Yeah it’s great. It’s essentially more of the same with a whole lotta quality of life adjustments.
2 Likes
Lol. We had loadshedding until 10:30pm last night. The family had all gone to bed, and I couldn’t resist… needless to say by the time I looked again, it was 1:30 in the morning 
And while you were chasing my numbers, I was chasing @Deadlypinecone’s, so I don’t feel too bad. 
Agree about the game - great fun and absolutely gorgeous. From what I’ve done and seen so far, it feels very much like they’ve kept a lot of the better parts of FH4, thrown in a bit of the even older editions, and sprinkled a bunch of new bits and pieces into the mix. So it feels comfortably familiar at the same time as being a little newer and fresher.
I wasn’t specifically hunting boards and roads, just driving around doing the odd race here and there. I want to concentrate on doing one story mission at a time to completion. Started with the VW Beetle (Volce?) story which has some fun missions. (Hint: If there’s no Checkpoint gates ignore the route and head straight to the destination marker 
)
I refuse to take it all too seriously. I’ve left all my control and game settings at default and will play with a “fun first” attitude. I may drop some of the assists and up the Drivatar level a little later on, just to earn more XP and $$$, but only once I’ve found a couple of cars to Favourite and gotten comfortable with the handling.
Loadshedding willing, hopefully some more time with it tonight again.
Vocho… get it right!
1 Like
Is it just me, or has the (Game Pass) Premium Upgrade been removed from the store? Was it intended as a pre-release incentive? Cos that is a balls move on their part.
1 Like
I managed to get some time in between regular power failure and loadshedding!
I did have some initial technical issues however. I had accidently installed the game on a normal HDD and it was not happy. Loading was extremely slow, and in the AMG part of the opening sequence, the car was going faster than the environment was loading. The game also gave me asset streaming errors. All solved by moving the install to an SSD instead.
1 Like
Was this the Steam or MS Store/Gamepass version? How has the performance been otherwise?
The Gamepass version. Thankfully Windows allows you to simply move the install drive without having to redownload.
Performance has been good otherwise. The benchmark mode gave me an average of 95 FPS, but there’s settings I can turn down a bit to boost it. I haven’t done any online or co-op to be able to say how well that’s working. I do see other people on the world map driving around normally though.
1 Like
Game Pass version installed to a SSD. Ryzen 1700 with a 2070S GPU playing at 1440p.
I let the game do it’s recommended settings on first launch and didn’t change anything. It defaulted to “Ultra” preset which I thought was a bit much, but it played fine. Did notice the odd rock or bush or tree pop-in every now and then, but no other major graphical issues. Also had a little stutter on one of those podium cut scenes, but that could have been for any random reason. Definitely going to run the benchmarker and then make some adjustments later.
Did do a set of 3 online team races with randoms vs AI which went fine. Some lagging from one of the players, but they dropped out during the first race so I guess they were struggling on their end.
Only odd thing I had a couple of times was my car coming to a dead stop randomly, and then just carrying on as normal. Very weird to experience, really disconcerting. Allegedly something to do with a server disconnect/reconnect issue they’re having. Hopefully hot fixed or patched soon enough.
2 Likes
So, really important question. Steering wheel, or controller?
Opinions will vary, but for me, it’s a casual racer, I’m a filthy casual gamer, I’m playing with a controller.
I’ll keep the wheel for Forza Motorsport where driving a Lambo through 500 meters of fencing doesn’t get you Bonus Skills Points, it gets you out of the race.
2 Likes
I tried to have a quick go this morning to see what the fuss was about… But I kept getting “controller disconnected” errors when using any wheel buttons or inputs.
Turns out it is a known problem.
https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4409616884883-FH5-Known-Issues
I will play like a pleb with a controller then I guess 
2 Likes
Well that settles it! 
Thanks, gents. Confirmed my suspicion that the wheel will not be necessary to get thorough enjoyment out of this one.
1 Like
Game is made for gamepad first, and the controls are excelenté
3 Likes
I tried Forza Horizon 4 with a wheel and it was horrible. Apparently it’s better now but will stick with a controller.
1 Like
OMG, I can’t express how happy I am that my character has a voice now. Just played through the intro and I got goose bumps.
2 Likes
It’s very weird. I can’t see it in the Xbox App on the PC either anymore, but it’s definitely still availble on the web.
Forza Horizon 5 Premium Add-Ons Bundle | Xbox
https://www.xbox.com/en-ZA/games/store/forza-horizon-5-premium-add-ons-bundle/9MZ0SR207MG8/0010
And for reasons that are best left undiscussed, I can confirm that it works. 
1 Like
In a racing game? A character, a voice…?
Haha I watched a review where the reviewer weren’t happy that they added voices to your character.
No way, it’s way better than in 4 where the character was just awkwardly nodding at everyone.
1 Like
Urgh! Since my download got interrupted by load shedding the Xbox app doesn’t recognise that I had downloaded about 40GB of the game. It now wants me to start from scratch, but here’s the catch, my SSD is reflecting that the 100GB’s is “installed” resulting in there being not enough space on the drive.
I now have to go on a grueling journey of somehow finding this invisible installation and wrest control of it from Windows. Problem is that no file is showing in any searches because I do not have the permissions to locate it. So this may take a while…
Especially because load shedding is about to kick in AGAIN in the next 15 mins.