Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days, we’re running an “Escape Game” series, and we’re finally starting to look back at games that release sometime in 2021, but for various reasons we couldn’t fully cover them at the time.
We’ve returned to some real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this, head over to the Games That Got Away hub, where all of our work in the series will be gathered in one convenient place. enjoy!
In a sport where stopwatches are king, KT Racing appears to have gotten the timing wrong. WRC 10 – continuing the series’ upward trajectory since the French studio took over in 2015 – celebrates the 50th anniversary of a sport that began in 1973, and I admit, the unreliable math makes this party a bit premature . Maybe it’s just to spoil the other side, as Codemasters will get a WRC license in 2023, but frankly I’ll forgive the oddity as it leads to a rallying feast.
The 50th anniversary is the highlight of this comprehensive package, and the fresh stage offers a neat tour of the collection’s rich history. Of course, owning iconic cars is nothing new to the rally game, but it feels fresh to have some well-dressed stages to have them roaming around — in fact, watching something like Michèle Mouton compliment her rugged Quattro, or Didier Auriol complements his Castrol uniform, Celica, when you’re invited to walk through a reckless audience on the right stage in an era without modern ad hoarding.
It’s those images of crazy cars dividing the crowd that directly drive the madness and appeal of rallying, and so did their performance in WRC 10. Classics may not boast the outright speed of the current rally car breed, but throwing an old Abbas around the dusty highlands of the classic Acropolis Rally has something to boost your pulse faster – by handling, of course. The dynamics of Dirt Rally 2.0, dare I say Richard Burns Rally become some of the best we’ve seen in this particular subset of the racing genre.
The WRC 10 has a wide variety of race cars, from the low-horsepower, rear-engined and frankly sagging classic Alpine A110 to the lightning-fast WRC Yaris that seems to teleport from point to point, cornering perfectly, and everything is well done on its axles . The wheel supports are still not where they should be, maybe — always an odd omission given the abundance of Fanatec emblems in the game — but on the controller, the WRC 10’s handling is pleasant.
If there’s one particular area of WRC 10 that stands out from the competition, it’s the stages, which are rich in detail and enhanced by dynamic conditions and time of day. The fidelity of the stages on offer here – it’s the stages that provide the fundamental challenge of the sport – is unparalleled, whether it’s the wide roads of Kenya safari or Monte Carlo’s famous switchback.
Really, this should be all you need to know to recommend WRC 10 – it’s a sport full of authenticity that feels great in your hands, with a huge selection of stages from the official calendar, including newcomers Estonia and Croatia match historical classics and accompany one of the most extensive and engaging rally car series I’ve seen in contemporary racing. For any historian keen on the sport, it’s nothing short of heaven.
But – I’m sorry, there’s always a but – it’s all accompanied by some sloppy work and cutting corners that ruined KT Racing’s efforts in the series. Those historical events that are available in 50th anniversary mode are fundamentally great, but oddly delivered – no option to change difficulty, and not much visibility, are you satisfied by any given The time required for the event while you are doing it.
Elsewhere, WRC 10 has a lot going for it – I love the challenge of offering bite-sized rallying, which is a perfect contrast to epic stages that require a lot of concentration to complete – but it could be suffers from the same inconsistency. Massive and engaging career mode returns, sees you recruiting staff and expanding your own team as you work in a team, but again you have to start at the bottom, which is a little harder if you’ve played KT previous efforts. It’s a bit messy.
In fact, as you’d expect from a series like this mildly iterative series, how much you’ll get from the WRC 10 will largely depend on how much you’ve invested in the series in the past. It’s familiar stuff in WRC 9 – arguably the culmination of the series so far – with familiar problems, and lots of familiar fun.Maybe you were full by then and didn’t huge Lots of excuses to come back here.
Maybe, like me, you haven’t been able to invest that much time in WRC 9, so the relatively few additions to WRC 10 aren’t a big deal. If anything, we’ve been late to WRC 10 for this special review to help its cause – Belgian and modern Greek stages have now been added, and have been sorted here and there to help make this easily modern The best rally hardware. It’s not a trivial achievement for the occasional blunder in the WRC 10, even if it’s only marginally better than previous results.
