Recent reviews by nea102

LMU is much, much better than I thought it would be. No, it's not perfect. And no, it's not finished. And yes, I do have concerns that this will never be finished owing to MSG's perilous financial standing. But there is a huge amount of promise here, and I really hope that S397 are given the time and money needed to finish it.

LMU is essentially rF2.5. A lot of the settings in rF2 carry over. You can configure triple screens and (rudimentary) VR by using rF2 settings copied into the the correct .ini files. The UI is leagues ahead of rF2's. It's not great, but it's servicable. It looks much nicer, but suffers some of the same UX foibles from it's older brother.

The graphics are (for the most part) great. The tracks look good and the lighting looks good. The car interiors and, specifically, the materials, are gorgeous. Sebring looks bumpy (and feels even moreso), though there could be a greater variation in track-side objects (specifically the motorhomes). Fuji does need a bit of a tart up, but S397 have said that it will be getting one soon.

Audio is epic. The sound of the regen in the 499P is absolutely spot-on. The engines all sound exactly as they should. The only issue is the crash sounds, which are lacking somewhat. But then that's an issue in just about every game I've ever played.

The attention to detail is great as well - they have the correct tyre warmer rules that the WEC used last season. Namely: there are no tyre warmers at any track except Le Mans. And trying to get heat into the tyres can be tricky, as it is in real life (remember the 499P crashing at Spa on cold tyres? Yeah, that's very repeatable here!). Once the tyres do have heat though, they feel great. On my TS-XW you can feel the tyres loading up. You can feel when you've entered a corner a bit hot and get some understeer or four-wheel sliding.

And now to the star of the show: The LMP2 is an absolute blast. So incredibly rewarding. Easy to drive, but difficult to get the best out of. It makes total sense though how rich old people are able to jump in one and not die but also see how there's such a pace disparity. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love driving it. It makes the iRacing one feel numb and boring. It drives how it looks when you watch the real ones. They do that lateral bouncing over kerbs. You can feel the tyres loading up. You can really feel the tyres coming up to temp, and you need to work at them to keep them in range. But not too much, else you'll cook them. It's forgiving, but only to a point. Can get away with a lot more than you can in the iRacing version; it allows you to get the tail out a bit and not die. It might just be the best and most fun car I've ever sim raced. It's amazing.

There's a lot to like here, but there's also a lot to be weary of. Yes, it's early access, so some of it can be expected. But some of the same rF2 bugs are present (disappearing force-feedback namely) which is a bit irritating. Navigating the settings menu in a race session is borderline impossible due to the lag, but they do work fine when not in a race session. Performance can be very hit-or-miss, with massive dips in FPS occasionally. For the most part though, it does run fairly well. It doesn't do any FSR/DLSS though, so extracting extra performance isn't that simple yet.

If you're happy to spend some time fettling settings and playing around in .ini files and can tolerate some random crash-to-desktops, then I fully recommend this game. If you're not, then maybe wait a bit. S397 have a potential gem on their hands. Time will tell if MSG let them polish it.

If you ever played Theme Hospital and wish there was something like it that ran nicely on modern operating systems; this is the game for you.

Quite how they've managed to get VR so, so wrong, especially considering how well implemented it was in the first Assetto Corsa, is beyond me. I'm using a WMR device and I have two HUD/menu options. 1: Have it follow your head movements and perenially be unable to see the corners. 2: Have it stationary, but way too low. Like below the floors low. Moving it doesn't work; it just won't move that far. And you can't use the mouse on the menus in VR.

Another issue is that if you exit the game, it stays running in Steam, even though I can find no process active for it. This is the only game I experience this on. The only way to "stop" it is to restart Steam.

These issues means I've not spent much time doing any driving in ACC; it's mostly been getting frustrated at the terrible VR implementation and trying settings out.

I know it's early access, I know things aren't finished. But the VR experience hasn't changed or improved since it was introduced and is broken to the point of making the game unplayable.

Edit: I have since found that if I uninstall and then re-install ACC, VR works. But only once, and now with the latest hotfix, it won't load at all after that initial once until I uninstall and re-install.

Edit of the edit: The VR still sucks. It's not as bad as it was, but it's still not great. However, the rest of the game has come alive since coming out of early access. The cars are phenomenal to drive, the AI is more than competent and the online experience is better than it was. This is now well worth the money, and the ICGT DLC is worth it too - loads of new liveries and 4 great tracks.

It's been in development hell for the last 11 years but was released as a Steam Early Access title three weeks ago. It currently has one class of kart (but 9 chassis to choose from) and three tracks. There's a free run mode and a leaderboard mode (you race the ghost of the person ahead of you until you beat them. Then you do it all over again). Leaderboard is addictive. Very, very addictive.

I'm utterly hooked on this at the moment. It's a little rough here and there - the kerbs are a little unpredictable at best, but it looks stunning and the sound is absolutely spot-on for a little two-stroke (especially when you go under the bridge at PFI). It also handles (mostly) really nicely. A bit understeery, which the devs are working on, and there's lots of stuff missing like tyre temps, brake temp etc.

The devs are also very active on Discord and are listening to peoples' ideas, suggestions and grumbles. Expect many features asked for by the community to end up in the game.

Some of the features that are missing include races, AI, multiplayer, a shop and VR. They are coming though. I'd also suggest using a wheel/pedals over anything else at the moment; it's not fun on a game pad at all (but then what serious racing sim is?). I'm using the T300RS/T3PA set and the force feedback is OK. Not perfect, but I suspect that it will improve as physics are improved.

I'd definitely recommend buying this, even if it is still in early access. I've play a lot of racing games over the years and, despite this being such an early version, I don't think I've ever "clicked" with a game before in the same way that I have with KartKraft

I don't normally review games, but for this one I'll make an exception.

Having played Grand Prix Manager 2 to death back in the mid-90s, I've been eager to play a modern "F1" manager game. The last one of note was the imaginatively titled "F1 Manager" back in 2000 or so and it wasn't brilliant.

Motorsport Manager, however, is. It's in-depth enough to keep F1 die-hards interested but without it getting bogged down in the details. You have to manage driver and team relationships, the mechanics and drivers bond the longer they work together and you have to get the results to keep your team owner and sponsors happy.

The presentation is fantastic, if you've ever played Football Manager then the UI shouldn't take getting too much used to. The race coverage looks beautiful; the tracks are sublimely detailed with an abundance of cranes, tents, crowds and other assorted things you tend to find at a real track.

The races do lack a little excitement (so far); it would be nice to speed it up beyond 3x (though I understand the limit here, any faster and your liable to miss a pit call or damage to the cars etc). The other area that is a little lacking is the car setup - it's pretty simplistic. Again though, I can understand this as it helps keep the game accessible to those with less enthusiatic knowledge.

If you're a fan of the old games like GPM2 or are a motorsport fan who has played Football Manager then I can't recommend this game enough.