So far, Jalopnik’s weekly streams have been rather relaxed, goofy, chill affairs (at least until someone announces an Opinion) with a racing game at the center behind light discussion. This week’s installment will be a little different, because my streaming pal Steve DaSilva has chosen violence and wants us to battle head-to-head in Forza Horizon 5’s Rivals mode for top times. Follow along this afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern at twitch.tv/jalopnikdotcom.
I should say that Steve is an FH5 veteran, having poured hours into Rivals mode with an Integra he tells me has been tuned specifically to dominate the A800 class. I, conversely, tend to play FH5 to unwind, so things are looking grim for my bid as the fastest Jalop in Mexico. I don’t know what I’m driving yet, but I might seek out something aggressively weird with zero competitive pedigree for kicks.
The only game I ever tried to top the leaderboards on was OutRun Online Arcade on the Xbox 360, where, if I remember correctly, I briefly sat third in the global ranking for the Skyscraper stage. That was OutRun though; a game that probably only had about 400 times recorded for any given stage anyway. Forza Horizon 5 is a little more well tread. But only just a little!
In addition to the racing, we’ve got lots of news and other topics to get caught up on, like Apple’s plan to control literally everything in your car, my bittersweet week with the Mazda3 Turbo and why the Ram TRX makes Andy Kalmowitz feel like a bad person. I mean, we can all guess why, but I want to hear him say it. All that and so much more at 4 p.m. ET on our Twitch channel.