Developer: Kunos Simulazioni
Publisher: Kunos Simulazioni
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: Xbox One
Assetto Corsa – Review
If we reminisce back to the old days of racing games we all think back of how hard they were because of the engine. Now with the coming of better driving engines and modern processing powers, racing games have become more pleasant and more realistic. Do you however wonder how a race game in this day and age can be as hard as Dark Souls, yet has the most refine driving engine of the group? Assetto Corsa will bring you a love-hate relationship to racing simulators, a missed opportunity or clever marketing?
Story
Simulation race games do have the tendency to fall short with a real story background and in many ways Assetto Corsa is no exception to that rule. Nonetheless starts with you building up a racing career, since you have a background in the racing scene, thus sponsors seem to easy to come by, if you stick by their rules. From here on out, it’s pretty much your opportunity to rack in fame points, by driving with assigned cars to please those who are sponsoring your career. Simple, but sufficient for a game such as this.
Graphics
When talking about a simulation game we all find that the graphics are as important as the gameplay. Assetto Corsa delivers on his part a smooth world with much detail to vehicles and even more in-depth detail towards interiors. The dashboards of the cars are fully functional with most dials working. What’s even better is when activating the headlights the dashboard will become lit; now reading off information becomes even easier. Viewing during the races happens on 6 locations, the classic behind, in front, hood and steering view. But they added a dashboard view as well for in case the steering movement distracts you. The reason why is because the steering wheel now turns 360 degrees in most cars, the more DTM oriented cars will have more stricter steering. This all leans more towards real life simulation, giving a more realistic driving experience.
Although much time and work sank into bringing us an attractive looking game, some details are missed. The camera turns badly making looking around the vehicle slightly annoying, which results in giving the overall graphical quality somewhat a cheaper appearance. A race line indicator is present but unlike most games where this informs you whenever you can keep your speed or need to slow down, the integrated one is static and won’t change. You can make the excuse that it appears like this for the more realistic side of knowing when to brake, but will throw off most gamers or people who are new to the genre, or those who are paying less attention as they simply want to enjoy a laid-back driving experience. Thus increasing difficulty a bit, as it might give a small hinder towards getting the most out of your speed.
Sound
Engine sounds are crisp and a trained ear can easily spot the between an I4 and a V8 engine. When pulling up next to another driver his engine sounds is also properly taken care off; which shows how much attention to detail was inserted into this title. Each car has a unique node because of its engine, this also means that some cars have a turbo pop sound when letting go of the accelerator and have a RPM cut to preserve the engine, while others just rev until maximum revolutions and don’t bounce off.
Gameplay
If you rather get your hands dirty from the start there’s the career mode. In Assetto Corsa you are expected to build your driving career up from scratch. Starting out with simple European cars and slowly climbing the ladder towards more fast and exclusive specimens. By completing “tiers” medals are given away, these medals are needed to succeed to the next series. In the beginning the sponsors will be happy with only bronze medals, but quickly enough they will be demanding silver or even gold medals to succeed. Unique about the career is that no money is earned so you don’t buy your cars; you borrow them from said sponsor. This sounds like a good thing, but backfires quickly because you cannot choose the vehicle for the event yourself. This is done in 27 championships with around five to six races each.
Because of the immense variation in content we must not lose the main focus on what makes a race game a race game, and that is the vehicles selection. With 21 brands carrying around 50 to 60 vehicles to choose from and there do is a nice variation between street and circuit cars. Every car does have an extensive selection of liveries. For those who might want to have a more variety of cars there is a season pass available.
The driving engine is very complicated, this sounds bad given the genre of the game this is actually good. Every little fault you make will be penalized with either losing some time or even worse, losing the race. It takes the most seasoned driver to keep the car well on the road and win races, because the AI is unlike in other games very good behind the wheel. A noticeable fact is that you cannot choose a car for the race. This makes some races interestingly difficult, especially when you’re a ‘one-car-kind-of-guy’, or gal, but it ends up being very rewarding when you can win the race afterwards. Of course you can tweak the settings of your car, to fit your driving style, the track or perhaps in some cases the weather conditions, even though the latter only seems to involve the visual aspects of the game. Tuning the settings will of course not be an easy task for those who aren’t used to these things yet, but practice makes perfect.
Conclusion
As a new player on the block: Assetto Corsa knows how to stand out with amazing graphics and gameplay. The game is filled to the brim with a lot of content to give everybody enough variation. The cars have their own unique handling perks and every little miss could mean last place for you. Drift mode is a fun extra to blow off some steam or to just slide around with a supercar. Assetto Corsa is overall a fun race simulator for the more experienced drivers among us; sadly some mishaps occur with the AI and the limited availability of cars which might bother those who are used of having a broader selection.
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