Occasional Tales

Treasure hunt. Win a race in a track toy. Go to the balcony below the hotel jump. Well, I say “go”, but I flopped in an undignified fashion to get the treasure. I was dreading the weekly in the Ariel Nomad because of the loathsome Hide-and-Seek task at the end of it, but a visit to the forums revealed that the final task never happened, which turned out to be true. When I did the speed zone task, I actually PB’ed one of them. I used the pair not far from the Horizon Tour start area. In spite of failing the Mulegé jump, I actually got credited for the 100m jump. I was going to go drifting for the HA task, but the game has been disconnecting me and only managed to get this done later. Again, my drifting skills, which were never great to begin with, were fairly sus. No sign of wreckage skills as an option. I one-shotted the danger sign and got a one-third very good SWS. Took me a couple of attempts to get the speed zone for a rubbish SWS. I managed to one-shot the trailblazer, although mu...

Treasure hunt. Go to the top of the volcano in an Exocet, they said. Treasure not far away from the nearby telescope. Money in the bank that’ll almost never get spent. I’d already done some practice in the Hoonigan Escort RS 1800 for the weekly challenge. I went with AWD because I felt the car was a bit floaty RWD. I did the drift skills without even trying. I managed to do the speed traps in two somehow. I one-shotted East Resort in the Ferrari F40 Competizione and got an SWS that was one-third good and one-third very good. Green Hills took a few attempts to complete, but I managed it with the tight turn at the end. Rubbish SWS. Trailblazer. One-shotted. Rubbish SWS. Eventlab (1), Ranchero Norte , employed that terrible fake tarmac that cannot be smoothly pieced together. Not a bad basic circuit, but the whole setting felt like it needed more work. I really shouldn’t have bothered because I already have two Hoonigan Escorts. Eventlab (2), The Gulch of Monument Valley . It sounds lik...

Treasure hunt. Near-miss skills on motorway. 300FPs to add to my expanding pile of them. The weekly in the Ultima Evo was a nuisance to begin with because I fiddled about building the car first and then found that you had to spend money on it. I did an engine swap and immediately swapped it back. The drag race was awful, with the car shifting sideways by two lanes during the course of the race. HA. Drifting, which revealed how out of practice I am. I seem to have done most of the work while some other player scrounged off me. I one-shotted all the PR stunts this week and PB’ed the Stadium speed trap. Was variably rewarded as usual. Eventlab (1). El Toro Scramble . This was really just a version of El Pípila . Not a fan of the obstacle course section which is why, I suppose, it was a solo effort. There was one section where it would be easy to sail off to the right instead of keeping left. This is where there needed to be props to block the way, but the decorative elements were mostly j...

We start with the weekly challenge in the ridiculously overpowered Rimac Concept 2. I don’t think I’ve ever actually built the car, but then again, I never actually drive it unless the circumstances force me to. I feared that the sole new car in this series, the Chevrolet C10, might be an undrivable mess in Rivals, but it wasn’t awful. In a similar vein, EV Rivals round Ek’ Balam passed through the history of my life without raising any problems. I took a photo, I got a scarf. I may already have had the scarf. The collectibles task in the stadium was a bit of a pain because some arse of a player, who may already have completed the challenge, was smashing all the dinosaur piñatas, spamming chat with “Ha ha!” and sounding his horn incessantly as if I was going to pay the slightest amount of attention to him. I thought that it didn’t matter whether some other player smashed one of these items, it was only smashed on their screen. This seems not to have been the case because if this littl...

 Series 43 preview and the 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo S. As I guessed yesterday, the post outline Series 41 was on the forums this morning, The post also covered Series 42 and teased Series 43. The cars. A couple of estate cars. Not my favourite class, although there are one or two decent ones such as the Hammer Wagon. There ought to be one of those stupid phrases to go with estate cars saying, “Get orf moi laaand!” (Irate country sort.) The Nissan Z Nismo doesn’t really interest me. I find the Nissan Z to be a barge and not a worthy heir to its antecedents, and I suspect that, for example, the perks for both cars will be the same. It’s a pity they won’t bring back the Bentley FE from FH4 because that had racing pedigree. I don’t really see the point of adding some chunky luxury barge to the game. Bentley marketing? The BMW M5 CS does interest me. First new M5 since the 2018 model which in FH4 has the most wins of any car I’ve driven. And lastly, in Series 42, we have some ridiculous s...