A good start that’s a little lite on content, Assetto Corsa EVO‘s early access campaign is off to the races.
Early Access is early access for a reason, and this is exactly that reason.
Right now, what’s in the game is about three or four different circuits, a couple of variations of a few of those circuits and a number of cars, also with some variations. It’s feature light, and aimed at getting us into the engine more than anything else. There are a sort of practice sessions to race against some AI, but there’s no qualifying — it’s mostly just asking us to “go” and go fast.
The game’s roadmap for its future has quite a bit more coming, including and open world setting, where it’s going to be the greater area of the Nordschleife. It seems like it’s going to be a pretty big and detailed area with different tracks to go to in that space. And then, of course, the well-known international surrogates like Suzuka and Brands Hatch, which is in there currently.
It is sort of struggling at its launch. The game itself plays great, but the AI is overly aggressive to the point where they will not do anything in a corner other than just push us over; they’re like a sack of bricks and we cannot move. So really, racing against AI isn’t kind of advised at this point. There are single player special events that are available right now, which aren’t a full career mode, but I have not been able to play any of them as well as a large portion of the community because it seems that there is some disconnect with the servers that doesn’t allow us to access that.
But right now the experience is just, “here’s a bunch of tracks to experiment with the engine, have fun with that.” But I think once that first like content update releases, which features that open world area, I think that will be a good way to introduce players to this and get people in it. Because it is the most like controller friendly sim I’ve ever played. It feels way better than Forza Motorsport ever has. Even with the rounds of updates to the Forza, for just the sheer drivability and feel of the cars already in this early access release is very strong by comparison.
Assetto Corsa EVO is still early, and clearly aimed at the simulation racing crowd, but what is there feels good, and what’s on the way looks like it will flesh out into a fairly complete and robust package.
This early access hot take is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. Portions of the video originally appeared on The SideQuest LIVE for February 2, 2025. Images and video courtesy publisher/dveloper.
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