The rally racing community is one of the more niche racing communities in the world, but its fans are passionate and its history runs deep. Undoubtedly, the World Rally Championship is the most difficult of racing championships to achieve, and challenging players on a racing simulation level also brings out the best of the best. Codemasters has excelled at this with the Colin McRae racing series and eventually transitioning over to DiRT Rally. The latest in the series since EA has acquired Codemasters is simply called EA SPORTS WRC, as the new game is the official video game of the FIA World Rally Championship and keeps the award-winning team behind the heavily-praised DiRT Rally series. Can this team keep the momentum of the series going?
Rally fans will surely appreciate the history of the cars that are represented here. Players can expect the current WRC, WRC2 and Junior WRC cars, but there aren’t a large amount of those. This also includes the 2023 drivers, teams and liveries. With only offering ten of those cars, Codemasters has included 68 of the legends that span 60 years of the sport. These are broken up into their specific groupings and all drive different, providing varying experiences for players of the game. The development team has also built upon the handling model, which was some of the most difficult-yet-rewarding racing in the previous game.
The advanced Dynamic Handling System differentiates handling on various surfaces, whether it be dirt, asphalt or snow. Players have the chance to race in dry conditions, wet conditions or snow with ice sprinkled in. Different seasons are also selectable that can further create different racing conditions. One aspect that did seem to be missing in wet races was the inclusion of puddles, as I chose heavy rain in a few races and never seemed to have puddles when this was an aspect in the past. On dry asphalt, the cars tend to drift less and catch on the asphalt as they should, while wet and snow will offer even less traction as the focus remains on finding that perfect balance to keep momentum going. Players can import car setups from drivers, if they choose, as an option.
In the previous game, it felt the higher horsepower cars were much harder to tame then what’s here in EA SPORTS WRC. I felt confident I could get behind the wheel of the best cars in this game and complete stages. While the handling and driving is still rewarding, I believe the difficulty has been toned down even with assists off. There are a good bit of assists for players looking to get started, but there are plenty of opportunities to make the challenge as difficult as possible. When racing in rally, the idea is not to go full throttle. This can also cause wheelspin in certain conditions, even in a straight line due to the surface.
EA SPORTS WRC shines the best with a racing wheel, offering the biggest gap in racing games between using a controller and a wheel. The controller, however, does work well. There will be a lot of balancing the car and positioning going into corners with the controller, but the immersion is so much more with a force feedback wheel. The satisfaction of completing one of the 200 stages across 17 current and former WRC locations is still unmatched in any racing game. I did review this on PC, and it’s worth noting that currently DualSense on a DualShock does not work, and I feel that would be a huge benefit for using a controller in this game.
Codemasters has introduced a different aspect to a racing game with the inclusion of the Builder. Players have the option to build a car from the ground up. This car can be entered into the Career Mode, as well, but it looks like it can’t be taken online. Using real manufactured parts, players will budget to build their car and can go in and create a livery to go along with the car making it theirs. Taking this into the Career Mode, the car can be designed for any of the three leagues of the current FIA World Rally Championship. The Career Mode offers a start in any of these leagues and players will assemble their team of engineers and will need to manage their stamina. Events are offered each week as multiple cars can be purchased to enter these various events, some of which are historic. The goal is to keep Benefactors happy and maintain the team budget. A teammate can also be hired to help expand operations.
The Career Mode is different, but it isn’t extremely deep. There’s a skill tree to help improve aspects of the engineers and team, but it’s nice that players aren’t just doing one league race after another. Yes, the idea is to win a championship in the associated league and some events take longer than others, but it’s all about strategizing. Because this design is different than most other racing games, albeit not being extremely deep, there’s multi-season progression and a solid single-player experience with the mode. Outside of the Career Mode, players have access to customize a Championship or generate one, go straight into Time Trials where times can be posted against others, Quick Play Solo and Multiplayer, and a Photo Mode.
The last mode that will be continually updated is Moments. This allows players to recreate historic races or go back to recent races to keep things fresh. These are updated daily to give players something different every day, helping experience different cars in the game. For those that want to build confidence to race, the Rally School will introduce players to learning the skills of the sport. While these aren’t license tests, it plays out in the same type of way with short stints of tasks to help gain experience. Regularity Rally also provides players with something different as the focus is on reaching points on the track with an average speed rather than focusing on the time. These all will help build new players up to a competitive level.
Codemasters has moved the series over to the Unreal Engine, and it looks to be the Unreal Engine 4. This has allowed for improved driving physics and more details on all the stages. There’s a ton of foliage on each track, whether it be grass, rocks or trees. Draw distance offers the same level of foliage as each location feels full. EA SPORTS WRC is only on current-generation consoles and PC, but it doesn’t bring the looks on PC and there are performance issues. Stutter occurred enough times on the playthrough to throw my driving off just enough, and frame rates without assistance of upscaling technology in 4K ultra with an RTX 3080 only got about 50 FPS. That’s a last gen card, and with DLSS on Balanced, it jumped to about 70-80.
Hitting objects on the side of the track also occasionally caused a major stutter, while jumping into online races offered major hiccups, but that could be related to connection. The cars look solid but dated. They have a glossy reflection on the bodies. Interiors are detailed enough, but it feels equivalent to the last game. It’s baffling why this game doesn’t look to be that demanding yet suffers with performance. There’s also no ray tracing available and some of the reflections in mirrors are downright ugly. Player models look like any other Codemasters player model, but the way the lighting reflects off the model looks strange at times. The audio is fantastic, helping to make up for the visual aspect. High-quality real-world recordings of all the rally cars are in the game and they all sound different and beautiful. Changing camera angles also changes the exhaust note, with a heavier emphasis on the turbos with the hood view. The sound engineering is immaculately done and it’s worth racing every car in the game just to hear them. The soundtrack contains a good bit of fitting EDM or coffee music, and the replays return with the music being the perfect compliment to them.
Online play supports a good bit of players in each room with the option of quick play or a lobby system. This was frustrating with some bugs, though. Having to wait for a long run to finish is boring as there’s no option to spectate while waiting. More times than not, the countdown to start the race stopped. There are multiple waits just to get into a race and even being asked to choose a car for a race doesn’t guarantee that car. I selected an Impreza for a race, but then it popped up as a Lancia when I started. Voice on PC didn’t seem to work, and hearing other’s talk drowns out the navigator and you’re honestly better off disabling voice chat. Cross-play is here, which is a big bonus to ensure players are online. The big stutters online are bad, however, and a room of 30 people will be down to 10-15 within two minutes.
Closing Comments:
EA SPORTS WRC makes a few moves that are different for the franchise that work, but the difficulty that madeDiRT Rally 2so challenging yet rewarding is missing. Yes, this game offers that same sentiment to a degree, but it feels like there was more of a focus on making a complete game with a love letter to the history of the WRC rather than just making a difficult racing game. The Career Mode is a good change from typical modes seen in other racing games but outside of building a car, isn’t deep. The Moments will keep things fresh and allow varying experiences for players on a daily basis. The handling model remains challenging with a lot of tools to help new players, but it doesn’t feel as punishing as the past and I would prefer the game to be punishing. While this probably isn’t an issue on consoles, the stutter and performance issues are a problem that can hopefully be resolved soon. The game also doesn’t come off as a next-gen title with visuals feeling dated albeit a ton of foliage around the circuits. I went with the PC version to review to cover VR, but VR isn’t available at launch. It is worth noting that the game is launching for only $50 and doesn’t have a Deluxe Edition or any DLC, but does a Rally Pass for cosmetics.
