My First Week With Automobilista – By Paul Thompson

So, back on the 24th of November I couldn’t help but notice Steam had a great “Black Friday” deal on all Reiza Studios titles, so after many years of semi – uninterest in Automobilista, I finally decided to pick up the game along with the season pass for the combined total of £15.88, and although a little late to the party, I thought I would share with you my first weeks worth of experiences with this game.

So the term “Automobilista” – a driver, a motorist, well that would best describe me in both my real life and my virtual sim life, but these words aren’t about me, so let’s get cracking.

I choose to download both the Automobilista – beta build as well as the latest version of the game, as I figured having both versions would prove beneficial in the long run, although so far after the first week of gaming I’ve only played the beta. After loading up the game I navigated my way around the menus with ease and set up my G27 wheel rather quickly to hasten my “on track” time. The first car of choice was a Ford Focus, and off I buzzed down the pit area awaiting my release onto the track. The pit exit light turned green, and away I went, shifting up through each gear with ease and excitement into the first corner. 3 laps later and I really felt at home in the car, so I peeled back into the pits and parked up and switched the engine off.

I tweaked a few of the options within game, as I tend not to drive with an on-screen hud, as I have a USB dash display system, plus in addition to that I wanted to remove all of the head movement “in game”, but other than those few changes, I was a happy chap. I skipped the qualifying session and headed straight to the race, and what a race it was. The door to door action, cars leaning on each other, a little rub here, and a slight tap going into the breaking area, yep it was rather entertaining.

Then I moved onto driving the Ultima GTR around the rather narrow and twisty Cadwell Park, and what a hard task that was. After many off-track excursions I really had to temper my control inputs to get on top of the car, brilliant I thought, a car that bites you. Well needless to say after a few hours testing lots of different cars at Cadwell Park I was still smiling (which is rare). Sadly my day was ending, so I switched off my sim rig system, and spent the night in bed digesting my on/off track actions.

The following day I read with interest on Bsimracing about the update of Automobilista to V1.4.9 and the added content being the “Metalmoro AJR”. Was this something I had overlooked in the beta build? only one way to find out, so I made a cup of tea, and sat myself in my sim-rig, and loaded up the game. But this time I decided to take my time, and tweak the graphics settings, choosing things like the multi-screen option, turning off filters, basically doing all the things I should have done the first time around. So now with everything maxed out, I loaded up the game and set about my day of gaming.

My car of choice was the Metalmoro AJR and my destination was South America, Velolpark. A track I had never turned a wheel on, and a good basic track to learn quickly. Also, I wanted to attempt to gain a sense of what the car was trying to tell me lap after lap. The first 3 laps were spent learning the basics of the track, and then I just pushed more and more, quicker and quicker I went, but again I was having lots of fun. Now the Metalmoro AJR come with different types of engines and having tested them all back to back on the same track, lap after lap, I could actually feel the different ways each engine delivered it’s power, in addition, and maybe my “brain” was filling in the gaps?, I could feel different engine breaking sensations, as well as slightly different engine weight configurations, but it all made for a rather enjoyable morning.

As the week went on I’ve had a few issues with the game (which I will now refer to as a sim) but they all seemed fairly surpassable. The fact I keep losing all of my USB controls from the sim if I change either the car or track combination is annoying, but I found an easy fix for me was to go back to the main menu, and return to the control options, at which point all my controls would reappear and I could carry on racing. Another odd thing is the in sim option menu seems to bleed onto both of my side screens, and I use the term bleed as it’s basically like the red sides bleed/melt, like a fluid pouring, which is odd, but I didn’t buy the sim to hang around in the menus, and turning off multi-screen option has fixed it.

So at the end of my first week with Automobilista I’m still enjoying my purchase. Plus I’m still finding things I hadn’t spotted before, like the first time I hopped into a Caterham and drove past the crowd, I could hear them cheering which made me chuckle a bit, or I’ve noticed the way the tyre feels over a kerb, and how you can run the tyre along the inside of some of the raised kerbs to help pull the car around a corner. But overall it’s the sense of being on top of the actual car, and by this I mean you can move the car around on the track more, entering a corner with one wheel locked, and letting off the brake a little to allow it to regrip, or braking a little too much which brings the rear of the car around, allowing you to back the car into a corner, none of which helps me go faster, but it just feels natual, and allows me to learn how to control the car at the limit, which speeds up the learning curve on how to drive the car faster over a lap. Sound also plays a huge part in this sim, backfires, gear changes, rattling over the kerbs, they all sound so right and really heighten the overall sim experience. The team behind this sim really deserve a polite nod in recognition to what they have achieved, thank you.

Automobilista is a definite drivers sim, and one I would recommend to anyone.

Kind regards,

Paul Thompson

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Reiza Studios Automobilista puts you in the driving seat of one of the most advanced racing simulators and delivers a uniquely diverse motorsports experience!

As the natural successor to Reiza Studios´ previous title – the highly regarded PC exclusive Stock Car Extreme, originally released in 2013 – Automobilista continues to simulate the premium Brazilian racing series such as Stock Car V8, Copa Petrobras de Marcas, Formula 3 Brasil and Mitsubishi Lancer Cup, now packing every car and every track from their respective 2015 championships. Beyond the Brazilian core, Automobilista is extensively complemented with one of the most diverse selections or racing vehicles you will find in a racing game.

Automobilista is available on the Steam platform for 27,99€.

Official Webpage – www.reizastudios.com