Assetto Corsa EVO's 0.9 Left Critics Cold. The First Free Roam Drives Around the Nordschleife Changed the Mood

Assetto Corsa EVO has spent its early access life fighting the shadow of the original Assetto Corsa, the sim that a decade of modders turned into a playground for drifting, touge runs and traffic-filled highways. Kunos' new game has the physics, but reviewers kept asking where the reason to keep playing was. This fall, the answer started to show up, and it is a 1:1 copy of the roads around the Nürburgring.

TORQFOLIO has not played the free roam build. This is a read of what the outlets that covered the August 0.9 update and the October hands-on sessions reported.

August: 0.9 lands with a shrug

Version 0.9 arrived Aug. 26 with three cars: the 2021 Audi R8 V10 performance quattro road car, the Audi R8 LMS GT2 race car and the Mazda RX-7 FD Spirit R Type A. Traxion's Ross McGregor detailed the rest of the changelog: mandatory pit stops that server hosts can require in multiplayer races longer than 20 minutes, Hotlap and Hotstint special events with global leaderboards, a new slick tire model for GT cars, better wheel support for Fanatec, Logitech and Thrustmaster bases, and a long list of visual and physics fixes.

The reviews were polite at best. Autoevolution's Dragos Chitulescu liked the R8's engine and exhaust sound and found the RX-7 accurate and more fun than its Gran Turismo 7 version, though he thought it felt slow next to a 550-hp FD he has driven in real life, and he ran into sound bugs. His larger complaint was about the game as a whole: it is "missing a 'binding' agent to keep us invested the way Gran Turismo 7 has." He called the update "just another teaser." McGregor wrote that fans could be forgiven for feeling a little underwhelmed by the new cars, and in a reply to a reader he agreed the game "certainly isn't close to being a finished product."

The new events are worth a closer look because they hint at where the game wants to go. Hotlap events fix the car and conditions and post your time to a global board, with an option to pick nearby drivers to compare against. Hotstint events show your gap to the drivers around you at every sector line, and an optional Limited Attempts setting caps how many tries count. Chitulescu ran the launch special event, a Ferrari F40 LM at Road Atlanta, and noted that you get only three timed laps to put your name on the scoreboard. For wheel users, McGregor reported that players can now edit an ffb.lut file to shape force feedback output.

October: the Eifel opens up

At SimRacing Expo in Frankfurt on Oct. 16, publisher 505 Games and Kunos announced that update 0.10 will add free roam on Dec. 9. The press release calls it "the most ambitious content update since the start of Early Access" and describes a 1:1 recreation of the Eifel region with the Nordschleife, nearby villages, country roads and off-road paths, dynamic weather, day and night, AI road traffic and time attack events. Traxion's Thomas Harrison-Lord added that it supports up to 30 players online and that the first version is smaller in scope, with more of the map coming in later updates.

What the hands-on drivers found

Simracing-PC got a separate session at the show and started from the Nordschleife parking lot, following the roads around the Ring toward Adenau. The writer called the experience "incredibly addictive," praised extremely well-rendered buildings and landscape and lifelike vegetation, and said the sound added to the atmosphere. They also saw the first AI traffic. The criticisms were about scope: the drivable map is still fairly limited, events in the open world are sparse for now, and a short session is "not particularly indicative" of how long it will hold interest. The site puts the first section at about 70 square kilometers.

Top Gear's Phil Iwaniuk interviewed Kunos founder Marco Massarutto about why the studio chose the Eifel. The team considered Tuscany's Argentario coast first, Iwaniuk reported, but dropped it because it did not offer enough driving. Massarutto's pitch for the Eifel was simple: "It's the only place in the world where you can find beautiful roads everywhere." Iwaniuk also reported Kunos' claim that the full playable area will be bigger than Manhattan and two and a half times the size of GTA 6's map, and he highlighted the scale details, from curb heights to tight town parking.

TORQFOLIO's read

Taken together, the coverage says Assetto Corsa EVO's racing side is still a collection of good cars waiting for a reason to drive them, and 0.9 did not change that. The free roam hands-on reports are the first time reviewers have sounded excited instead of patient. A 1:1 Eifel with traffic, weather and 30-player lobbies is exactly the kind of setting the original game's modding scene spent years building by hand.

The caveat is in Simracing-PC's own words: a short expo session is not a review. The first section is small, and the long-term pull depends on events and map growth that have not shipped yet. If Dec. 9 delivers what the Frankfurt drivers saw, sim players who live for the Nordschleife will have a new place to spend their winter nights.