After playing Assetto Corsa for the past day, here are some of my experiences.
First let’s start with physics: The physics of Assetto Corsa are pretty darn good to be honest. They are a lot more realistic than anything else on console, and I love how you actually have to be cautious with the way you drive. This also means the physics are more advanced than previous racing games on console, so jumping in a random car (Eg. the McLaren 650s GT3) is actually quite daunting and frustrating. It has a crap load of lift off AND turn in oversteer, but once you look through the tuning menus you can work out how to fix it and make it more enjoyable to drive.
Now onto the graphics, a sharp 1080p on PS4, but the lighting and mirror clarity is slightly worse than Project Cars but still very good. Shadows are also very good and time of day makes a huge difference to how the track looks. Speaking of tracks, the detail is crazy, and there is rubber all over the various racing lines and kerbs which make the tracks look very authentic.
Now, here’s what lets the game down. The Career mode difficulty is incredibly inconsistent. I raced the first race on hard, and demolished the AI. Then I moved over another race and the AI slaughtered me, so I put it on easy and although the AI were slightly slower I still only managed to win because the AI pulled into the pits on the last lap for some weird reason…….
Then we move over to Special Events, which most are actually impossible for everyone unless you know how to tune a car to get 100% out of it and are also and alien, but I also think even with that most of these are still impossible. From what I have worked out, the times were set to be beaten on the old tire model where the tires had a lot more grip and should be patched in the near future hopefully.
Overall:
The gameplay is bloody good, the car setups can make or break a car, and there are plenty of varied experiences unlike Project Cars where it’s the same crap every lap. Kerbs are actually existent and accelerating while on them can slow your exit down quite a lot, the same goes for astro turf, it’s bloody slippery and is only really useable in cars with TCS unless you want to throw away lots of time exiting the corner. Every track except one is laser scanned (Zandvoort) and this means that corners are a bit different to Pcars, for example, corners at Monza are a bit wider, and the sausage kerbs are so much more realistic that you have to go around them or else your front wheels will lose contact with the road and you will understeer and loose time, even the turn 1-2 chicane at Monza is incredibly technical, same goes with the chicane at Nurburgring, the esses at Vallelunga and the bus stop at Spa. This game definitely has potential, but it really balances on what Kunos decide to fix and not fix.
Negatives:
- No private or even public hosted sessions.
- No Results after race.
- No multiplayer replays.
- Every person in a lobby besides the offender has to vote to kick someone, which means they never get kicked unless you know everyone in the lobby and they all know how to vote.
- Every person has to vote to restart a session if a race start ends up in chaos.
- Thrustmaster shifters need to be plugged directly into PS4, not a USB adapter or the wheel base and again, should be patched in the near future.
- Seat position is fixed and can’t be moved. Some of the open wheel cars have incredibly bad camera positioning that makes the cars quite odd to drive.
- Only 2 pre-sets for button settings on wheels, and they suck. There is also no manual button mapping unfortunately.
- No pedal or wheel calibration, so no way to tell if you are getting full throttle or brake which sucks if you have a brake mod.
- There are a few other issues here and there, but most stuff is to do with settings that were left out but were on the PC version.
Positives:
- The racing is awesome, especially in GT2’s at Spa.
- The contact physics are not perfect but still very good and have no magnetization. Fair warning though that bumping someone mid corner can easily cause them to spin like in real life.
- There is a view called the dash camera view, which basically shows the Motec and shift lights without the steering wheel and sits quite far forward, a bit like the dash cam on Dirt Rally.
- The FFB is heavy the but doesn’t create much heat, and the FFB settings make it very adjustable to get it how you want, but have heard a complaint or two about settings so far, possibly to do with the lack of settings per wheel.
The game is new on consoles, so hopefully most of these issues will be addressed sooner rather than later.
Thank you to our good buddy (and winningest SRM member) Samsung for getting us his impressions of the game so far. Living in the AU has some perks huh? Be sure to scope out his YouTube Channel to see one of the fastest sim racers out there in action!