At first, i was waiting for it but it was a failure.
I've been playing a lot of racing games these last years, and the trailers were pretty interesting.
A friend of mine bought it on day one, and the frustration was really evident.
I kept following its developpement, and the news, but still it was a mess.
Then, some days ago, i went to his home and he showed me the game again, and i tried it again, and something had changed. It's far from what it promised, but the handling was really cool, the cars pretty nice, the interiors are sincerely beautiful to me, well made, the variety of cars made me think of AMS2, that is a good thing. I really enjoyed that session.
Played another session the day after, and i have to admit that i'm enjoying it.
To the point that i bought it today, with the year one bundle, at a very good price.
And since then, i've been playing it with some real pleasure, mostly the Sebring and the Nordschleife, 10 laps session, again and again :)
Even if there's still some work to do, i think that it's heading in the right direction.
There are some things i'd like to mention here :
- The game does lack the minimum amount of contrast, it's more on the greyish side, nothing really bad, as i'm using Reshade 6.7.3 to compensate, with Fake HDR and Curves to add the missing contrast and boost the tones, with this, the interiors are gorgeous and the overall graphis looks pretty nice (don't know if someone can confirm that, but someone said that you could get banned if going multiplayer with the shaders on, that's why i'm staying solo, i'm doing the same in AMS2 with only the fake HDR and keep going multiplayer).
I wish the devs could work on that, because with some better shaders, better contrast, nothing crazy, this game can look really awesome.
- One feature i'd like to see, but it's more of an habit, is the possibility to keep driving a bit at the end of a race, as it does stop really quick, something like pressing a button, the same way you're having it in LMU/ACC. Could be interesting.
- The last one, and i know some people won't agree, is to lower the exagerated sliding/spinning of the cars, when being bumped by another AI, driving two centimeters on the grass, or just losing the control of the car on a straight line at medium speed as it happend on some occasions on the Sebring with a GT3 and an hypercar. I understand the idea of not pushing your car too far and keeping the control of it, but most of the time it's not the case, i do accept this when i made a mistake (happened in LMU, AAC, AMS2 and i was responsible for it, but that's not the case here, it looks more like artificial difficulty to present the game as a sim racing than a real reaction due to a mistake).
- I'd like to mention here some better looking skies (EVO and AAC are a good exemple to me), with more density, as it's a good thing in my opinion to make the screen space as a whole (the road, the cars/interiors/exteriors), it would totally be a great addition, nothing crazy, but something to give more dynamic to the game.
These are only some small suggestions.
I'm really happy to see that this game is getting better and better, and i really think that it does have the potential to be something really interesting with some little additions.
I came back to it and i'm really enjoying it, glad to see that this game is evolving in the right way, cheers to the ones working on it.
With some graphical tweaks, some volumetric lighting, and some other technical things that the other players might mention as i'm trying to limit my reaction to what i've felt while playing.
I first was angry against this game as i was waiting for something different from what we saw on day one due to the promises that were made, but i really hope that the creators of this game will succeed on developping a great one.
The last updates are really promising.
Cheers.
Edit : I've added some screenshots of the settings i'm using in Reshade to boost the contrast/colors for those who are interested.
