Developer: Kylotonn
Publisher: Bigben Interactive
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One,
Tested On: Xbox One, PS4
WRC 7 – Review
WRC is a franchise that comes out every year and each time we look forward to its innovations and new content. This rally game is the successor to last year’s fun WRC6 and because of this reason we wonder how this 2017 version would hold up to our expectations. Now our moods dropped when we started to play it, because of what the developers did with the handling of the vehicles.
Story
As your first day on the job you are given a loaner car to test your driving skills. After successfully finishing and not wrecking the vehicle some teams take interest in you. Each have their own desires and styles, this makes it a bit easier to select one to your liking. This is the time that you must prove your worth and make the sponsors happy. When taking podium places and having a few trophies on the mantle, other advanced and higher ranked crews might take interest. This is how you slowly make your way up to the top. Story wise this is like any other rally game and mainly like the previous title. It is a fun way to show it but if you played WRC 6 this might feel too familiar.
Graphics
WRC7 scores strongly with its sophisticated graphics. A boatload of work is done to make the experience very realistic with artfully crafted locations all over the world, beautiful environments that are well detailed. The cars get totally wrecked, damage is so realistic that each crash or scrape ends up showing on the vehicle and parts get torn right of. Where the game lacks a little is the attention to the fine details, to start there is barely any decent cockpit view (not clear or functional dash whatsoever) and some effects feel a bit stale. This brings down immersion since most of the time we want to spend it in the driver seat and look at our gauges dancing around while pretending that this is the real deal.
Sound
Yet again a section where this title gets many points right. The rally equipped machines sound very realistic. You clearly hear the straight piped exhaust scream powerful while the turbo spools and unburned fuel backfires from the back. Every scrape and error is clearly heard and we started to get scared when we heard our brake discs screech with dirt collecting on the brake pads. In comparison this is done way better than its predecessor, a true sound fest.
Gameplay
WRC 7 is a rally racing game that wants to be a simulator and almost greatly succeeded. With its graphics on point and sound game very strong it could knock other competitors out of the park with ease. But at its core foundation it lost track of what was important and this is why the score is lower than its predecessor. In a racing game it is so crucial to have great controls for each player to enjoy or have the ability to configure settings so it is more pleasant. In WRC 7 you only can put on two assists, other than that you have no ability to change how the game goes. This makes that game’s engine very hard and realistic, maybe they tried too hard because most cars are barely controllable. Maybe if you have an expensive racing steering wheel that makes input better but with a normal controller the vehicles feel like bricks in muddy water. The game takes place all over the world with various terrains present, from dusty roads to muddy ditches and frozen paths. Your ride will handle differently on each ground and this makes controlling the car even more challenging and terrible than on normal terrain.
There is no wide choice of available rally machines, with only a handful and mostly being modern specs some fans of older ones will feel left out, now those who follow the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) will appreciate the details done to the cars. Parts get worn out nice and evenly, making the wear and tear feel greater after each corner. This realism is one of the things that make this game such a good simulator, if only the cars would handle better. Another strange thing is that when shifting the vehicle magically loses speed, around ten to fifteen km/h per shift, this is very mysterious since a moving object without real opposite force would not have such a great slowdown in such a small time.
Next to the career mode there are not that many extra components to fill your time. Quick game or custom championship allows you to have a fast race up the streets or create your own rally tournament. Or maybe you want to take a trip back to driving school to sharpen your skills or have some multiplayer fun either online or split screen.
Conclusion
WRC 7 had great potential to be one of the best rally games of 2017 but due to its lack of playability this drops the score down to only six. If the developers patch the controls to make this more accessible so not only people with a steering setup may enjoy this, we could see great fun thanks to the astonishing graphics and beautiful sounds.
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