Update 1.4 for Le Mans is out now and brings with it a huge number of changes, the usual bug fixes, performance updates and new features and improvements. There's also the new USA Track Pack DLC Part 1 that's available, including the Daytona 24 Hour road course and the Laguna Seca track.
What about the jokers?
Before we get to the jokers and what we think about them, we just want to quickly go over some of the more notable features included in this update. The first big one for us is the behaviour of Hypercars tyres: grip levels when leaving the pits are now a lot better and more in line with real-world tyre behaviour.
Michelin introduced a new tyre that has a special outer layer that improves cold temperature grip levels but quickly wears off to become a regular slick tyre after a couple of laps. This is now modelled in-game and should make the first lap out of the pits that little bit less scary.
The time available for practice before a race has also been increased, as well as how brake temperatures are measured, with a resultant improvement in pedal feel. We'll test this and report back in an upcoming article. We think it's time for a State of Play article on LMU to discuss where the game stands and what we still need to address.
Jokers
Initially, Studio 397 wanted to introduce the new Joker feature for Race Control Pro subscribers only. However, due to some pushback from the community, they opened up the feature to all users.
Basically, you get a Joker after 10 races to use to wipe out any driver or safety that may result from a bad race. The thinking behind this is to mitigate the negative effects of an internet disconnection, steering wheel failure, or maybe you just had a bad race.
We like that Studio 397 listened to the community and scrapped the idea of making the Joker feature behind the Race Control Pro paywall, but we're not so sure this feature was needed in the first place.
We'd rather see Studio 397 focus on getting the game to run stably and leave out this feature altogether. However, we don't think that the Joker will necessarily change the way people drive. What we mean is that if someone has a Joker available, they won't suddenly decide to drive aggressively because they have a get-out-of-jail card in their back pocket.
It's very difficult to predict how people will use this. Will they use it the way it was intended or will we see something totally unexpected? Time will tell.
Final thoughts
This was a good update for Le Mans Ultimate, and we like the new improvements, especially the tyres, brakes and longer practice sessions. There were a lot of smaller improvements like better netcode, performance improvements for VR and a visual update for the Le Mans 24 Hour track.
We're not particularly fond of the new Joker system, but that's something we find to be relatively minor and not worth the big fuss that it was made out to be. Look out for our upcoming LMU State of Play article. We'll report on our findings on LMU in its current state, check if the various issues we've experienced since we first played the game have been resolved, and if it's maturing into the racing sim we hoped it would become.
