Thank you 505 Games for sending us this game to review!

A little over eleven years ago, KUNOS Simulazioni (simulations in Italian) released the racing simulation game Assetto Corsa to widespread universal acclaim. A few years later, they followed it up with Assetto Corsa Competizione. Through great word of mouth and excellent pricing, the Assetto Corsa series of games has gone on to sell more than 28 million copies as of 2022, making it the sixth most popular racing franchise in history by number of units sold after only two main games.

In early 2025, Assetto Corsa EVO was released in a 0.1 Early Access version. This release was low on content, as expected, but many fans were worried, since EVO was nowhere near what they were hoping for in other areas like physics and driving feel. Thankfully, they stopped and listened to fans, slowing down their release cycle to make sure they got it right. While only on version 0.4.1 as of this writing, it's worlds away from what we saw out of 0.1, and hopefully, still a world or two away from what 1.0 becomes (for the better).

For those unfamiliar with Assetto Corsa EVO, while you can call it a game, it's really more racing simulator than anything else. You can sit in the driver's seat, or you can choose one of several other views as you drive around a racetrack going as fast as the car you chose (and your skill level) allows. It supports virtually any kind of input device to control your car, though it is most certainly optimized for racing wheel use; nothing else feels nearly as good. Even still, if you want to use a controller, you can certainly do that. I raced primarily with my racing wheels; at first I used my older Logitech G27, but upgraded to the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race KD3 as I was given the opportunity to review that. Direct drive racing wheels like the Turtle Beach feel much better while on the track than the much older gear-driven design of that older Logitech. Whatever you use, games like this greatly benefit from having a racing wheel.

Racing wheels benefit games like this for a few reasons. The main one is simply realism and immersion. When set up correctly, a racing wheel can feel much like driving the car would. I found that with the Turtle Beach KD3 wheel, the on-screen rotation of the wheel can match your physical movement perfectly. Given the accuracy of the simulation available here, I would be more surprised if the wheel movement didn't accurately reflect how the real car behaves than if it did.

With that said, you can use almost anything to control the game. There is a default gamepad profile, and I tried that, and it all works as expected. The only issue I had there was the steering control was a bit too sensitive, as spinning out was very easy to do. There are so many ways to tweak controls that I'm sure with some tuning it would feel great, but as of this point in Early Access, they haven't gotten it quite right yet.

I do love how flexible the control options are. While you can certainly tune your gamepad controls like I mentioned earlier, that is far from the only thing you can do. Would you like to use a separate device for the wheel, pedals, and shifter? Sure, you can do that. Would you like to use an old flight stick as your handbrake? Sure! I actually tested that since I don't have a dedicated handbrake on my racing setup quite yet, and it worked flawlessly. If your device shows up as a USB HID device, chances are you can use it to race.

On top of that, rumble, force feedback, and haptics support is all well done. My gamepad and racing wheels all were perfectly supported with excellent haptics. The vibration I felt on my gamepad really gave me valuable feedback on how well I was doing or if my car was worse for wear. (Hint: If you can feel the car while driving on a clean straightaway, chances are it's damaged.) This is even more the case with a racing wheel, as the force feedback reacts really well to the surface you are driving on or if the car is damaged. If the wheel is fighting you while trying to drive in a straight line, you better get to that pit stop to get fixed up as soon as possible.

For an early access release, there is actually quite a lot of content. There are over forty-five vehicles to choose from, with all kinds of types and power levels represented. There's everything from a grocery-run worthy hatchback to a Formula One race car, with a whole lot in between. Some brands are better represented than others; European car brands have lots of options, while American car brands have few. Even still, it's a lot of variety, even if not all of my favorite cars are there (yet?).

On top of the large variety of cars is quite a selection of tracks. Over half of the current track list is, again, European, but America, Australia, and Asia also has a showing. It's currently kitted out with fourteen tracks, some with multiple variations. If you count all variations, there are currently twenty-six tracks to race on, which is quite a respectable total - especially for a game that isn't even to its halfway point yet.

One aspect that doesn't seem to be well fleshed out yet is the Single Player Career mode. You can earn licenses by driving in preset tests well, but beyond that there isn't a whole lot to do. I'm sure that will get better over time, but at least you can still play in Open mode and drive whatever and wherever you like. There is also online multiplayer, and there seems to be fairly active servers available in there to drive in, so the community looks like it's in a good place.

As is very important in the simulator genre, the cars and tracks look great, with realistic lighting, reflections, shadows, and more. The performance and quality levels can be heavily adjusted, with a very long and detailed options menu, along with several handy presets. If you have a high-end computer, you can make it look really great - and if you rock a potato, there's a good chance it can run there, too. I was surprised to see competent performance on my Steam Deck, despite it being officially 'Unsupported'. It was an awkward experience entering your name and such with the on-screen keyboard, but once I got past that, it did work playably well at low settings. I'm guessing a recent Steam Proton fixed the game, but the compatibility hasn't been updated for the game since.

On the aural front, I have little to complain about. The engines and other cars around you sound great, at least as far as my amateur ears can tell. There is no music to speak of other than in the menus; once racing, it's all about the cars.

One thing that I finally got around to testing with this game is something I wish I would have gotten to a long, long time ago: virtual reality (VR) racing. I know other racing games have supported VR for quite some time; it wasn't until AC EVO that I finally got around to trying it. And wow, it's incredible.

I tried running it with three different VR headsets: the Sony PSVR 2, the HP Reverb G2, and the headset we have in to review on loaner, the Pimax Crystal Light. Each has its own positives and negatives. The PSVR 2 has OLED colors, which brings truly black blacks, that makes night racing amazing. The HP Reverb G2 surprised me with the brightest colors that popped - I expected the PSVR 2 to win here, but it was the G2. The Pimax Crystal Light has the clearest visuals, with a large sweet spot for clearer visuals. Honestly though, they all put a smile on my face, and I'd be happy to race with any of them.

Its worth noting that the Pimax did require setting the OpenXR Runtime to Pimax and lauching the game from their launcher for the best performance. If I didn't do that, the PC would seemingly hang for minutes at a time. Thankfully, once that was all figured out, it ran great. Just be warned to check that if you decide to play with that combination!

Once everything is working properly, the VR experience in Assetto Corsa is incredible. I was easily able to make out the dashboard inside the cars when driving, and the environments look great. Driving from the seat of a car, you can look around inside as well as out the window - just like while driving. It’s a much better experience in many ways than just a normal monitor; the downsides are it’s more work for your PC, so the demand on the CPU and especially GPU is much higher; and the cars all look a bit smaller than in real life, despite you sitting in one. There are other small immersion-breaking aspects as well. For example, by default, the mirrors reflect a static direction rather than dynamically update based on your position. AC EVO does allow you to enable dynamic mirrors, but the performance impact is quite significant. Even with those caveats, it’s an awesome experience that I highly recommend. I hope to do more VR racing in the future, and I'm grateful that I finally took the opportunity to do so; I'm hooked!

While Assetto Corsa EVO is currently in Early Access, I think it's safe to say that what they have delivered is already worth the Early Access price. As of this review, it's $39.99, though the price has gone up over time as they have released more feature patches. I'd seriously consider getting in now while the price is lower, and enjoying the many amazing content patches as they are released. They have promised us an Open World mode coming soon, where we'll be able to drive around a town in Europe freely to explore and enjoy the roads with our chosen car. I can't wait to check it out! Highly Recommended for racing sim lovers.