WRC 5 Review

Stuck in the Mud?

With relative newcomers Kylotonn replacing veteran racing devs Milestone for development duties on this year’s official WRC game, has a genuine step forwards been made from the stagnating series?

Story:

Unless you looked at the box or credits though, you’d struggle to realise that there’s been a change. Certainly, stylistically and content-wise, the brief and scope haven’t changed. You start out as a generic, faceless driver in J-WRC, before moving onwards and upwards through WRC2 to full WRC.

Most of the career options have been stripped out – there’s no longer any in-season development, no garage or sponsors to manage, just pure rallying. Some people may find this refreshing, but with even much of the presentation stripped away, it does leave the game feeling pretty soulless in comparison even to other racing games, and light-years behind titles like Forza Horizon 2.

Gameplay:

I’m sure that Kylotonn will argue that this is because they want to put their focus on what actually matters (the racing), but it still feels like a pretty thin excuse. There’s very few options to change the handling model – you basically get to choose traction control, braking assist and damage options, and that’s about it. And however you go about your setup, you’ll find that the game lacks some of the authentic feel and emphasis on finessing the car and weight balance that Dirt Rally has. In some ways, that’s no bad thing.

Where WRC 5 excels is in the ability it has to make you feel like a great rally driver. Little flicks of the car, drifting and handbrake turns can be pulled off with ease after a few minutes of familiarisation, and the tracks are just wide and forgiving enough to let you take the old Colin McRae adage of ‘If in doubt, flat out!’ literally with your application of throttle. Carelessness will be punished though, as the damage model is excellent (even if some of the rendering of it could look better), and you can even lose comms with your co-driver.

However, some of the penalties seem too punitive. Flashbacks put you back at the last checkpoint, but leave you stationary, and there are too many places where going more than a few millimetres off the track more than the game expects will either slow you down to a crawl, reset you, or give you a 30 second time penalty – none of which are fun or feel like real rallying.

Slight issues aside, WRC 5 does do a good job of keeping the competition close and creating a good feel of rallying, with a number of stages joined together before you can repair your car. Whilst there may be a lack of modes, the career, whilst not being as deep as some of its predecessors, takes you around the globe several times, has a good tutorial, and should keep you going for a good dozen hours or more.