It’s more than just engine swaps, and I’ve been stewing a little bit so I feel a rant coming on.
Another problem is that aerodynamics isn’t modeled right so if you put 1500 hp in any car, it does more than 260 mph. That isn’t right. Getting to 200 mph is possible in a lot of cars if you have enough horsepower, but getting from 200mph to 260mph and above is a different story. A lot of these cars that you can swap in a V12 and get that much horsepower would turn into airplanes at some of these speeds, like the old youtube video of an RX-7 doing 215ish at the salt flats. At the very least, these cars shouldn’t accelerate the same as hyper cars when they get up into serious speeds.
This is where the game gets arcade-y, and while I really like the game and a lot of things in it, how the upgraded cars perform and how inaccurate some of the stock cars are … those are my major gripes.
An old Jag race car should not be able to 300 mph. So much air can get under that car … it would be airborne way before 300 mph.
At the top of S1 class are hyper cars with 800-900 horsepower, but you can get some cars that start in a lower class over 1000 hp, like the WRX. That part is OK. What isn’t OK is that at super high speeds, these non-exotic cars are able to take high speed turns as if they were hypercars. No tire in existence is going to make a Suburu handle 150+ mph turns like a Ferrari Enzo. The game doesn’t model this right. It’s almost like aerodynamics are completely ignored and the only thing that matters is the handling rating … and the only thing that effects the handling rating are weight and tires. Pulling well over a G in a 150 mph turn is about more than weight and tires, people. With the performance possible at the top of S1 class, the leaderboards should NEVER be dominated by rally cars.
Then I looked at a leaderboard for a lower speed circuit in A class. It probably should be dominated by rally cars, but the entire front page was Jeeps and other trucks. WHAT? That’s just beyond stupid. Who knew that a WWII Jeep had a better chassis for road handling than almost anything on the road under 600 hp? All it needed was tires. Stop it. Ridiculous.
I look at the stock handling rating on cars and trucks and notice that a Caddy Escalade has a 6.1 handling rating, if I remember right. A '99 Mitsubishi Evo is given a 6.2 handling rating. I don’t know if anybody else has driven these two cars in the real world, but let’s just say that an Escalade handles nothing like an Evo. That shouldn’t even need to be said. One is a near 6000 pound truck with a center of gravity near crotch high, and the other is a rally car. In terms of upgraded trucks, I saw a Hummer near the top of a S2 leaderboard on a course that was more than half pavement. So I got in a Veneno and raced it. The whole first part of the race was on a street, and I ripped through it in a Veneno, as I tend to do. The problem was that my rear view mirror was full of Hummer the whole way. Are you kidding me? A Hummer hanging with a 1000+hp Veneno with a handling rating of 9.0? Insert mod edit for language right here.
Now, I really like how offroading has changed since Horizon 2. In FH2, just about any car could go offroad with no problem. In FH3, hypercars are terrible offroad and trucks are great, so there’s no reason to ‘level the playing field’. If they were to model trucks right, they should never compete on a street with some of these cars, but they shouldn’t need to because there are plenty of offroad courses suited to them.
And then there’s the Tesla … with a 6.9 handling rating. C’mon man. That’s ridiculous.
S1 and A class should be great classes, but because of stuff that makes me question some of the makers ‘car guy’ credentials, the leaderboards are going to be full of rally cars in S1, and full of trucks in A. That’s just not right. I still love the game but stuff like this uglies it up a lot.
