In Short
The official World Rally Championship game offers solid driving-mechanics and all the lovely official cars and tracks. Die-hard ‘petrol-heads’ should find joy in this title if you can put the bland visuals and some flaws aside, and it remains the only simulator rally title. There is more on offer than the first title but not the biggest step forward.
Developer: Milestone
Publisher: Black Bean
For fans of: Rally, racing simulator games
Reviewed on: Playstation 3
Also available on: Xbox 360
If we had to give it a numerical score: 7.5 out of 10
What I liked
- Driving mechanics
- Official licenses
- More game modes on offer
- Career mode depth
Not so much
- Visuals
- A flawed title
- Presentation
- Lacks polish
Overview
WRC 2 allows you to live the life of a real rally driver through the career mode, from creating your own racing team, to working your way through the rally stages in the official calendar of the tough driving sport that is ‘rally’. You will need to manage your own team and all the components associated with doing so, and experience all the difficulties a team needs to overcome to win the Championship.
Gameplay and Features
With WRC 2 you can customise the difficulty level to suite how much ‘simulation’ you can handle by tinkering with the car settings, the driving-aid till your hearts’ content or just going with the auto settings the difficulty gives you. There is enough here to please the purist and should you go all out and switch everything off, WRC 2 is immensely challenging. Those of you like me who like simulators but believe in modern driving aids, you too will be pleased by the challenge without being too much to handle. I would say the overall physics of the cars handling are not thoroughbred ‘simulation’ but well on its way there.
You can now rewind in a race – a very welcome edition. Rally games of yesteryear were hugely frustrating – I remember that one tree that on impact would take my time from first to last, after a long stage this made you want to snap the disc. You can only rewind up to 5 seconds so you still need to take care. This idea might have been started by Codemasters but I welcome it in any off-road game as where there is lots of sliding and trees, there is bound to be lots of crashing.
Career mode has you take on the world of from beginning to end, managing everything in between, with the goal of winning a Championship. Create your pilot, a co-driver build up your team and name, spend your entry budget on a vehicle [light class to start] and you’re off. You compete for reputation and money which you use to level up unlocking new sponsors, vehicles, performance parts etc. The career mode will keep you busy for hours and validates the title for anyone keen on the sport.
Besides the lengthy career, you can compete in single stages, rallies, time trials and the Rally Academy where you to complete much shorter stints, following a racing line and a ghost car racing against time. With multiplayer, and I fully agree with Milestone here, they decided to make it a four-player hot seat competition. So there is no split-screen, up to four players take turns driving the same car in the same race. Online mode allows up to 16-player to compete.
WRC 2 offers more in most aspects – you have way more stages to compete in with ‘Urban’ stages make their debut. There are more modes to choose from and you can customise your settings more than before, making this a more complete package than the previous title.
Graphics and Sound
The presentation is unimpressive if I am being picky, but they are neat and functional. This theme follows suit throughout the visuals in the game. I mean nothing looks terrible, but I would not say the visuals do much to sell the game. Even the pre-rendered bits are far and few between, all business and little show and a bit out-dated looking.
The cars look like their counter-parts, gleaming with licensed decals and the tracks look good. I did not notice any major graphical issues but at this stage in the current generation, it fall short of what I would expect.
The sound, for the most past, continues with the un-polished feel of the game. The sound of the engines was well put together, but the sound effects for the most part do little to elevate the experience. Even the in-menu music is low key a huge contrast to other titles in this genre.
So overall WRC 2 did little to impress me in the visuals and sound department.
Final thoughts
WRC 2, much like Black Bean’s other racing titles, is all about the solid driving-mechanics. Sim fans should overlook its flaws and celebrate the most important aspects – the feel of driving. Because I fall into the a fore mentioned category and because I am a huge fan of anything FIA, I definetely enjoyed [am enjoying] WRC 2 because it does not fall short on the driving feel.
I rarely like arcade racers and when a title tries to be a simulator and falls short – I hate it! Fortunately Milestone did a decent job with this aspect but should look into polishing up the other departments.
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