WRC: FIA World Rally Championship

As a motorsport discipline, rally is just about as demanding and unforgiving as it gets. Thundering through an all but deserted forest at ridiculous speeds with nothing but the directions from your navigator to keep you company, you need nerves of steel and Jedi-like concentration to survive, let alone win. In this, the first officially licensed World Rally Championship title to hit consoles in a good few years, developer Milestone has done admirably to capture the exhausting tension and intensity of the real thing, but unfortunately the whole experience is let down by shoddy presentation and terribly outdated graphics which simply can't be ignored.

They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, and with WRC that first impression could hardly be worse. It is instantly clear that presentation was an afterthought, as if the developers put the game together and then just as it was about to ship they realised that people are going to need a few menu screens and so on to tie it all together. Calling the overall presentation of WRC 'functional' is to do a great disservice to the word 'functional'.

The ubiquitous 'they' also say that you should never judge a book by its cover, but sadly in this case if the cover was bad, the pages of this drab novel are just awful. It has been a long time since I've felt genuinely offended by a games' graphics to the point where I sometimes caught myself exclaiming aloud in sheer disdain. Close up, textures are murky and indistinct, while track-side elements, trees and environmental features are all so poorly created that my initial response to seeing this game in action was akin to being punched in the eyes. When asked by a fellow gamer which view I prefer to use while playing WRC, my instant response was "with my eyes half closed"... it's that ugly. Trees pop into existence like blurry green candyfloss on a muddy watercoloured landscape, and vehicle interiors are pretty much a generation behind the current standard. You see, we've been spoiled by the likes of the Forza and DiRT franchises, and up against that sort of competition WRC fails on an epic scale.

Aurally, this game doesn't fare much better. Perfomance tuned rally cars are supposed to be snorting beasts, rumbling like the storms of Hades, but the vehicles in WRC sound neutered in comparison. Besides being too tame, they are also all far to similar to one another. With Milestone having access to the actual cars used in the various FIA rally classes, each vehicle supposedly has its own distinct and faithfully recreated engine sound, but the differences within each class are slight to say the least. Looking past the timid vehicle sounds, the rest of the sound effects are an improvement, with ambient track noises and effects discernible depending on track surface and surrounding elements. Your navigator does a respectable job of guiding you through each race, even if he (or she) could do with a direct shot of adrenalin to give them a bit of lust for life. Their comments about your performance or race standing as you pass through a checkpoint are sometimes badly timed and cause them to miss calling the next corner, and when things are as tense as they are in rally racing, one missed corner could mean an early shower for you as your Citroen C4 becomes intimate with a pine tree.

So, we have established that Milestone may not have delivered a feast for the senses with this title, but that's not really the full story. Yes, WRC may be as ugly as sin, and may well have the aural ferocity of a garden mole, but dig a little deeper and the truth is that there is a surprisingly impressive and demanding rally racer under all of that. Perhaps what makes the actual gameplay stand out is that we've been dumbed down by the likes of DiRT and its kin, with their arcade stylings, rewind features and hand-holding nanny tactics. We've forgotten what it's like to be at the end of a frighteningly intense rally stage, barely clinging onto a tenuous lead, only to clip a fence and instantly lose all hope of a podium finish. The old Colin McRae titles were all about that suspense, as was the classic Richard Burns Rally, but that feeling of tension where each action in a race has proper consequences, that feeling has become a relic of yesteryear, and for fans of hardcore rally it has been sorely missed. This is the one shining beacon of hope in Milestone's WRC, and it does just about enough to elevate this troubled racer from the depths to something worth playing.

The twitchy but precise controls take some getting used to, but with practice it becomes a tight and polished experience for those prepared to master it, and there are driver assists available to give beginners the training wheels they may need. The key is that in a game like this, when you pull off a clean section and powerslide through a narrow gate in the English countryside like you're threading a needle, you know it's your careful control, focus and concentration paying dividends, and it's quite a thrill.

Adding to the authenticity of the rally experience, WRC has a detailed repair section between certain stages, allowing you to repair the parts you deem necessary before the race continues. The detail here is impressive since it goes beyond just "fix suspension" by giving you control over which element of each aspect to spend your valuable repair time on. Coupled with the repair feature is a damage model which is sufficient to give you an idea of what is broken, but doesn't come close to what we've grown to expect these days from competing racing franchises. At least any damage incurred is well translated into the gameplay, with a very clear impact on vehicle handling, so it's not just for show.

The core of WRC is its career mode, the Road to the WRC as it's called, and this is where you are bound to spend the majority of your time. There is an informative rally academy to help newcomers learn the ropes, but veteran racers shouldn't have too much trouble getting started with the career mode right away. Since this is a licensed product, the career sees you starting out as a relative nobody in the rally world and then working to progress through the ranks of the 2-wheeled JWRC and through to the WRC proper, where the big boys play. Progress is slow, but deliberately so, and never feels drawn out, with the pace of things lending itself to a lengthy and fulfilling career. There are incentives for winning and for completing sponsors' requirements, including many unlockable paint schemes and colours, new sponsors and better vehicles. Obviously by the very nature of the WRC this isn't the kind of game which will offer a vehicle roster to match something like Forza, but it doesn't need to either. Working your way toward earning your first proper WRC car is a rewarding experience, adding gravitas to the immersion of the career mode.

Those who lack the patience or desire to build a time-consuming really career will find enough quick-play modes to fill the gap. Players can choose from a single stage, single rally or a full on championship, getting behind the wheel of some of the powerful WRC cars without the struggle involved to unlock them in the Road to the WRC mode. Again, since this game has the official WRC licensed attached to it, the real drivers are at your disposal and if you are a follower of the sport you'll undoubtedly enjoy being able to take control of your favourite drivers and teams. Rally has always been quite a solitary affair, but Milestone has at least tried to inject some form of party play into this one with the addition of a Hot Seat mode. This is effectively a fancy name for a "It's my turn next, move over!" mode, but is probably the only suitable way to incorporate local multiplayer without sacrificing the realism of proper rally.

Taking the action online, WRC's live component features single stages, full races and championships with up to 16 drivers. Considering that rally events involve only one vehicle at a time, Milestone has built the multiplayer as a sort of single-player vs live ghosts mode to give it that feeling of proper competition. It works surprisingly well, because while you are fully aware of the people you are racing against since you can see their ghost cars in real time, you are still effectively all alone on the track just like the real thing. Lets put it this way, it works better in action than you would imagine. One downer is that races take a terribly long time to load, which can be really frustrating. Prolonged load times are also a painful element of the single-player modes, leaving you to stare at a dog ugly loading screen showing off your chosen vehicle in all its dirty, jagged, low resolution glory. A sad and constant reminder of just how appalling the graphics and presentation are in this game.

Taking all the factors into consideration, the amount of pleasure you will derive from WRC is entirely dependant on your priorities as a gamer. I'm not going to lie to you, this is a drastically flawed game, specifically in the areas of graphics and presentation, to the point that at times you may wonder if Milestone had actually finished developing it when it went off to the manufacturers. On the other hand, if you can convince yourself that what lies beneath is more important and you are willing to overlook WRC's glaring shortcomings, there is an intense and even rewarding hardcore rally sim lurking beneath its dirty exterior. Those who got a kick out of the multi-vehicle events and light-hearted approach to off-road racing which have made competing titles so popular will be severely disappointed, but rally purists will appreciate that Milestone has kept this game true to the sport, as brutally ugly as it may be.

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