As CGM’s resident sim-racing enthusiast, October and November were shaping up to be good months, with the releases of NASCAR 25, RENNSPORT, and Project Motor Racing all dropping before the end of November. After the lukewarm NASCAR 25 dropped, I was looking forward to playing RENNSPORT next to get back into racing on proper tracks with proper racing cars.
I wanted to get a feel for how the cars performed on both controller and using wheel & pedals, so I immediately hopped into the rookie championship on my controller, using the BMW M2 and tried my hand at the practice session. In the single-player championships, there are three sections to each race: practice, qualifying, and the race itself. The practice and qualifying sessions are 10 minutes each and can be skipped at any time if you just want to get to the race.
I spent nearly the entire practice session trying to wrestle my car around the Founder’s Track, which was designed specifically for this game and shaped like the RENNSPORT “R” logo. I found that when using a controller instead of a wheel and pedals, the car was very sensitive to sudden steering movements because the controller has only so much travel before it reaches the car’s steering limit. It took patience and a light touch, but I won the three-race championship. The other tracks were more familiar: Hockenheimring and Fuji International Speedway.
“I thought my Gran Turismo 7 confidence might transfer over to RENNSPORT—boy, was I wrong.”
I also found that in several races and qualifying or practice sessions, AI drivers were running me off the road. This happened at least five times across the championship and left me wondering why. One moment at Hockenheimring stood out. I had passed an AI car on the long straight toward the hairpin, and just as I was nearly clear, it swerved into my rear quarter panel. It spun both of us out and cost me six positions. I managed to finish third, but it was needless contact that happened again at Fuji in almost the same way.
After the debacle that was single-player championship on controller, I connected my wheel and pedals and went over to the time trial section and tried to set a time at my favourite track in the game: Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. This is the track I am the most confident on when I play Gran Turismo 7, so I thought that confidence might transfer over to RENNSPORT. Boy, was I wrong.
First of all, track limits are significantly different between the two games. I found myself taking the lines that I would take when playing GT7 and immediately invalidating the lap I was on. It genuinely took me about 10-15 minutes to break the muscle memory of my GT7 turning points and brake markers to acclimate to the track limits enforced in RENNSPORT. Now, this isn’t exactly a mark against the game, especially since different racing governing bodies have different rules for this sort of thing; it’s just something that frustrated me early on.
After learning the track all over again, I managed to put in a lap time of 1:33.058, good enough for, at the time of writing, 31st in the world. I’m sure with more time, I could break into the 31s probably, so I’ll definitely be re-visiting that.
I want to go back to my controller driving experience for just a moment, as there was one default setting that just didn’t make sense as to why it was set up that way. This was the button to turn the engine on and off. By default, this function is mapped to the L3 button, which sounds fine at first blush, but when you are racing and making tight turns using the controller, you will inevitably press down on the left stick, engaging the L3 button and turn off your engine. It took me considerably longer than I care to admit to figure out why I wasn’t moving the car despite having the R2 button pressed in to accelerate.
I realise that you can change that mapping in the settings, and rest assured that I immediately did, but it doesn’t make sense as to why that function is mapped to the most used button on the controller.
The multiplayer experience is a breath of fresh air by comparison, as the game requires you to do 4 multiplayer races to give you a driver rating, which will then match you up with other drivers of your skill level. I love this system, as it rewards good clean driving. Those first four races can be a bit of a mixed bag though, as everyone is trying to earn their rating so you have drivers of all skill levels competing in the same lobby. You can also filter your search results to show only lobbies that have gt3 cars enabled or only at a specific track, so that’s a good mark in my book.
When it comes to racing titles, sound is of the utmost importance. Hearing the engine revs gives drivers a feeling of when to shift gears, especially if they tend to run with no HUD. I was very happy to find that of the cars I drove, the engine noises were pretty close to the real thing.
A divisive part of the sim-racing community is running assists. Whether it be traction control, ABS, racing line, etc., there will always be someone out there telling you what assists you need to turn off. Thankfully, RENNSPORT doesn’t feature much in the way of driving assists. There are options for traction control, ABS, stability control, driving line, and automatic headlights, and that’s it for driving assists. Each assist has an option to go from Off-Low-Medium-High and that’s it. Not a lot of overthinking to do, and I prefer it that way.
“In its current state, RENNSPORT feels unfinished, especially if you are using the controller alone and not a wheel and pedals setup.”
Now we come to the worst part of RENNSPORT in my opinion, and that’s liveries. Each car you get in the game has a livery on it already (a livery is the paint scheme and how the car looks), and you can add a sticker or two in very specific places and that’s it. There is no custom livery editor like you’d see in Gran Turismo 7.
In contrast, RENNSPORT features a livery shop where you can buy a new livery for your car using in-game currency that you can only get buy spending your real money. The least expensive livery available costs 200 RENNSPORT credits, which amounts to about $3.25 CAD. It’s baffling to me why this is included in the game, and without a way to earn those credits through game play.
Aside from the livery shop, the issue I have most with RENNSPORT is the distinct lack of things to do. There are three levels of single-player championships to take part in, for a grand total of 7 different series of races. This just isn’t enough for a game that is meant to take on some of the heaviest hitters in sim-racing.
Graphically, I have some issues with RENNSPORT as well. The tracks themselves are as well replicated as you’d expect, but there were numerous times I experienced significant frame drops and other visual anomalies. When going through your camera views, there are a few that offer a rear-view mirror, and using that mirror is like looking into the game played on a PS3 for how different the textures look.
As well, RENNSPORT just seems to lack the polish that I was hoping for, but maybe I’ve been spoiled by the graphical powerhouse that is GT7 for too long.
In its current state, RENNSPORT feels unfinished, especially if you are using the controller alone and not a wheel & pedals setup. There is a good game in here somewhere, as the cars feel good to drive once you figure out their quirks and your own driving style, but I just can’t recommend it to a newcomer to sim-racing.
