.

For the Good Old Days I used the Peugeot 205 T16, which was already C500 and can only be partly tuned. (I really need to build the car properly.) Probably this wasn’t the best choice as the car didn’t have much grip round the corners.

I one-shotted the DA in a tuned, stock MX-5 Cup car. Rubbish WS.

The rubbish WSs continued with the PR stunts. I smashed both targets and got more rubbish rewards. I built the Mazda RX-3 for the DZ. Worked quite well in spite of my reservations.

It was back to the MX-5 Cup car for the Trial. 5th round Narai-juku, but no way of catching the group of cars in the lead. I started last round Shirakawa and came 8th, but was able to give sufficient support for a second team win. I had a sneaking suspicion that the driver ahead of me in the first race was cheating rather than lagging as he kept slamming into the walls, but appeared to be unaffected, and then took out a drivatar late in the race by appearing from nowhere.

I was racing in the 2021 BMW M4 in Spec Racing. The same player won every time regardless of where he started. Excuse me while I make my sceptical face that this is even possible. I know I’m at a disadvantage on a keyboard in stock cars, but I find such success implausible without assistance.

And finally, that ridiculous Hide-and-Seek mode. No idea what I was doing, what I should be looking for, where I should be looking for it, or anything. Don’t care, not interested.

Saleen S7

There have been some changes to the car since FH4. In Horizon 4 and 5 you can’t alter the tyres widths, but can in FH6. In 5 and 6 the car tends to understeer and needs braking or gear changes to get it through corners. In Horizon 4 there’s no sense that corners need a little extra care.

I felt that a PWR of about 0.50 was about right, although as FH4 is in kW, I shrugged and accepted that it was in S2 class.

The cockpit view is actually quite good because the A-pillar doesn’t block the view of checkpoints and corners.

Eunos Cosmo

Seems decent. Absolute rocket off the line and nice to drive. I probably won’t ever take it out much, but I’m still slowly making my way through all the cars I’ve not yet driven and haven’t made much progress.

Koenigsegg One:1

I took the out-of-the-box car round the motorway and PB’ed the SZ again without even trying.

VIP SWSs

I happened to see a post on Facebook about the absence of the VIP SWS. I added a comment that I’d not seen one of these in months even though I still get them in FH4 and 5. Just the other day, I had a message gifting me 14 SWSs from which I got two new cars, the 240 SX and the madcap 599XX Evo. The rest was mostly horns, clothes, and rubbish.

I actually got a VIP SWS this morning in my messages for the first time in ages.

First expansion

Who knows at this point. Supposedly appearing in about the third week of January. I hope it’ll have more longevity than Sierra Nueva or Fortune Island because if the events there are not part of the Festival playlist or compellingly engaging, expansions don’t seem to have that much to offer. More importantly, the expansion will vaguely hint at the location of FH7 and will include new features of one sort or another.

It seems that this will include the Italian Passion car pack, although this is no signal that FH7 might be based in Italy. In fact, wherever they set FH7, I hope they have a better balance of terrain. Mexico was too flat with the interesting bits squeezed into the margins; Japan is tiresomely hilly. Also – just to stray a bit further –, I think the layout of Tokyo is appalling, with routes from A to B often involving some pretty iffy turns. Guanajuato was a mess in one way; Tokyo is spaghetti gone mad.