The world of racing simulations is, in some ways, a sort of religious cult where even professional drivers are often involved in the “adoration” of the sector. Article by Bishonen Works blog. Assetto Corsa Competizione, a new episode of the racing saga developed by the very Italian Kunos simulation, is on the market after a period of Early Access, in which the game has gone through many small upheavals and improvements.
To leave access in advance and enter the “1.0” phase, means to propose oneself on the market transmitting the idea that the game is complete and ready to be played. But will it really be like that? We just have to read the review!
Assetto Corsa Competizione is a simulative racing game, based on the Blancpain GT Series car championship that involves about several teams: from Ferrari to Porsche and Lamborghini, the cars will fight with endurance shots or facing short and fast races (sprint race), as it happens in the reality of the competition. The choice – which could cause some eyebrows to arc in the pseudo-sim games that collect hundreds of cars from different eras – is right from the start right: owning a single “style” car gives Assetto Corsa Competizione a concrete and solid basis on which to develop a realism that is punitive, but not unlikely to be anchored to having to “balance” a large fleet of cars and coming from various eras.
In the game, we will have a total of 13 cars that can be driven on a total of 10 tracks: a bit ‘little’ compared to the competition and even if compared with the old chapter of the series, although it should be noted that each of the cars will have its own “concrete” personality as regards the real counterparts.
Assect Racing Competition will allow us to try our hand at five different modes: career, championship, single game, events and online modes. Choosing the first one, at the beginning, our virtual alter ego will start as a young member of a program organized by Lamborghini, a three-day test on the legendary Monza circuit. Depending on the performance, the game will automatically adjust the difficulty and driving aids. From there, as you can imagine, will start our virtual experience as a pilot, in an attempt to slowly become a prominent name in the competition.
The single player and event modes will work in a very similar way, allowing us in the first to choose track, driver, car of our liking and in the second to participate in the most significant events of the season. The championship mode, instead, will collect both classic tracks and special events, which we can deal fully in a simulated season resulting in a substantially weakened career mode. In principle, Assetto Corsa Competizione will offer a single sector quite varied but not particularly inspired: at least, we would have expected a career with a pinch of verve in more and more options and possibilities since, at the moment, there will not be so many differences between Career and Championship r that, basically, we will hardly undertake the single races or the section dedicated to events.
As for the multiplayer mode, beating heart of almost every racing game, at the moment you can challenge other fans in Quick Match mode or compete in some of the longer events. We can even opt for a public server, which will be totally free and without any kind of restriction, or for a competitive one, which will have serious limitations of participation. Despite some small technical problems, the competitive online section consists of several parameters to modify and customize the matchmaking, where we can even “investigate” your degree of skill or correctness through the rating of seven different categories. Whatever the mode undertook, from the very beginning you will realize that Assetto Corsa Competizione is realistic and simulative, but does not seek the absolute difficulty to boast of the epithets listed above: as fans will know, the cars that compete in the Blancpain competition, are among the most refined and “simple” to use in the entire automotive sports landscape.
And the thing is fully reflected in the game: the racing of Kunos Simulations will be complicated to manage not because it was made artificially so with “backstage” choices made by the developers. Assetto Corsa Competizione, in this sense, will require a rather meticulous approach to the myriad of technical details that will surround our racing car, from the tyres to the grip and aerodynamics of our racing car. We can help each other by taking advantage of the pre-set settings but doing so would take away a large part of the sense of the game, which shows its muscles in the realistic possibilities of “tuning” in-depth also related to the presence of dynamic weather conditions. And this will be the difficulty of the game, that is to say approaching it with a mindset proper to the driver, who takes care of every detail of his racing vehicle, without launching headlong into races that would end up being lost at the start.
Technically speaking, Assetto Corsa enjoys ups and downs. If the simulative part of the cars and the sound – the latter really surprising – as already mentioned several times border on top of absolute realism, the graphics are valid but rather swinging qualitatively and “heavy”, especially when compared to racing titles much more open to the level of gameplay (such as Forza Horizon, for example).
The models of the cars and circuits will be substantially realistic, underlining a clear step forward compared to the previous understanding thanks to the use of the Unreal Engine 4, but the aesthetic sector will still be cut off by a whole series of technical imperfections, from segmented margins despite the selection of the maximum anti-aliasing, to the continuous flicker of the rear-view mirror that will potentially also affect the course of the race or light effects that sometimes make the polygonal models a bit ‘plastic. The game test took place with a medium/high-end gaming rig, which guaranteed a fluidity of the game at 60 frames quite solid as long as you play a little ‘with the graphics options.
Another sore point will be the general interface of the game, a bit ‘chaotic and often not particularly intuitive. Good proof of the AI that, despite sometimes tending to the sportellata, will result in general competitive and well implemented, with the possibility given to the user to be able to calibrate the effectiveness in the game. The general programming status of the game is, to date, still far from perfect, especially with regard to online net-coding (there will be frequent problems of various kinds during multiplayer games) and some minor bugs but annoying found in single mode (such as being disqualified for exceeding the maximum speed allowed in the pits … having run a few palms).
In this sense, we will have very clear the situation of a game that has formally come out of Early Access but, in fact, has not yet left it totally behind. Nothing to object instead with regard to the guidance system, realistic and punitive to the right point and that stands as one of the most simulative and balanced ever appeared in a racing game and, even now, very close to perfection. The game has been tested with both a steering wheel (Logitech G27) and an Xbox One pad, showing in both cases a level of compatibility and response of the cars excellent and balanced (of course, the steering wheel is by far the best option).