Disclaimer

Before I get started, I want to say that I acknowledge there are a lot of people having issues with stuttering, getting supported wheels to work and the ol’ multiple USB issues from previous titles. To clarify, I have been using my trusty XBOX 360 controller during all of my gameplay and not felt the need to mess with any controller settings. I personally have had no controller or performance issues with the game so I simply can’t comment on those aspects during this piece. I am playing the game on the maximum possible details at 1920 x 1080.

Basic PC Specs

Intel i5-4690K @ 3.90GHz/Nvidia GTX 1070/16GB RAM

My Background

I want to mention this, because I think it’s actually pretty important. I’m both a gamer and sim racer. I differentiate between the two because I approach both differently. I take sim racing very seriously, with hours and hours of practice put into events. With games outside of that, I want to feel immersed in the world I’m playing in, with it also being accessible. I want to feel like I’m part of something expansive. I very much play based on how the game makes me feel rather than outright “needing to do well”. That is the angle I approached WRC 7 from, not the sim racing angle.

The Great and the Good

I’ll be honest, I’ve been having a blast with WRC 7. “Why is that?” I hear you say. There is one very big thing that this game gets right that other rally games simply haven’t in recent years – the stages and the environments. I have played the original Colin McRae Rally (and subsequent PS1 and PS2 games), the PS2 WRC series, V-Rally 3, Richard Burns Rally, DiRT Rally and DiRT 4. Very few of those games have ever quite nailed the individuality of location feel that WRC 7 has managed. Not since the PS2 WRC series has a rally game really captured my imagination in the way WRC 7 has. It really has stirred the ol’ memory banks from my youth. Lets be honest, nothing can really beat a bit of nostalgia. Of course, the stages aren’t the only reason the only reason I’ve poured hours into this game since it launched last Friday, but the challenge they offer and the immersion they bring certainly gets me playing again and again. There are stages on offer in this game that are narrower and more dangerous than some of those in Richard Burns Rally. That should tell you something.

The so called Epic Stages truly are that, for the most part. There are some in the game that take 10-13 minutes to complete. I can tell you that some of them will leave your steering thumb begging for mercy, especially the El Chocolate stage in Mexico. I truly hope we get more of these in future iterations.

The 2017 WRC cars also hold massive appeal. I think most people can agree that the new breed of WRC machinery has breathed new life into the real series, and I feel Kylotonn have done a truly fantastic job of recreating them here. With the grip on offer, they beg you to push them harder and harder, but make no mistake, there is a very definite limit. Whilst they may not have aimed for total realism (and that isn’t a bad thing, pipe down), you can’t just do as you please. You still need to really listen to the co-driver calls, you still need to set the car up for what is ahead, whether that be a flat out right hander or a sequence of hairpins, or 2-3 angled turns. The way the cars slide around is also very convincing and extremely satisfying. You really feel like you can play with the car, especially in the longer corners.

Visually, the cars move around fairly convincingly. You smash the throttle, they’ll squat on the rear wheels and the front end dips as you hit the brakes. They’ll sit on the outside rear corner as you power slide your way around that very long left 4, then squat at the rear again as you nail the throttle and straighten up. They truly do look fantastic from the external shots. In some cases it might be a little overdone (and actually underdone on tarmac), but it certainly captures the spirit of these beasts bucking around whilst being thrown over bumps, jumps and and scrabbling for grip.

There’s an extra point or two for seeing the occasional crashed car at the side of the road. It’s just a neat little touch that adds some extra immersion (screenshot below was taken before noticing my graphics settings were not set to the max), although I’m yet to see Kris Meeke so the realism can be questioned!

AI difficulty seems to be at a really good level. Whilst I’m using the full “simulation” setting for driving, I’m on the second hardest difficulty and I’m not finding it easy to beat the fastest times. For me, this bodes really very well for the offline experience and trying to finally win a rally in the WRC class versus the likes of Ogier, Neuville and Latvala.

Graphically the game is a massive improvement over any of the WRC games from the current series, whether they be from Milestone (WRC 1-4) or Kylotonn (WRC 5-7). As I’ve already said, the game does a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re actually in the country being simulated, with so much of that is down to the graphical improvements made over the last 12 months. The cars themselves look absolutely fantastic as well.

The Average

OK, with all that gushing out of the way, lets focus on some solid if unspectacular stuff. The career mode is the very definition of average to me. It’s basically the same as it was in WRC 6. For those that didn’t play the previous iteration, you start off signing for 1 of 3 JWRC teams, each with different attitudes. One will want you to take care of the car, another wants a balance between speed and safety, with the third basically says go hell for leather, regardless of damage. You do better, you move through JWRC to WRC 2 to WRC, the rallies get longer and so on and so on. There are objectives the teams set for each rally which you need to complete to keep the team happy, although you don’t get a complete list of what these were until the rally is over. With the career mode being pretty average, once again it’s the environments themselves that add some missing layers of immersion in this particular game mode.

The other game modes are fairly standard, with custom offline championships, single stages, online multiplayer lobbies (up to 8 players) and whatever the weekly challenge is. At present, the challenge is running with the 2017 WRC cars on a single stage of Monte Carlo. As I said, fairly standard these days and the minimum you would expect from a title such as this. I have no doubt the eSports WRC competition will move to this game in the not too distant future.

The sounds have been improved quite a lot over previous games, but they do lack the rawness you get from DiRT Rally. That said, I really don’t think they deserve the criticism that some people have thrown at them. They may not be the most accurate you’ve ever heard, but they offer enough to be immersive and believe a rally car is romping through your town.

What Needs to Be Better

Despite my love for most of what this game has to offer, there is still so much that could be improved to offer an even more complete experience.

More stages are required. As I’ve made clear, the stages in this game are some of the best ever produced for a rally game, but there simply isn’t enough of them per country. Each rally only has four individual stages. The bigger issue here comes from two of those stages being portions of the longer “epic” stage, with an extra shorter stage or a super special stage. It simply isn’t enough. These stages in the career mode (once you reach WRC) get repeated every so often which clearly leads to seeing the same bit of road quite a lot. They could really benefit from adding in more of the shorter stages from WRC 6 (some of which appear to be here already) just to fill out some of the events. Rally GB seems to be particularly lazy, with all three of the shorter stages running to sections from the Epic Stage. Hafren is run in both directions, using the loose surface section of Dyfi, with Great Orme using the tarmac section.

There is also an inconsistency in the length of some of the Epic Stages. Whilst you have El Chocolate in Mexico standing at just over 18 km and Kruklanki in Poland at just over 23 km, you have some that are only 8-10 km (In Italy and Britain). This has a knock on effect to the shorter stages within those countries due to the Epic Stages being comparatively short. It can make for a handful of unfortunately short rallies. The quality of those stages is still extremely high however.

The camera options are severely lacking. Whilst I’m not too bothered about playing from the bonnet camera in games such as this, my preference is still to be in the driver’s seat. A lack of FOV options and ability to stop the very strange behaviour of the head camera really did force my hand though. The head camera, whilst not surprisingly, moves around in a manner that seems unnatural with the bumps, jumps and slides. It also feels like it zooms in and out, giving your eyes some quite strange sensations to deal with. This seriously needs looking into both for now and future WRC games.

There is a severe lack of customisation for online and offline rallies. If you want to do a single event, you are stuck with whatever the game decides the itinerary will be. The conditions will also be locked to one option. In this regard, both DiRT Rally and DiRT 4 blow WRC 7 out of the water. Whereas the in the Codemasters games you have full control over what you do online and a lot more control offline, this is badly lacking in the Kylotonn effort.

Damage is OK at best. There are only two settings; visual damage or damage that actually effects the car. Unless you consistently have massive crashes, the damage is pretty much only visual anyway. The damage to internal parts actually seems less severe than in WRC 6. It’s entirely possible this was a conscious decision, given the narrowness and difficulty of most of the stages. Despite that, it seems odd to me that you wouldn’t include more damage options for those that want an even bigger challenge, given the stages themselves really don’t hold your hand.

Overall presentation of the game itself could do with some sprucing up having not really changed much from WRC 6. Whilst there are things like post rally and championship celebrations if you get on the podium, along with solid looking garage areas and service parks, that’s about it for non-menu content. The game could really do with some cut scenes to the championship and rallies, just to add an extra layer of immersion. This is something some of the PS2 WRC games did VERY well. In those games, the presentation of events was generally outstanding. At the moment, you hit a couple of buttons and that’s basically it.

Career mode will almost certainly become pretty stale very quickly. With a lack of driver, car development or driver changes, you’re stuck with Neuville and Ogier battling for the title and most rally wins in every season. You don’t get any surprise results from drivers like Hayden Paddon or Kris Meeke, with the latter not possessing his fast but fragile traits in the game. It will always be Ogier and Neuville at the front of a rally, with the occasional interjection from Tanak or Latvala. Over a career, that is going to get old quickly. Some inspiration from V-Rally 3 and F1 2017 would’t hurt here to add a little more progression.

Unfortunately the replays, controls, and replay cameras are somewhat lacking. You have the standard driving views (cockpit, bonnet and behind the car), with a broadcast style that switches between a variety of onboard shots, to a handful of external shots and helicopter angles. Finally there’s a separate helicopter option that follows the car from that view through the whole stage. The broadcast style doesn’t have nearly enough roadside cameras for my tastes. I understand what they were going for with this setting, but some of the onboard shots are pretty useless (looking backwards or too low in the car to really see anything at all. The helicopter camera has a tendency to go through trees or mountains too, if they are high enough.

Final Verdict?

Would I buy this again brand new (for the £29.99 I paid) knowing all this? I actually would. Despite what it lacks, it still manages to make you feel like you’re on a journey across the world of WRC, and for me, the way it makes me feel trumps everything else. This game really brought back a feeling that I’ve lacked in rally games since the PS2 series from Evolution Studios. If you are a WRC fan, a rally fan, or even a general gamer that likes a challenge, you will get something out of this. Hugely powerful, grippy and fun cars combined with extremely diverse, immersive and challenging rally stages makes for a seriously fun rally title. Hopefully Kylotonn take on some of the feedback and make WRC 8 one for the ages. I wouldn’t bet against it.

If you have any other more specific questions outside of wheel support or game performance issues, feel free to ask and I’ll give my opinion or answer to the best of my ability.

For some more of my screenshots of the game, feel free to check out my album on Imgur. A lot of them were taken using the Ansel feature on Nvidia graphics cards. They are not touched up at all, I only changed the FOV, camera position and camera tilt.