Having had more of a chance to experience multiplayer, it’s a little bare bones and lacking in excitement, but you can find a race quickly and the action’s pretty stable. It requires a little more of the thought and discipline you’d find in PC’s sim racers, though with driving aids on it’s more approachable than Assetto Corsa and the like. This isn’t a game you can play like Forza 5 or Gran Turismo 6, screaming around the corners with the brakes on and hoping for the best.

Some classes of vehicle – particularly the open wheel racers and karts – can be a nightmare to drive, but that’s what we’d expect. And while we can’t say whether it’s a combination of patches, our own control tweaks or just experience that have done the trick, we’re finding the handling more predictable and consistent these days. Now on its 1.04 patch, the PS4 version is smoother running, has cleaner edges and is less prone to the menace of screen tear, all of which make for a slightly better experience. In many respects, it’s maturing nicely too. Project Cars delivers on all these counts. It turns out that not everyone wants a social racing focus, Top Gear tie-ins, American racing superstars or the world’s best photo mode, but lots of people do seem to want a game with a fairly straight race-by-race, championship by championship career mode, the option to play full race weekends, a realistic approach to tyre wear and damage and AI racers that are neither robotic nor psychotic. The partly crowd-funded racer has tapped an audience that other racers seemed to be ignoring. Project Cars has been one of the year’s surprise success stories, to the extent that Slightly Mad Studios has just announced a sequel while the first game’s barely two months old.

Available on Xbox One, PS4 (reviewed), PC We take another look at Project Cars

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