Gran Turismo and Forza Gear Up as NFS Unbound Chokes and Emits Smoke

I was hoping for a little more in this Motor Review. I was sure we would have a new update before the weekend Gran Turismo 7 (a month has passed since the previous one) and full insight into the 19th Century Series Force Horizon 5. But both Polyphony Digital and Playground Games decided to spite me. But that doesn’t mean I had nothing to write about. See for yourself.

Assetto Corsa double hit

Recently, we received two electrifying news about what Kunos Simulazioni is working on. The first concerns the enigmatic Assetto Corsa 2. It has been confirmed that the premiere of the game is still scheduled for 2024 – it would take place in the spring (i.e. potentially in just over twelve months).

The source of this information is the financial report of Digital Bros., which owns 505 Games – the publisher of the works of Kunos Simulazioni (via MauroNL). The document also states that by the end of 2022 sales of both games in the series exceeded 28 million copies, and the revenue from them amounted to over EUR 104 million. A very decent result for such a niche genre after all.

The second interesting news is related to Assetto Corsa Competizione. Kunos Simulazioni has finally officially announced the new content. On April 19, a DLC will arrive on PC that will introduce three cars: Ferrari 296 GT3, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 and Porsche 992 GT3 R (or at least, so many upcoming GT3 machines have been talked about and revealed so far – it’s possible that the developer has some surprises in store). In the trailer below you can admire the first of these machines, which is probably the most electrifying.

NFS Unbound has a boot problem

It took Criterion Games three months and a half to transform Need for Speed ​​Unbound from a game into a game-service … or at least make an attempt to do so. To put it bluntly, it finally went into production fresh content, made available in the framework Update Vol 2.

On paper, the news looks decent. We get three cars, dozens of challenges, very important features of the online mode or a ton of fixes. Unfortunately, these attractions are followed by a big BUT.

1. Cars – only one is really new (Mercedes-Maybach S 680 from 2021), the rest are modified versions of machines already available in the game: Lotus Emira Balmain Edition and Nissan Fairlady ZG 1971 Epic Custom. What’s worse, the latter was reserved for EA Play subscribers (although it was shown on screenshots before the premiere NFS Unbound).
2. Bringing the police online – I can’t believe it wasn’t there before, since it’s the foundation of this game.
3. New character poses and driving effects – probably the last things on the list of novelties awaited by players (there are also clothes, but to get them you have to buy the newly released DLC Map keys).
4. Races and other challenges, including daily ones – at least they are hard to pick on (as well as a long one leaves bug fixes), should keep you entertained for a long time.

As you have probably already guessed, the community did not reward the update with thunderous applause. In fact, the condition of this game looks worse and worse, judging by Steam. Only 63% of the reviews posted there are positive, and the number of players playing together every day does not exceed 2,000. (NFS Heat still has better stats).

How will it go on NFS Unbound may have trouble surviving its predecessor (even though it was only seven months in development). But let’s not delete the game yet, maybe Criterion Games will surprise us positively in the next updates and turn a bad start into success. After all, every year we have more and more such cases in the industry.

Five interesting cars are heading to GT7

While we don’t have an update as such yet, at least we know what cars will be coming to Gran Turismo 7 after the weekend (probably Thursday morning). At least we can guess. As usual, Kazunori Yamauchi, head of the Polyphony Digital studio, posted on Twitter picture presenting the silhouettes of five new machines (see below). Internet experts quickly they identified models:

1. Audi RS 5 DTM (second generation),
2. Mazda 3 (fourth generation hatchback),
3. Porsche 904 GTS,
4. Porsche 959,
5. Toyota Alphard (third generation).

I like this choice. Here we have a continuation of catching up with the Porsche classics (a field where Grand Touring has the largest backlog, given that the brand appeared in the series only in 2017) and complementing the offer of modern racing machines, as well as development of the trend for which many love the works of Polyphony Digital, i.e. sharing “ordinary” vehiclesseen every day on the streets … Although I did not expect the return of minivans.

Top Toyota, left Porsche 904 and Audi, right Porsche 959 and Mazda 3. Credit: Polyphony Digital.

Riding the edge in RaceRoom

The free RaceRoom Racing Experience hasn’t received any news since December, and I was beginning to worry if everything was okay with KW. Fortunately, yesterday the developer dispelled fears – and did it with class.

At the beginning of April, three new cars (paid) will be added to the game, collected in the set On the Edge Pack (although you will also be able to buy them separately). These are modern racers representing different performance classes:

1. KTM X-Bow GT2,
2. Mazda RT-24P,
3. McLaren 570S GT4.

The trailer below shows off all three machines:

The Crew 2 is still alive and thriving

It seems that the upcoming The Crew Motorfest does not prevent Ivory Tower from actively keeping the almost 5-year-old The Crew 2 alive. As proof, it is enough to cite Season 8which started in this game last week.

His first episode is titled USST Cities – It the return of the US Speed ​​Tour imitating motorsport eventin which we participated in the third season, this time locating the competition in the largest cities of the United States. More competitions (including endurance) will be made available every week.

They go hand in hand with the theme of the event four brand new racing carsthat have been added to the game: Saleen S1 GT4, Spyker C8 Laviolette GT2-R, KTM X-Bow GT2 and Chevrolet Corvette C8.R (I’m skipping the twice as many modified variants of machines available earlier). The first three can be purchased in the showroom, the last is reserved for owners of the new Motorpass in the Premium version.

In addition, a large, because weighing more than 30 GB update placed a new playground on Lake Michigan, and also improved the driving model of the remaining dozens of machines from the Touring Car and Alpha GP categories. For the full list of changes, click here here.

LEGO 2K Drive announced

I was wondering for a long time whether to mention LEGO 2K Drive at all in Motoprzeglad – after all, I omit here extremely “arcade” racing games with go-karts (a la Mario Kart) or futuristic “gliders” (a la Wipeout). In the end, I decided to make an exception due to how unconventional the work of the Visual Concepts studio looks.

It will, in fact sandbox arcade gamein which, apart from racing, we will undertake various, usually crazy tasks. If you compare it to another project, closer than Forza Horizon 4: LEGO Speed Champions would probably fit The Crew 2. There is an interesting concept of automatic transformation of the vehicle depending on the surface – as soon as we leave the asphalt, the race car will change into a machine adapted to off-road (e.g. a quad), a similar process will also take place after falling into the water.

With all this, of course, there will be an obligatory module of constructing your own vehicles, and you will be able to crash on open maps both alone and with others (via the network or on a split screen). Premiere LEGO 2K Drive will take place on May 19 on PC and consoles, PS5, XSX/S, PS4, XOne and Switch.

Motocourier (WRC, Forza, F1, PUBG)

1. The whistleblower billbil-kun, who has recently been making an increasingly brilliant career, has taken the upcoming WRC-licensed game from Codemasters as a wallpaper. He communicated that The project is reportedly ready for release, and its announcement will be very soon. As proof, he presented icons of achievements (for viewing here).
2. Details about Series 19 in Forza Horizon 5 will be revealed on Monday as part of the broadcast Forza Monthlywhich will start at 5:00 p.m. Playground Games will also celebrate the imminent launch of the Rally Adventure expansion. On Tuesday, an update with new content will be released (although we will start getting this content starting from Thursday), a we will start playing the expansion on wednesday. In short, we have a full week ahead of us Forces.
3. The next installment of the series F1 has been removed from sale on Steam – this time young ones were removed, because they are less than three F1 2020 springs (thanks, RSC). This is a continuation of the harvest that EA started shortly after the acquisition of Codemasters.
4. Who watched e-sports competitions from Rennsport already knows about it, but the game’s creators have only recently officially confirmed the content in it Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. The announcement was accompanied by a demonstration of the car in the video (link in the previous sentence).
5. You may not realize that before creating Automobilista, Reiz’s studio provided some attractions in the form DLC to rFactor 2 (a handful of cars and tracks). Years later, the developer announced that he was working on refreshing this content. We got it at first screenshots presenting all four routes from the package with graphical corrections.
6. You know what PUBG Mobile is – it’s definitely not a car. Despite this Bugatti chose this game to promote itself. With Update 2.5, players can whisk around the battlefield with two models of this brand; these are the Veyron and La Voiture Noire (you can see them in the video below). Various cosmetic items related to Bugatti have also been introduced. And I thought car manufacturers advertised in Rocket League it’s weird…

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