From Europa Universalis V to Tavern Keeper, I've spent much of 2025 playing games whose difficulty options were so comprehensive that I could tailor them precisely to my preferred style and level of ability.
That kind of accommodation is normally welcome. But also: sometimes you just need to get your ass kicked. To remind you of your place, to remind you that no matter how much of a cakewalk you can try to make things, your life is not easy, and that sometimes the only way to make yourself better, and to make you feel better about the resulting self-improvement, is to overcome challenges.
For many of you reading this, that might be why you play a Souls game, or something like Silksong. For me, someone who can't stand either of those, it's why I spent last week playing Assetto Corsa Rally, a very serious car game instead.
Like the original Assetto Corsa, a track-racing game released over a decade ago, Assetto Corsa Rally is not fucking around. This is not Art of Rally, it's not Sega Rally, it's not Colin McRae, it's not even Dirt. This is a video game whose sole aim is to simulate the experience of driving a fast racing car on a loose dirt track as realistically as possible, and if that's brutally difficult to do in real life, then it's going to be brutally difficult to do here.
To give you an idea how serious it is, I, a fairly avid racing game fan, booted the game up last week, picked a free practice session, selected a classic Lancia and tore off from the start line. I crashed into a tree on the first corner. And the second. Then I made it through a few corners before spinning off down a hill. Before I'd got even halfway through the course--in practice mode--half my car was missing and I was getting warnings saying I'd respawned too often.
OK, I figured, there's learning the ropes and there's getting your ass kicked, so maybe I'll just go into the options and turn on some driver assists, maybe disable some of the more punishing physics. Upon which I discovered, to my horror, that all the assists already were on. I was already in the baby training wheels mode, and I couldn't even play that.
Which for a second made me want to uninstall the game immediately in disgust, but after two more seconds made me smile like a sicko and decide to get to work. So I went back to the main menu, chose a more forgiving (read: modern) car, jumped back into practice mode and took things a bit more seriously. I stopped trying to drive at top speed the entire time, because learning the car's handling and the track layout was more important. I eased into corners instead of flying into them to gauge just how far I could sling this car at speed, and I started feathering the accelerator on straights instead of flooring it, because I (correctly) figured it was more important to make it through a stretch of road staying on the track than blasting 80% of the way down it before going sideways into a wall.
All of which sounds a bit boring, but you've gotta remember that a) this game looks fucking incredible on my new PC, regardless of the speed or my success and b) because Assetto Corsa Rally is such a serious simulation, recreating the thrills and perils of driving a fast car so meticulously, that it's almost as fun to crash and burn as it is to clock a good time, because all the driving in this game is fun, whether it's being done well or not.
I said above I'm not into Souls or Silksong, so why skip a challenge there and not here? I think it's because driving a car isn't some abstract concept to me. It's something I do every day, which I enjoy doing, and so unlike some unfamiliar idea or control scheme where what I'm doing to a controller (pressing a button) looks nothing like what I'm doing in the game (swinging a sword), in ACR I'm doing exactly what I already know how to do and do all the time. I just need to do it a bit faster, and on worse roads, and in fancier cars, and so the prospect of dragging my current skill level (driving to work without crashing) to the point where I'm winning races is one I'm very into.
So I appreciate the skill check, Assetto Corsa Rally. I've been getting soft playing all these cushy management games lately. It's time to let something kick my ass and get me into shape.
