Occasional Tales

2nd session I spent awhile searching for the location of the Figaro. I expect everyone else was rolling their eyes and saying none too quietly, “Old person problems.” I thought it might be on the island, and then the foreshore, and then up the coast road until I returned to the foreshore. The car park faces south looking, in fact, towards the bridge where is turns east to the island. I did much better at finding the GT40, which is on the cape near the space port. As for the bonus board on top of the assembly building in the space port, if you take the jump from the road at about 140-45kmh, you should land on the roof without too much bother. I did the Daikoku Circuit in the GR86, but ought to have upgraded the car (which I’ve now done). This was followed by Daikoku Chase (Street Scene), which is another course I need to get used to. I did another Street Scene race, Kita Ine , in the Silvia K’S. I thought the drivatars were being a little inconsistent, but managed to win. This led to ...

The game started by installing itself, which took about ten minutes before it informed me that I needed to update my nVidia drivers. I was expecting this, but not that it would be a requirement for playing the game. I knew that you needed to be using a particular version of gaming services, which I’d checked earlier. And yes, xbox time came ahead of local time. The same annoying splash screens which we can presumably never be rid of. Then it was into some cutscene which I ignored, instantly disliking Mei’s grating American accent, which was followed by a “race” to the Festival during which I changed to proper settings – cockpit, manual with clutch, no driving line. The characters are the same as ever, which is disappointing. They’ve added Japanese characters, who all look gormless, although all the characters do. The old characters also somehow look worse than they did in FH5 – low-poly models as I believe they say. If only we had the same sort of system as Skyrim, where we could adjus...

Bye, Mexico. You were all right while you lasted. We start with that traditional fan favourite, the treasure hunt. I did a DS in the Abarth Esseesse to add 300FPs to the pointlessly ginormous fund that I already have. The weekly was in the Renault Clio Williams. I broke out my unused one for this. I one-shotted all of the PR stunts, even the intensely annoying dirt SZ outside Guanajuato. The rewards from the SWSs were one-third excellent, two-thirds good, and a bunch of rubbish. I took a photo and got a stupid gesture that I’ll never use. Also, you couldn’t pay me to use it. Eventlab (1). Nelipo Circuit . The layout was all right, but marks off for night and a poorly placed checkpoint that was placed ahead of the corner. Eventlab (2). Ram Jam . Good motorsport feel to this one, but the circuit takes practice, I think, and reminded me of Bathurst. Eventlab (3). Ausi-ish International Circuit . I liked the circuit, but the surface was rubbish and ruined the experience. The SWS was one-th...

I dealt with the weekly in the Lancia Stratos without any issues. Eventlab (1). Ramen Autodromo . Spaghetti-like layout, but not annoying, Not the best surface, and the final turn kept causing problems because it was indistinct. Eventlab (2), Jardín Día . Marks on for props, but marks off for the racing surface and the karting track layout. For the PR stunts, the Peugeot 205 T16 was an excellent choice. I one-shotted all three PR stunts, in a couple of cases by a resounding margin. Took a picture of the DS23. Can’t recall what the reward was. Probably a bag of grated cheese from 2016. The HW PR stunt was the ST after the loop, but the 2003 Audi RS6 took care of it first time. The RA PR stunt was the colossal pain that I expected it to be. Multiple attempts before miraculously completing the task. How? No idea. The best line seemed to be to run alongside the dirt road, go through the narrowest part of the ford, and then turn across the corner apex. I started with one version of the Lotu...

I sorted out the weekly in the 458 Italia without any issues. Four rivals events this week. It’s been some time, I think, since we last had EV rivals, which looked to be a regular thing and then disappeared. I must admit that I’d completely forgotten about the Pininfarina Battista. As for the VW, I assume that was marketing. I don’t think I’ve ever driven it outside of Rivals except to take a picture of it for Horizon Promo. Eventlab (1). Coast City Circuit . Night, points off. Props, points on. Layout, a lot of points off. If you thought turn one at Monza was awful, you should try this. Eventlab (2). Dancing Gopher . Too many checkpoints because they kept popping into existence. Also, repeated poor placement of checkpoints ahead of corners. Layout not bad, though. Eventlab (3). Power Plant Surge . Not a bad circuit, but awkward transitions between different types of surfaces. I one-shotted all the PR stunts this week. The ST was a matter of charging straight at it over the hill. Two o...

Turn on, tune in, drop out. PGG has been posting share codes for tunes for new cars via in-game messages. Not quite sure why they’ve been doing this since while it’s possible to reconstruct how a car was upgraded, it’s not possible to see the precise tuning settings (i.e., as an aid for players wondering about such settings). At least I don’t think it is. This state of affairs has had the Chief Try-Hard (CTH) on the forums fulminating about how there are better tuners, whose work should be promoted etc. By and large I’ve never bothered with other people’s tunes. I do my own, which I’d describe as cosy – a pleasant driving experience so long as you aren’t being a Horizon Open try-hard yourself. However, I thought I’d try the tune being promoted for the AMC Rebel, expecting that I was probably going to say to myself, “I wish I could build and tune like that.” Sometimes I’m wrong. I installed the tune on the new Rebel and took it for a spin round the Horizon Mexico Circuit . I have to con...

When I got FH4, I looked at the tuning settings and didn’t bother because they were incomprehensible. My first attempt at tuning was stretching out the final drive after seeing the YouTuber, DUBS, do the same. The next major step came from watching a Shmee150 video in which Tim Burton talked about changing the car setting to corsa (or something like that) and the effect it had on the springs. I started doing the same with generic settings for the springs. I did some wild guessing with the settings for the ARBs, but the game is so forgiving that it didn’t seem to mind. Things got a little more serious when I ran into weight-based settings in a YouTube video. I know these get dismissed, but they had two advantages in my tiny, non-technical mind: first, they made sense, and second, they could be calculated exactly. There was no need use generic spring settings any longer, although as I said above, the game is quite forgiving. I also wondered about tyre pressures and adopted my GT3, GT4, r...

And some other stuff. The details of series 21 are out. Yeah, off-roading. Shrug. Some new pick-up trucks (cue baffling fanboy hysteria about them; Quote from Facebook: “This month is Huge!”). Two repeat exclusives, an Extreme E and the terrible Morris Traveller. There are other, thematically relevant exclusives which could’ve been included as seasonal rewards, but they’re nowhere to be seen. There’s an update to photo mode (don’t care), but what about an update to the painting tools? And looking ahead to series 22, more new rims (which we don’t need), but no sign of tunable stock aero or different, tunable rear wings. Even NFS: Most Wanted (2005) had more wings than the Horizon series even if they were purely cosmetic. I’ve driven the Porsche Mission R. The problem with EVs is a lack of gears. Most of the time I played FH4 it was in automatic, hence I didn’t need to pay any attention to gears. But now that I use manual with clutch, it’s all about the gears. I know what gear I need to ...

Good out of the box. I’m seriously impressed by the Porsche 935. All I did to the car was tune it (not something I’m especially good at, but my approach works for me). As usual, I took it to the HW Goliath. The Huracán STO was a disappointment in that the drivatars were all over it whether it was RWD or AWD, and I was expecting much the same with the 935. Well, I’m sometimes wrong. A normal race round the HW Goliath has me on a best lap that’s about 45 seconds ahead of the drivatars’ best lap, and that’s what I had by the end of the race; hence I’m seriously impressed by the Porsche 935. I’ll admit that this is the sort of car I want to see more of in the game – the sort of lineup you get in ACC rather than the stock cars that your dad, granddad, and rich uncles and aunts drive every day. I’d still prefer the game to have free roam between proper motor racing circuits. The next series of FH5 would appear to focus on off-roading, which I feel is a little too soon after the so-called Ral...