Assoluto Racing is a brilliant mobile racing game. While not finished, the game has a great handling model, fun tracks to drive around and a driving school. Not to mention the fact that you can do tons of hot-lapping, trying to get the top score on the leaderboard.
Assoluto Racing is quite easily one of the best racing sims on the mobile racing marketplace today. While still in development, Assoluto Racing provides a good amount of content to start off with as it stands right now. The game itself isn’t what I want to talk about though. You see, Dodge has recently been added into the game. With this addition, we get to drive cars like the classic ’69 Charger as well as the Challenger H-Cat and the Viper ACR. With Me being the Mopar-Addict that I am, I raced for two days straight trying to get the money for the ACR. After getting the ACR however, I was initially underwhelmed. With that being said, prior to me even finishing this article, they seemed to have read it and quickly posted a patch. Fixing virtually all the problems I originally had. With that being said, I won’t forget to mention some of the problems with the pre-patch car. Because I drove that car just as much as the current one. Interested? Good, let’s begin.
Handling: Where Fiction returns to Reality.
The pre-patch had awful handling for the ACR. The front end felt like it was constantly under aerodynamic lift and the steering was either heavy and vague, or light and unprecise. With the new patch though, that has been pretty much eradicated (thank the lord). You now have a much better feel for where the car wants to go and for where you’re pointing it. The steering feels far more precise. Thus, giving you the added benefit of having more confidence when turning into a corner. I don’t know what it’s like when you put the steering assist to 100% (why would you), but I can tell you that the pre-patch Viper utterly sucked when it was on to such degrees. It was bad without it, but I couldn’t even bear the car with it on. It was like having someone literally sawing at the wheel while you were still holding onto it, making useless (and ultimately incorrect) suggestions on how you should be driving.
Then you had the… ahem… tail-happiness of the pre-patch Viper. To be honest, “tail-happiness” would be putting it kindly. The amount of oversteer (practically everywhere) was unacceptable. I’d generally advise that you use the throttle slider for RWD cars in this game. The ACR (pre-patch) version was a car where it was necessary though. You couldn’t drive it without the throttle slider. At least, not if you wanted to put in a half-decent lap.
There was absolutely no reason why the ACR should’ve been as tail-happy as it was. The real ACR is just too grippy for the way it as handling in the game at that time. Forgive me for the seemingly excessive use of bold and italics. I just can’t stress how bad the pre-patch ACR was without such text modifiers.
The fact that the ACR was far more oversteer prone than it should’ve been isn’t all. The car was amazingly numb when you got into a slide. So much so that it was hilariously easy to over-correct and get into another slide completely on accident. You could write a skit (which I did in the original iteration of this article) regarding the “drifting” characteristics of the ACR. I say “drifting” because the idea behind drifting is to control something uncontrollable, to be in a “controlled slide” as some would say. When you started to slide in the ACR, it was everything but controllable. This was greatly fixed with the post-patch Viper though. The numbness is still there from time to time. Even then, it’s far better than before. For the most part, you’ll be able to get the Viper out of a slide and be able to continue the lap and still return a pretty good lap time. That’s something that couldn’t be said for the pre-patch car. The post-patch Viper is such an improvement that I now absolutely love driving the car around even some of my least favorite circuits.
Good job Assoluto Racing: Not only for getting the car right (relatively speaking) after the patch but for issuing the patch so darn quickly!
Upgrades: Watering down the beast.
Now for a change of pace. Let’s talk about the upgrades. We all know that the ACR has road-legal slicks, adjustable suspension, adjustable wings and splitters and countless other racing goodies. Everyone, except for Assoluto Racing. When you go into the upgrades menu you find that the car doesn’t even have racing tires on the car as it is! That’s absurd. While I’d understand if they weren’t sure whether to put the ACR on full slicks or semi-slicks (which is an option) because they weren’t quite sure just how “street-legal” the Kumhos are, I don’t understand why they put the car on “stock” tires. You’d probably think this is fine, except it isn’t. Because the game acts like the stock tires are Pirelli P-Zeros. Not bad tires at all, but certainly not the ACR Kumhos.
Then you come to the suspension, Assoluto gives you the option to upgrade the ACR to race suspension. What does this do? Basically, it allows you to tune the suspension. Something you can already do in the ACR as it sits from the factory. I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s like the guys at Assoluto forgot half the features of the ACR. I get they probably didn’t want an overly OP car in the game, but watering down the car for that reason is really disappointing as a Viper Enthusiast.
With that being said. Those upgrades do make a difference. The car handles pretty darn good without the upgrades. Put them on though, and you get something utterly incredible. I’d say the upgrades that make the biggest differences are power upgrades, brake upgrades, and tire upgrades. I currently have my car set to 745 HP. Which is about the power level I’d recommend if you don’t want something where you have to be overly careful with the throttle without feeling like you missing a little something down long straights. I find 745 HP to be an increase of HP without hurting the handling.
Performance: Slight differences.
There are some things that do make me scratch my head about the car though. Most notably, the top speed. The car will hit over 177 MPH. The real ACR won’t go faster than that…. at least, not without some extra motivation. This is a minor problem at best sure, but one that; to me, shows a slight lack of attention to detail. This would be less of a problem if the car had adjustable aero in the game…. it doesn’t though. I don’t really know how much of a difference it would make if I’m being brutally honest, however, I do think that there should be a limit to the speed of the car. The Viper ACR isn’t a top-speed goliath. It’s a corner-carver. It makes up the time it looses in the straights by being an utter monster in the turns. Don’t think I’m saying it’ll do 177+ plus with mods either, the ACR in this game will do 177+ without mods. I did some testing on the Test Course racetrack and ended up getting the STOCK ACR up to 195 MPH. It probably could’ve kept going had there been enough room but I think I’ve made my point.
Game Models: It’s the little things that irritate.
Get a picture of the real ACR and then compare it to the model in the game and you’ll quickly see the difference between the two Vipers. While I don’t have too many problems with the model; It’s a Viper, how could I despise it, the differences there are do annoy me to the moon and back. No, I don’t know how to model. But then again, there are people who don’t know how to cook either, and some of them definitely know when something isn’t right. While I may not know how to model, I do what’s not right with the 3D model for this Viper ACR. Rather than point it out though, I’m going to link the model used for this game and I’m going to leave it up to you to find the problems.
Link: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/dodge-2017-viper-3d-max/1077045
While the model isn’t perfect, I have grown to like it more and more. My real issue is that the guys at Assoluto Racing didn’t use a better one. The rest of their cars look brilliant and accurate to the real thing. So for the ACR to not look the way the real one does is something that greatly annoys the Mopar-Maniac inside me. Like they cheaped out on the Viper because it’s a Dodge and felt that it wasn’t completely necessary to get it perfect. Petty, Immature and other synonyms may be the way you want to describe that feeling and I’d perfectly understand. Yet, when I searched to find a model that was more accurate to the real thing I couldn’t find one. All of the ones I looked for had some problem in one form or another. The model they ended up going with is the best one out there in my opinion. Of course, there are better normal Viper models out there. However, there don’t seem to be any better ones for the ACR. The one that’s in the game is the best one I saw out on the “marketplace” as of the time I looked and indeed as of the time this article goes out. In the end, it isn’t the fault of the guys at Assoluto Racing picking a bad model. There just aren’t any good ACR models out there. At least, nowhere near as good as the one they chose.
Conclusion: The end of the track.
I spent the better part of 2 days grinding in Assoluto Racing to get the ACR in my garage when the only thing in it was a Peugeot RCZ. I was sick at the time so I didn’t really have much else to do. Once I got the car I was very disappointed initially. However, through the patch that came shortly after getting the car, the team at Assoluto Racing have greatly improved the ACR. Turning it into a car I’d recommend you do race after race after race trying desperately to obtain. It’s incredibly fast, fantastic to drive and is absolute eye candy when screenshots are taken. While not perfect, the ACR is by far my favorite car in the game. There are some short-comings, but once you drive the car, it becomes pretty hard to care about any of them.
Now… if only we could get some first-person driving for Assoluto Racing…..