XBOX REVIEW | Rennsport

When this game came on my radar and they asked us to review it, I was pretty excited. I like racing games. I really enjoyed the Forza Motorsport series, but not more arcady Horizon ones, to make it clear. When I’m bored or it’s a slow night, I like to start up a racing game and go for a few laps. Just pick up a controller and do some time attack laps of the Spa-Francorchamps or Hockenheim with all types of cars. Make your mind go blank and follow the race line and push as hard as you can to improve your time. A short shift to take that corner a bit faster, or brake a bit later so you can hit the apex better. Those kinds of things. So let’s see if Rennsport fills the void!

Things I liked!

• Graphics | The views of the tracks and cars in general look amazing. You have a great view of the sky and surroundings. The thing I was sad about, is that it’s very sterile as an environment. There is nothing happing around you. The tribunes are empty. No birds flying or anything else happening. I missed the details in my surroundings. The one thing on the graphics side of things that made me angry was the reflection of other cars in the rearview mirror or even the ghost car for that fact. It was so pixelated and deformed that it got on my nerves. It was like a pixelated image from 2003 shot with a 124p camera driving in my mirrors.

• Tracks | I really enjoyed seeing some of my favorite tracks in the game. But for a racing game, 14 tracks are really not enough.

• Steering | I still have an older generation racing wheel, but it was really good in this game. I was surprised to see that the handling with the steering wheel was awesome. It felt way better that Forza for example. I could handle the car much better than I’m normally able to. This was really nice and made my experience much better.

• Sound | The car’s engine sounds were amazing. That is one of my main reasons I love racing. Hearing the engine and gears going through their pace is so satisfying. I really loved the Aston Martin Vantage GT3. What a machine! But again, not enough cars! Yes, you get really fast cars and they are a handful to handle. But why not a Miata Cup cars or Beetle Fun Cup? Some smaller, less fast cars, they also bring joy to a racer.

• HUD | You can customize your HUD as you see fit. I don’t like it when the track is in the top right corner of your screen. You can adjust it, and I brought it to the bottom left side of my screen. You can add, hide and move stuff around as you like.

Mixed & disliked!

• Online | You can race online, but only in premade lobbies. I couldn’t even make a lobby and invite some mates to practice with me. I couldn’t find a lobby on the Xbox with people to race, which I found sad. Just allow that you host a race and have fun with some friends.

• Liveries | What is the use for the liveries that you have to spend real money on? You get like 2 or 3 different liveries per car. Why not make a liveries builder like forza. If you want people to play, let them be artistic and let them build liveries. I’ll drive around in an anime livery. If you want to know where Forza went wrong it was Forza 5. Forza 4 was brilliant. You could exchange stuff, build setups. Here, not so much. The only place where I could modify a car was in Time Trial. There you can change settings for the car. Which was a lot, if I might say so. It was overwhelming. But that was the only location that I found this. I wish I could do this for a championship and have all the car set up like I wanted it. But no, it was not possible.

• Controls | They were really annoying in 3 parts:
  • Rebinding the buttons was a disaster. I like X to downshift and B to upshift. Well, when I did that, all weird stuff started happing because B was a combo with the MFD in the game. You could NOT deselect or activate the MFD (Multi-functional Display in the HUD) on screen. So, every time I was shifting gears, the info on my screen would shift between different information, like my position or tire temps or my abs and tcs settings. I tried rebinding the Y button to the handbrake, for example and that made the MFD information go left to right and when I pressed B from right to left. This was infuriating. There was nothing else to do, but put them on a button you didn’t use, but they were all selected. My handbrake didn’t work, not that you need it in general, but you get the point. Easy when it works. Why not make it so you can activate the MFD and deactivate it.
  • Why does the game reset my settings between rounds? I start and set my TCS to a 1 out of 2 and my ABS to a 6 out of 11. I’m happy with that setting, did a great lap and good time. Start qualifying, I have to set the ABS and TCS back. Do that, go to the race, again have to set it up. WHY!!!??? Just keep it like that. And you change this in the MFD.
  • Controller vs Steering wheel: I tried driving with my controller first. On the time trial I was about to control the car pretty ok. Not great, but not bad either. Then I moved over to the championship. Well, you start your first championship with a BMW M2 CS Racing. I couldn’t race it. It was horrific. Couldn’t stay on the track, brakes didn’t work properly. I finished that championship and already I didn’t want to play anymore. I was really not happy, so I tortured myself with a 2nd and a 3rd championship. I could win it with the controller. My position was dead last. Don’t forget you have to do 3 races per championship with a practice round, a qualifying round and then the race. I wanted to break my controller in half. The redeeming part for this game was the steering wheel. After hooking my steering wheel to the Xbox X, which was pretty seamless, I started over. There was a difference of almost 16 seconds per lap and the car would go off track way less then before. Still had some horrible spinoffs, but way less than before. I don’t know how much this bothers you guys, but I couldn’t even hold a drift or a power steering. It was impossible for me.
• The Opponents AI and Racing AI | The AI in the game is terrible
  • Opponents AI: I have almost no words for it. It was like driving demolition derby. You make a clean pass and the AI goes like, “well now I’m going to PIT you”. Good luck, everybody else. Once you have passed everybody, you are home free. Nobody will pass you unless you make a mistake. Also, when you are in the middle of the pack, you see weird stuff the AI does, like casually driving into the wall at the same spot. Flipping on their roof on parts of the track, you almost can’t believe it.
  • The racing AI: How many times I got message that my lap was void because I went over the curb. And I understand, you want clean racing. But when the AI Racers are driving like clowns and you are doing your best to avoid collisions and then they say to you that you have to give back a position, because you evaded the collision. That is nuts in my opinion. I tried driving with the race line on. I got penalties because I followed that line! At some parts of the tracks, I cut the corner, and I knew I would get a penalty for it; I got nothing.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 15 hours
How long to beat the story? 8 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 355/1000 or 16/40
How long to achieve 1000G | 20 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo

CONCLUSION

Score: 50/100

This game is a tough sell. On one hand, I like it with all its flaws, but it feels more like a missed opportunity. It’s not a cheap game; you need to pay for extra liveries; the tracks and cars are limited. It’s not racing out of the box. You will need a steering wheel to play this game. You can’t just sit down with a controller and have fun.

I hope they fix some bugs and add features that improve the gameplay. This might be a great game on PC and for people with racing sim rigs. But for the average gamer who wants to race and sit down with a controller, this game is a pass for me.