Like many men that have settled down, I like boring things. I like getting socks as gifts, a fun night out can contain, but are not limited to going out for a nice dinner and ending with a fun movie for the whole family. The most exciting type of games I own are the ones where you take a crappy car, go round in circles so that you can eventually unlock a slightly less crap car to go round in circles with. This doesn’t sound exciting to most, but racing games are my Dark Souls. The racetracks are my enemies, you memorize all the corners so they don’t surprise you. The car setup is your load-out, you change the setup of your car so it fits the track better and the car is your class, you choose a car depending on how you like to play. There might not be a rich story or lore that can fill a multitude of books, and game developers are never going to win many ‘game of the year’ awards with die-hard racing titles, but by God do I love every square inch of track that thoroughbred racing games like Assetto Corsa have to offer.
Assetto Corsa, like many modern racing games, looked at what storytelling games like The Last of Us and Firewatch had to offer and promptly told everyone to get out with their vile emotions and lovingly crafted stories. In racing we need nothing but tarmac, wheels, engines, and speed! While racing games and deep stories have never been the best of friends, there’s a definite trend towards more trimmed down experiences where cut-scenes are a thing of the past and love-stories are as unheard of as great German cooking. While this lack of any narrative isn’t the end of the world for die-hard racing fans, it is a trend that is possibly making rock-solid racing games less attractive to bigger audiences. But racing fans, don’t despair, what this game lacks in any story, it more than makes up for in realism, fun, lots of racetracks, and an amazing spread of cars.
Assetto Corsa is one of the purest racing games out there, the only game that comes to mind that truly went ‘racing first, everything else later’ is IRacing. Assetto Corsa does racing extremely well, but the developers decided to put a significant amount of effort into making the cars look and sound outstanding. This doesn’t mean that they’re getting anywhere near the photo realism of Project CARS, but it does mean that it is undoubtedly one of the prettier games available right now. When it comes to sound, there’s nothing like hearing the roar of the engine as you attack the winding roads of the Nürnburgring. The cars feel alive thanks to amazing sound design, with sounds reflecting off of other cars and walls, and they truly make you feel like you’re putting the car through its paces as you push the accelerator down.
Like Beauty and the Beast, there are some darker sides to Asseto Corsa that sometimes decide to show their faces, and while many of these are small problems you can overlook such as not having the best UI in the world, there are some problems which might exclude this game from the ‘to buy list’ for many racing fans. One of Assetto Corsa’s biggest flaws is undeniably the abhorrent AI that seems to have the intelligence of a goldfish with a headache. It knows how to race and drive around corners well, but it has barely heard of concepts like defending or even overtaking. Every time another car tries to pass you, it’s like if you’d tell a socially awkward person telling someone not to cut in line. They know full well how to do it, but they end up moving around behind them thinking about all the things they could say and do and eventually just end up staying behind anyway. The AI have one thing going for them, their cars actually obey the laws of physics, unlike a lot of the recent Codemasters games where the drivers seem to forget that they’re driving the same car as me and shouldn’t be five seconds a lap quicker than me, despite running full wet tires on a dry track. The cars in Assetto Corsa will react similarly to how you would in the same conditions, they slide around on cold tires and make mistakes when you’d least expect them to, something I can definitely relate to.
The multiplayer matches are heaps of fun, racing around on your favorite tracks against friends and possibly enemies has hardly ever been as much fun. Having a wheel to do this makes this a very memorably experience, the force feedback is second to none and you can feel every bit of feedback that a proper racing car would give you in the same conditions. Despite all the fun to be had, there are some features that are as missed as Amelia Earhart. Despite being a huge part of actual racing, this game seems to take place in a world where global warming has done its thing and we never see a drop of rain again. This might sound fun to your average holiday goer, but just as in Dark Souls, it just isn’t the same if we’re only handed the easy, more approachable options. Another feature that’s not present is visible damage to cars. We all know a lot of manufacturers don’t like it when damage is modelled to their precious cars, but this ends up causing people to use the car in front as a mobile braking point in multiplayer matches.
This game has a ton going for it with some of the best handling in the genre and some of the most amazing sound designs and tracks that might even be more accurately modeled than any other game before it. Sadly, it has some major issues that stop it from being a game that everyone can enjoy. For now this is the perfect hot-lap simulator, but if you want more, have a look at alternatives like Project CARS or Iracing. Despite being released, the developer is still working on this title, and perhaps we’ll see much needed additions like changing weather and better AI drivers, because without those the rivaling racing games will steal a bigger audience than Assetto Corsa could ever hope to get.
Developer: Kunos Simulazioni
Publisher: Kunos Simulazioni, 505 Games (PS4, Xbox One)
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Release Date: 19th December 2014 (PC), 26th August 2016 (Xbox One, PS4)