WRC 7 Review

Feeling flat?

With Kyloton’s third effort at the WRC license, can the series find a groove, or is this official game left in the dust by Dirt 4?

Story:

WRC’s career mode was overhauled last year, and returns this year, with almost no appreciable difference. When you compare it against the sheer number of options in DiRT 4 or the year-on-year improvements offered by F1 2017, it doesn’t make for pleasant viewing. There’s so much more that could be done, and all the basics are there already…

Gameplay:

Last year I criticised the impenetrable handling model, the lack of tutorials, and the difficulty in setting up your car. WRC 6 was also a much more hardcore game than its predecessors. Unfortunately, too few of the above issues have been addressed.

The biggest improvement is in the control setup, particularly if you race using a steering wheel. I’d managed to get much more of a hang over the options, and within 5 minutes I’d arrived at something I was at least relatively comfortable with.

However, the rest of the issues mostly remain. WRC 7 has some more driver aids available when compared to last year, although the difference between having them on or off is often negligible. Clearly, a decent amount of skill is still required, and there’s no option to not use a strong left foot on the brakes. Having said that, even with all the aids off, the game seems much more forgiving on the damage front, as you can crash over and over again with only a minimal impact upon the driving characteristics of your vehicle. I even raced an entire stage with a punctured tyre without a huge amount of handling difference.

The game’s driving school gives you a score, but not feedback on how to improve, making it pretty useless. There’s no other tutorial, and the game still certainly takes some getting used to when it comes to the handling. It’s less precise than DiRT from a steering perspective, requiring you to link up corners as if by magic sometimes. This would be ok, if it wasn’t for pace notes which are often inconsistent.

Even with the new ‘advanced’ setting, which now has corner strengths between 1-9 (rather than 1-5), sometimes you’re presented with a tree in your bonnet much sooner (or later) than anticipated, or as a result of the corner strength being mis-represented. With no rewind feature, and very harsh penalties for resets continuing (despite the average stage length being over 5 minutes), this remains a daunting game that requires skill and patience to persevere at before you can truly start to enjoy it.