WRC (2010)

Let me start off by making one thing clear: Richard Burns Rally was not an outstanding simulator. It was a mediocre simulation of the sport of rally where friction and braking were exaggerated to a point where the game was nigh on impossible to master. Real rally is not as difficult as it was portrayed in Richard Burns Rally. A fact confirmed by several WRC drivers.

With that out of the way I'm going to make a statement that will make some simulation fanatics scream "bloody murder" - with the correct settings WRC will offer a more realistic simulation of rally on gravel than Richard Burns Rally. At least if you stick with the SWRC class.

But WRC is not a brilliant simulator. There are details that Milestone have managed to do well, when simulating how a 360 horse power rally car handles on gravel at 100 miles an hour. Unfortunately there are just as many details in the handling that they have not been able to capture well.

The first thing you have to do (I must underline this) when you start is to go into the settings and create a profile of your own. For some hard to fathom reason the standard settings are all over the place and this makes it impossible to record decent times with a steering wheel. The standard settings distribute the force wrongly, and you have to make a number of adjustments to them.

Once this has been done you won't have to suffer the weird unstable feeling the standard settings offer. Because if you jump into WRC without tinkering with the settings it will be nearly impossible to get through a stage without turning your car into scrap. It feels as if your car doesn't touch the ground, the car waggles all over the place and the brakes lock the rear wheels at the slightest touch. This happens regardless of your difficulty setting.

With changed settings, a Playseat chair and a Logitech G27 steering wheel, it's relatively easy to enjoy WRC and thanks to the high difficulty level it's rather addictive. There are however a few major problems that I cannot ignore, and ruin the experience beyond salvation.

First of all it's hard to understand why Milestone have chosen to penalise players with rather hefty speed decreases every time one or more of the wheels are outside of the road. I have no beef with that being the case in track racing titles like Forza Motorsport 3 and Gran Turismo 5, but in rally it's a big part of the actual sport to be able to cut into corners.

If you take a look at any rally driver, regardless of division, stage, team, car och skills, they always try to cut corners as much as they can in order to straighten out the line as much as possible and gain time. All drivers cut corners. That's why the co-driver says "don't cut" at certain points as the rule otherwise is to cut as much as possible.

This is harshly penalised in WRC. In many ways this is the biggest problem with the game. Every time you cut a corner, the car slows down and you lose tons of speed even if there happens to be five yards of freshly cut grass on the side of the road (as in Finland) rather than mud or quicksand.

Another problem is the co-driver and his inability to read pacenotes at a satisfying pace. Sure, you can change the note settings to fast or normal tempo, but no matter how much I've tried I haven't been able to get it to a point where I can fully rely on the notes. On top of that he is very hard on you and comments on your driving ("Is this really the best you can do?"), which makes me want to reach over, open the door and kick him out - Niko Bellic style.

The third problem I have with WRC are the stages. Sure there are fun ones, but way too many are extremely boring. Most notably the German stages are mindnumbingly boring, and so are the Swedish ones with death barriers of snow that create a lot of frustration. In general Milestone have built a lot of rock hard barriers on the side of the road. Which create a feeling of racing on track rather than rally.

That takes us to the graphics. WRC is almost unbearably ugly to look at. When it comes to games like Rfactor and GTR 2 I can appreciate the fact the graphics are sacrificed for wonderful driving physics, but I'm not as forgiving towards the latest WRC game. The PC version is naturally the best looking one, and the PS3 version is clearly the least attractive. Regardless of this WRC features the worst racing environments I have seen since Cruis'n on Wii. The cars on the other hand are well crafted, decently lighted and the damage model is satisfyingly detailed.

Despite the well engineered car physics (with a few much needed adjustments), WRC fails to entertain for any longer periods of time. The stages are boring, the notes are too slow, and the graphics too primitive. That and the fact that you cannot shave time off by cutting corners makes for a decidedly mediocre rally title.

(The first 16 screens are from the Xbox 360 version. The following 6 are from the Playstation 3 version and the final 11 screens are from the PC version.