Occasional Tales

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...

Or, The Antiques Roadshow, US edition. Let’s start with the Autoshow Car Vouchers, which seems to be a cynical cash grab. The target cullies are, I assume, the Game Pass brigade who contribute so little financially to MS’s vast money bins, but are probably the players who turn up on Facebook wanting to know how to make more money because they can’t be bothered doing races to earn the credits they need. Mind you, this could also be used by new players to get the Autoshow cars that barely if ever turn up in wheel spins without spending vast sums on them. FH4 suffered from there being a number of expensive cars that were never playlist or wheel spin rewards. And then there’s new DLC car pack. Yes, I’ll cave and buy it, but only for the Saleen S7 LM. I don’t want some ridiculous hot rod van, another obese agricultural barge, or some obscenely overpowered hypercar that’s only good for PR stunts. As for the rest, it’s mostly like the Antiques Roadshow. The series cars are a pair of shrugs. T...

 Well, not quite. I’ve given up on online racing for the moment. I’d still like my gold badge for doing 1,000 races, but the whole process was so depressing (literally, not metaphorically) that I had to stop and don’t know whether I’ll ever bother going back. Series 16 is effectively done. All the cars are unlocked. All the Fords were repeat screenings. The Renaults were repeat screenings, but from other Horizon games. Series 17 has four new cars. Sorry, two. The Nissan 400Z and some antique from 1965 which is re­mi­ni­scent of the Cosmo. The other two are repeats – the Toyota MR2 GT and the Mitsubishi Galant. Until this morning, I’d only ever raced the MR2 GT once in Horizon 4. I think the Galant is a decent dirt racer, but I’d probably opt for the Subaru Legacy. Cue two types of declarations because of this: a.) hysterical fan­boys declaring how marvellous this all is; b.) hysterical fanboys demanding to know why some equally shrug­worthy cars aren’t being included. Overall, Seri...