0.3 review, about 2 hours in.

This is more of a review for encouragement - a bit of positive reinforcement, I guess. You can feel the ambition, but that's kind of it for now. Though I love the track selection so far, love the unconventional car choices, and love the early commitment to single player content (driving academy).

What I don’t love is the TDU2-esque vibe seeping through the game - all that rich-man, playboy, crypto-bro gloss, spotless dealerships, eternal sunshine, etc. I like my racing games gritty and a bit down to earth.

Physics are unimpressive too; you can tell Kunos started from absolute scratch with this game. The systems are there, you can see and feel them calculating things, but to a degree where it does not come together into anything solid.

UI is, classically for Kunos, busted. Menus are laggy and freeze the game constantly. The UX overall seems pretty OK until you're in settings (especially controls); that's where it hits you with a big wrench right between the eyes: it's hard to find things, the structure is all over the place, tooltips are scarce, and even when they are there and tell you stuff - it's incomprehensible.

And yet, I'm willing to not roast the game, because Kunos set an impossible task for themselves with a goal to have a racing platform, a serious (yet accessible) simulator, and a free roam mode (still not sure what it will achieve in a sim game but sure) along with multiplayer. It’s ambitious as heck, their biggest game to date. But let’s see what will happen. Assetto Corsa is a giant among sim-racing franchises - the pedigree is there, the tech and know-how too - so I’m, let’s say, cautiously optimistic.

0.4 review, 15 hours in.

Now you can finally see the game taking shape. It's not a bunch of half-baked systems wired together with some UI - you can safely call ACE a game. And also, which is more important, a sim. The physics model now resembles a package. The cars are fun to drive, they have character, they differ. And there's a damage system now. It's not too deep: you have scratches, you have bits losing shape and wiggling, and you can wreck your suspension in a very realistic-looking way.

UI does not go ballistic on your system anymore and you can navigate the menus without bringing your PC to a crawl; though I know it's still bad for most people.

Sound is pretty bad for the most part. You have cars that don't sound like their counterparts at all, you have levels mismatched, you have TC sounds suddenly dominating or sounding as prominent in the chase camera as it sounds in the cockpit, and so much more weirdness.

Oh, and the AI is just not there; you can't race in single player at all. AI cars just form an orderly queue and stay in it forever. Even if you vacate the racing line - they don’t care and just keep going at the same speed, seemingly unable to make a decision to go by.

To sum things up - stuff is still broken in ACE, a lot, but it's finally fun to drive, which makes you interested in exploring the existing content and experimenting.

I barely managed to put together this provisional review, because it’s really hard to look at Expedition 33 as a product. It’s an experience — one that I’m not sure can be compared to anything else. And I’m only a handful of hours in. I’ve barely seen anything. I don’t even really know what’s going on.

But I’m so obsessed, so touched, and so inspired that I needed to express it. I find myself frantically googling the names of the devs, their backgrounds — anything that can anchor me and steady my disturbed thoughts. Things are truly, groundbreakingly different with this one. Expedition 33 feels entirely new. It’s like you’re playing a game from a different timeline, where the whole industry evolved along a different path.

Obsessed.

I’m obsessed with the devs. I’m obsessed with Charlie Cox dropping in for eight hours of recording and delivering a performance that now rivals giants like Neil Newbon and Troy Baker. I’m obsessed with that seemingly random composer who just exploded with ideas on the spot and supplied Expedition 33 with nothing short of a magical soundtrack. The deeper I dig, the less realistic all of this seems — because so many different pieces had to align for this game to become what it is. And when I think about it for too long, I get scared, in the same way I do when I try to imagine what the edge of the universe looks like.

And yeah, I’m not saying we don’t get magical moments like these in gaming anymore. I was similarly stunned during the Raphael fight in Baldur’s Gate 3, accompanied by a song sung by Raphael himself, intimidating the living ♥♥♥♥ out of me. I still get chills thinking about it. Now imagine that feeling of “♥♥♥♥, this is something else” — that brief loss of connection to reality when immersion peaks — but stretched over hours. That’s the feeling you get throughout the playthrough.

I’ll update this review with some actual reviewing at some point.