It’s a straight-laced racing ‘sim’ that’s channelling Gran Turismo, with familiar jazzy piano chords accompanying grid scenes, methodical and technical driving, and some very familiar-looking licence tests.
As for the ‘racing’ of the title, it feels like the game would prefer you drove solo, as most of the modes see you tackling time attacks, counting apexes and driving cleanly in order to get gold. When you do race, you’re not allowed to start from a standing start; the game does that for you then hands you control after a few seconds. Inexplicable.
There’s no damage modelling to speak of, and the AI drivers often appear to be terrified of Turn 1, going mega-slow as they approach. They will sometimes run wide, or stop forever in the middle of a hairpin, and often barge into you if you’re occupying the line they want to take.
Fields are mismatched too, with some cars able to zoom ahead because they’re just better vehicles. Such ‘racing’ isn’t fun.
Still, the driving itself is adequate under Time Attack conditions. There aren’t many big hitters in the track list, but you do get Tsukuba and a decent facsimile of the Nordschleife.
The majority of vehicles are predictable and can be pushed hard to wring tenths of a second out of lap times but, whenever you break traction with the surface of the road, the realism wanes, with some very strange oversteer and unrealistic zigzagging. And as for the rally stages resetting you back to the start line if you crash – with all your elapsed time still counted – I don’t know what to say.
If leaderboard chasing isn’t your style, you can head to multiplayer, where real people are populating the lobbies. Trouble is, most aren’t racing here either – they are faffing about in ‘free run’, idling by the start line and swearing at each other in censored text chat that must surely be the result of cross-play from the phone versions.
A quick race doesn’t give everyone the same car, resulting in devastating mismatches even in the same power tier.
But there are even more fundamental issues off the track. Firstly, this handheld game NEEDS an internet connection to even load up. Your progress is stored ‘in the cloud’ so without the internet, you can’t even open the garage door, let alone drive a car. Inexcusable for a Switch racer.
Secondly, the user interface is dreadful, employing a cumbersome cursor instead of the touchscreen. Sometimes even that won’t select anything at all.
There is no dedicated Switch 2 version, so playing the game on Switch 2 sees you using ‘boost mode’ where you’re seeing the docked version of the Switch game playing at 1080p on your handheld. The frame rate is smooth, with only minor performance hiccups in some scenes, but lighting and textures are basic. The grandstands are all empty too; the game feels devoid of life.
The final nail in its coffin is the frequent suggestion that you could spend more money. Even your initial choice of three cars has the best one locked away behind a 79p microtransaction.
The £16.99 we paid to buy the game (which is free to play on iOS) is already quite a lot for a Switch racer, but seeing the option to spend up to a further £79.99 on in-game currency is frankly scandalous. Then there’s a £3.99 monthly subscription if you want exclusive access to rental cars, and that’s before you add on subscriber ‘boost packs’.
I’m out.
Overall, Assoluto Racing on Switch has some merit in its smooth driving engine and car licenses, but even if it was free to play, I wouldn’t recommend it. Avoid.
Score: 3/10
“Not the Gran Turismo-style game Switch is crying out for”
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