EA Sports WRC boasts 10 current WRC, WRC2, and Junior WRC vehicles and 68 of the most iconic rally cars spanning 60 years of the sport. Working together with official WRC teams and manufacturers, such as Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai, each vehicle is built to tackle every challenge they'll face throughout the season. The hybrid-powered 4WD Rally1 cars are some of the fastest in the sport's history, capable of incredible speeds while tackling gravity-defying jumps, deteriorating surfaces, and adverse weather.
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Ta wapo
Whithin UE4 stutters, smeary image quality and uber flawed carrer mode there lies a great game still
It's the best rally game ever in my opinion. Emphasis on game because RBR still holds the title for best rally sim. Regardless it's an absolute joy to drive. The only thing holding the game back right now is how hard it is to run on PC.
Check out my full review on our website:
https://inthegame.nl/2023/11/08/review-ea-sports-wrc/
-- ENGLISH VERSION --
About 2 months ago, EA SPORTS WRC was suddenly announced via Social Media. Behind the scenes, EA has worked with Codemasters on a new Rally title. Can it adequately follow the renowned DiRT Rally series?
It's been over 4 years since Dirt Rally 2.0 was released by Codemasters. In the meantime, the company has been acquired by the mega-concern Electronic Arts and has developed a few games under the new collaboration, mainly the F1 games. However, Codemasters has been known for decades for their rally games, such as the Colin McRae Rally games on the Playstation 1. More recently, the DiRT series has evolved into DiRT Rally.
Where Codemasters left off with the previous Rally game, EA SPORTS WRC must pick up the thread and do justice to the legacy. Meanwhile, the rally world has shifted to new car technology, and some classes have changed.
Accessible to everyone but difficult to master.
Once you jump into one of the many cars in EA SPORTS WRC, you are bombarded with new signals that you don't encounter or feel in most racing games. The car's maneuverability is good and very responsive. Whether you're playing with a controller or a steering wheel and pedal combo, the game provides good feedback regarding the car's behavior.
Compared to DiRT Rally 2.0, EA SPORTS WRC is almost the same but actually takes a half step back in terms of difficulty. The detail in the road surface and car control is still there, but it's a bit more forgiving than the previous game it follows. What I did notice was that the road surface sometimes lacks detail. For example, standard asphalt feels somewhat lifeless, and you don't feel 100% what the car is doing, sometimes relying on guesswork at high speeds.
WRC - Capture 2EA SPORTS WRC by Codemasters and EA SPORTS
If you're not familiar with rally sports in general or want to improve your skills, you can turn to the Rally School. This is a course with a series of exercises that you encounter in most rally stages. From learning pace notes to mastering handbrake turns, almost everything is covered. This functionality reminded me a lot of the driving school in the Gran Turismo series, easy to grasp but challenging to master.
Lots of potential but still incomplete.
During our preview of this game, there were a few bugs. Quite normal for a game that wasn't on its final build at the time. The bugs included cars disappearing during a podium ceremony or a glitching car after a crash. During my sessions tearing through various stages with, of course, a few significant crashes, I still noticed the presence of some bugs. For instance, I was forced to reset my car because it had merged with a guardrail, and even lampposts were not safe.
Resetting your car incurs a time penalty. This was already present in previous rally games, so nothing new. However, the fact that you're almost forced to use the reset button and thereby receive a penalty is not enjoyable. I had to redo stages entirely, which can lead to frustration.
Overall, the game feels very good but somewhat incomplete. This may be because a considerable number of iconic cars are locked behind DLC, but mainly because the world feels empty. Mountains in the distance, for example, are visible but quite bare because you can almost see through the trees. Along the track, you see spectators here and there, but the ambiance around it is somewhat lacking.
Regarding audio, there's not much to complain about. The iconic cars sound good but are not a complete representation of their real sound. The new cars with a hybrid system sound quite similar and lack the punch, for example, of the Subaru Impreza 22B STI.
Gameplay is solid with room for improvement.
Focusing on gameplay, the game feels robust. Certainly a good foundation for potential successors bearing the same name in this series. The cars have good feedback, easily accessible for newcomers and controller players, and the detail from DiRT Rally 2.0 is still largely present.
However, there is still room for improvement in EA SPORTS WRC, mainly in the graphical aspect but also in simple elements such as menus and some gameplay points. The menu is fine at a glance, but if you want to start a quick race or time trial, you have to create an entire rally first. Unfortunately, it's not just buckle up and drive. The menu in the campaign mode is also cumbersome. A screen full of bars and various options that you have to complete in other menus brings a lot of confusion, which caused me a lot of stress before I even got behind the wheel.
In terms of gameplay, the game feels somewhat incomplete. The graphical aspect is fine, but distances in the game can cause a frown on your face. The game plays well, although there are occasional frame skips. The occasional bug is also hard to miss, but that could still be patched out, it seems.
It is certainly a successor to DiRT Rally 2.0; you immediately feel that it comes from the same studio. However, there is still a lot of potential to be tapped in this rally sim, but for a new title, it doesn't look bad.
https://inthegame.nl/2023/11/08/review-ea-sports-wrc/
-- ENGLISH VERSION --
About 2 months ago, EA SPORTS WRC was suddenly announced via Social Media. Behind the scenes, EA has worked with Codemasters on a new Rally title. Can it adequately follow the renowned DiRT Rally series?
It's been over 4 years since Dirt Rally 2.0 was released by Codemasters. In the meantime, the company has been acquired by the mega-concern Electronic Arts and has developed a few games under the new collaboration, mainly the F1 games. However, Codemasters has been known for decades for their rally games, such as the Colin McRae Rally games on the Playstation 1. More recently, the DiRT series has evolved into DiRT Rally.
Where Codemasters left off with the previous Rally game, EA SPORTS WRC must pick up the thread and do justice to the legacy. Meanwhile, the rally world has shifted to new car technology, and some classes have changed.
Accessible to everyone but difficult to master.
Once you jump into one of the many cars in EA SPORTS WRC, you are bombarded with new signals that you don't encounter or feel in most racing games. The car's maneuverability is good and very responsive. Whether you're playing with a controller or a steering wheel and pedal combo, the game provides good feedback regarding the car's behavior.
Compared to DiRT Rally 2.0, EA SPORTS WRC is almost the same but actually takes a half step back in terms of difficulty. The detail in the road surface and car control is still there, but it's a bit more forgiving than the previous game it follows. What I did notice was that the road surface sometimes lacks detail. For example, standard asphalt feels somewhat lifeless, and you don't feel 100% what the car is doing, sometimes relying on guesswork at high speeds.
WRC - Capture 2EA SPORTS WRC by Codemasters and EA SPORTS
If you're not familiar with rally sports in general or want to improve your skills, you can turn to the Rally School. This is a course with a series of exercises that you encounter in most rally stages. From learning pace notes to mastering handbrake turns, almost everything is covered. This functionality reminded me a lot of the driving school in the Gran Turismo series, easy to grasp but challenging to master.
Lots of potential but still incomplete.
During our preview of this game, there were a few bugs. Quite normal for a game that wasn't on its final build at the time. The bugs included cars disappearing during a podium ceremony or a glitching car after a crash. During my sessions tearing through various stages with, of course, a few significant crashes, I still noticed the presence of some bugs. For instance, I was forced to reset my car because it had merged with a guardrail, and even lampposts were not safe.
Resetting your car incurs a time penalty. This was already present in previous rally games, so nothing new. However, the fact that you're almost forced to use the reset button and thereby receive a penalty is not enjoyable. I had to redo stages entirely, which can lead to frustration.
Overall, the game feels very good but somewhat incomplete. This may be because a considerable number of iconic cars are locked behind DLC, but mainly because the world feels empty. Mountains in the distance, for example, are visible but quite bare because you can almost see through the trees. Along the track, you see spectators here and there, but the ambiance around it is somewhat lacking.
Regarding audio, there's not much to complain about. The iconic cars sound good but are not a complete representation of their real sound. The new cars with a hybrid system sound quite similar and lack the punch, for example, of the Subaru Impreza 22B STI.
Gameplay is solid with room for improvement.
Focusing on gameplay, the game feels robust. Certainly a good foundation for potential successors bearing the same name in this series. The cars have good feedback, easily accessible for newcomers and controller players, and the detail from DiRT Rally 2.0 is still largely present.
However, there is still room for improvement in EA SPORTS WRC, mainly in the graphical aspect but also in simple elements such as menus and some gameplay points. The menu is fine at a glance, but if you want to start a quick race or time trial, you have to create an entire rally first. Unfortunately, it's not just buckle up and drive. The menu in the campaign mode is also cumbersome. A screen full of bars and various options that you have to complete in other menus brings a lot of confusion, which caused me a lot of stress before I even got behind the wheel.
In terms of gameplay, the game feels somewhat incomplete. The graphical aspect is fine, but distances in the game can cause a frown on your face. The game plays well, although there are occasional frame skips. The occasional bug is also hard to miss, but that could still be patched out, it seems.
It is certainly a successor to DiRT Rally 2.0; you immediately feel that it comes from the same studio. However, there is still a lot of potential to be tapped in this rally sim, but for a new title, it doesn't look bad.
A new rally entry from Codemasters. It's been a while since I played any official WRC game putting aside the fact I barely play rallies at all. It welcomes new players fairly while having a quite an obtainalbe platinum. I do think the time spent on this game was justified though often I felt overwhelmed by the handling probably due to the fact my foreigness to car customization and rally tracks. The career mode had some micromanagement systems such as team management (hiring staff, managing happiness of benefactors etc.) and that was indeed shallow and unnecessary for me.
I’m not gonna lie, rallying is a pretty slept-on discipline of motorsports. Unlike many series, where the car is the one doing the actual driving and the driver just tells it what to do, rallying is a sport where the person behind the wheel is the one doing all the hard work.
To put it simply, it’s a motorsport that involves throwing yourself down a narrow gravel road at ludicrous speeds whilst trying not wrap yourself around a Finnish conifer, whilst an incredibly brave man in the passenger seat shouts at you a mysterious language of numbers and letters they’ve written down in biro on a notepad they stole from Home Bargains. Safe to say, it’s a little bit mad.
EA Sports WRC is the first game in the long-running series of officially-licensed games by the World Rally Championship to come from Codemasters, longtime racing game experts most famous for the widely-beloved Colin McRae Rally series and the officially-licensed Formula One games, and is the first new IP to ship from the company since its acquisition by Electronic Arts back in 2020.
Graphically, EASWRC (As I shall now call it from this point on) is nothing to write home about. That’s not too surprising considering this is the first big-budget project from Codemasters since TOCA Race Driver 3 to not use their in-house EGO engine (At least for visuals, physics and sound design still seem to be handled by Codemasters’ own technology), instead attempting to harness the power of Unreal Engine 4 to produce a more visually pleasing experience than its ancient predecessor. Instead, what you get is a game that actually looks worse than DiRT Rally 2.0, especially if you’re playing on console or don’t have the horsepower to crank up the graphics to Ultra or Epic.
To put it simply, it’s a motorsport that involves throwing yourself down a narrow gravel road at ludicrous speeds whilst trying not wrap yourself around a Finnish conifer, whilst an incredibly brave man in the passenger seat shouts at you a mysterious language of numbers and letters they’ve written down in biro on a notepad they stole from Home Bargains. Safe to say, it’s a little bit mad.
EA Sports WRC is the first game in the long-running series of officially-licensed games by the World Rally Championship to come from Codemasters, longtime racing game experts most famous for the widely-beloved Colin McRae Rally series and the officially-licensed Formula One games, and is the first new IP to ship from the company since its acquisition by Electronic Arts back in 2020.
Graphically, EASWRC (As I shall now call it from this point on) is nothing to write home about. That’s not too surprising considering this is the first big-budget project from Codemasters since TOCA Race Driver 3 to not use their in-house EGO engine (At least for visuals, physics and sound design still seem to be handled by Codemasters’ own technology), instead attempting to harness the power of Unreal Engine 4 to produce a more visually pleasing experience than its ancient predecessor. Instead, what you get is a game that actually looks worse than DiRT Rally 2.0, especially if you’re playing on console or don’t have the horsepower to crank up the graphics to Ultra or Epic.