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| Photo from https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/rennsport-3776b8 |
"Passion and courage is what it takes to start a movement."
HOW I PLAYED: On an Alienware Laptop running Windows 11 with a Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, and 16GB of RAM with a Thrustmaster T248 wheel and pedals on a custom built wooden sim rig with a dual monitor holder.
THE INTRO
Rennsport is a Simulation Racing Game that has been built from "the ground up" to be a home for passionate Sim Racers wanting to play as a community or jump in to competitive tournaments. I have followed Rennsport for over a year now and kept myself updated with a lot of what has been going on and was accepted into the Closed Beta in April and have enjoyed my time playing. But now that the game is in Open Beta I wanted to share my impressions and thoughts of the game. There are 3 Founder's Pack options, but no storefront to buy anything yet.
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| Photo from https://www.rennsport.gg/founderspack/ |
THE GOOD
There is a lot of things to be excited about as with racing simulators, the undertaking of building one is like that of an MMORPG. That is, you don't see just anyone trying to build one. It takes time, effort, a lot of money and passion to succeed. Now, Rennsport is on Unreal Engine 5 and the strength of UE5 is it's visual fidelity, so there is no denying the beauty of this game. Now, there are three main positives I want to discuss about Rennsport.
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| Community content is already being created and used. |
Firstly, community support is already there. Having the ability for community modders to add content will allow for the game to be refreshed faster than a development team could on their own. Hopefully the modders stick to it!
Secondly, "real" digital ownership with no subscription fee (like iRacing and GT7**). These are not NFT's (thank god!). So when you purchase a car from the store it will have an "eVIN", a unique identification number; much like a real car's VIN. Furthermore, the car will always have the original owner tracked and will be able to be sold on to another racer. This is massive. Not a lot of games allow the reselling on digital purchases.
Thirdly, there is already a competitive scene with a championship with 12 teams competing. Rennsport organising this before the game releases was smart to help build confidence in their new game.
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| Photo from https://eslr1.com/ |
THE BAD
Rennsport is competing almost directly with iRacing and Asseto Corsa Competizione. It is also going to compete with games like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo 7; if it hits consoles. I have three main concerns for Rennsport.
Firstly, because it is competing directly with iRacing and Asseto Corsa Competizione and iRacing is a 15 year old game with a solid playerbase that has paid a lot of money in to that game over the years (and become comfortable with that games feel). Also, ACC is now 5 years old and it, too, has it's own playerbase. A new game will need to give them a very good reason to make the move. So Rennsport cannot be just "okay".
Secondly, Unreal Engine 5 is extremely taxing on hardware. This could make people feel like they need upgrade older PC's just to get a good experience out of Rennsport. This may be seen as a "barrier to entry" for some racers who don't want to upgrade just to be competitive or have an acceptable Frame Rate.
Thirdly, the content road map is a little too vague for my liking and it isn't really clear yet exactly which tracks, cars and classes Rennsport will feature long term. This may deter people from having faith that Rennsport will get enough content and they may just stick to the games they are on now.
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| Photo from https://www.rennsport.gg/roadmap-2024/ |
Rennsport's development team said: "Passion and courage is what it takes to start a movement"*.
There is definitely a passion there and while passion doesn't always result in a good product, it does seem like the team developing Rennsport are thinking things through carefully and catering to the Sim Racing Community as best they can. Only time will tell if people are willing to give Rennsport a real shake. Comment below if you want to see a full review of Rennsport or my Thrustmaster T248 in the future.
TL;DR It's free, the handling is great and the visuals are stunning. If you are a sim racer just try Rennsport for yourself and decide if it is for you or not; you have nothing to lose.
Download Rennsport Here: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/rennsport-3776b8
*Quote is from: https://www.rennsport.gg/#approach
**Gran Turismo 7 requires PlayStation Plus to access multiplayer races.
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