Occasional Tales

With the return of the academic year I’m probably not going to be posting entries till sometime on Saturdays. I have a fair amount of time on Friday between lunchtime and my return to school to get much of the Festival playlist done, but I also have P1 and P10 classes and on some occasions, am likely to prefer a nap. The treasure hunt, as I discovered, wanted you to add a new part to your Ford Focus. I tried adding a part I’d already bought, but the game was having none of it. But in reality, I assume that this was another attempt to force players to use the Test Track which, I feel, has nothing practical to offer. I ended up doing a wreckage HA because there was one near the location of the treasure chest. The weekly was in the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Job done, but drag racing and drifting? The Audi S1 had no problems with the speed zones. I switched to the 2012 Mini JCW for the Trailblazer because in testing it had no problems hitting the target time and then some. What happened? I kept ...

The treasure hunt seems to have been rather contrary from what I’ve been hearing. I headed to the jumping-off point for Eventlab Island before going down to the beach and driving north to Playa Azul. At some random point, the task was done. For the weekly challenge we had to drive the BMW X5M. What did we have to race it in? A Street Scene race. Well done, PGG, another car that encourages impressionable young players to drive the wrong sort of vehicle in the wrong sort of event. Or does it? I suppose that since SUVs are mostly urban vehicles driven by gangsters, gangsters’ wives(/yummy mummies), gangsters’ molls, and gangsters’ henchmen (or for “gangsters” read “shifty builders” and “shady plumbers”; “people from Cheshire[/Alderley Edge/Chelsea]”), this is an ideal vehicle to drive in a Street Scene race. I managed to one-shot all the PR stunts in the Taycan CT. I half expected the danger sign to go wrong, but managed to land the car without it flipping or slamming into a tree. One-thi...

The weekly posed no real problems. I managed to one-shot the PR stunts in the 2018 Ford Mustang GT. Northern Passage , which I’d been practising was a skin-of-the-teeth job. Didn’t we do Ring Road as the speed zone last week? Or very recently? I had one SWS that was one-third good and the rest were rubbish. The picture of the new Ford Focus got me a pair of boots. Mmmm, high fashion. I ended up in my Hummer EV for Horizon Tour. One 1st place and two 2nds. I managed a last minute 2nd place round Herencia from being able to take corners properly. Only one Eventlab this week, Hill Valley Run , which is why it seemed that it took no time to get through the Festival playlist. Good use of props on a course that I thought was a rally stage only for it to turn out to be a long, narrow circuit that resembled a rally stage. At least it wasn’t some piece of insane spaghetti. The rewards was another bloody 2010 VW Golf. I smashed the collectibles. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, I counted. 1, 2, 3, 4, the gam...

Treasure hunt. Has to be done in the Polestar. Trailblazer off the motorway. Job done. I used the weekly challenge in the 2010 Audi TT RS to do the Switchbacks PR stunt (terrible SWS). My first attempt to do the danger sign got ruined by a front flip. Terrible SWS. I one-shotted the speed trap and got another terrible SWS. Rivals. (1) Bola Ocho , Fiesta ST. Rain and understeer, the winning combination. (2) Gran Pantano . Toyota Camry. This thing will be better with upgrades. (3) El Pípila . The Durango. Overpowered, fast and wobbly. (4) Dunas Blancas . Lucid Air. What?! Again?! Overpowered, fat barge. I think I did take the car out for a spin the last time it was in the game, and even on gentle corners it wanted to go sideways. Eventlab (1). Yes, the tiles were actually working this week. Black Sands Truck Ranch . Terrible “track”. The first hairpin need a mid-corner checkpoint or something. Prop placement ahead of the final corner was terrible. The reward was another MB A45. Third? Pr...

I happened to be on YouTube mere minutes after JakeXVX uploaded a video on the Series 37 reveal. I assume that Ford are on a marketing spree with the 2022 Ford Focus and the 2023 Ford Fiesta. I hope the Focus will be a good addition to the models that are already in the game. I’ve always felt that the with the Focus in the game, the Fiesta is a bit of an also-ran. (As an aside, I was racing in the Fiesta today; decent PWR in both A and B class, but not my first choice.) I must admit that apart from the name, the (2023) Toyota Camry doesn’t mean a lot to me. It might turn out to be a decent super saloon. As for the last of the new cars, the 2021 Dodge Durango, I can’t see how that fits in with the theme; or why we’d need a second Durango. Prediction: they’ll have the same perks, same stats, and same performance. The series rewards are fine, although the older BMW M2 is the better car, and I don’t think I’ve ever driven the Lucid Air. I can see no compelling reason to do so. I had hopes ...