For the past seven years, the French studio Kylotonn Games has been producing and publishing seven rally games based on the official WRC license and with this edition the KT Racing journey ends. On January 1st, 2023 they lose the license passing into the hands of Codemasters (and with it EA Sports), so WRC Generations will be the last rally title to be powered by Kylotonn Games. A swan song. One last goodbye.
With this in mind, I would have liked to fix most of the shortcomings that last year’s version of WRC 10 suffered from, but at the same time, the number of big changes that can be implemented in ten months is of course very limited. However, I was expecting a better game than WRC 10 and not the same product again, which is very similar to Generations. It’s almost exactly the same game as WRC 10 and, in fairness, shouldn’t even be called a sequel. It doesn’t even come close. To be generous, Generations is a basic DLC pack that could be given away to anyone who bought WRC 10, and that’s a big problem.
Advertising:
Let’s start with the physics simulation which I think has gotten progressively worse since WRC 8 and although KT seems to have tried to get more feel in the tires with a better friction simulation they also slide and make the car shake more than ever almost has me swinging down the road like a drunk as a seasoned rally gamer having spent thousands of hours playing about 20 games in the genre over the years. The force feedback on both the Fanatec CSL DD and Fanatec DD2 has been a bit better since WRC 10 and this time I can feel where the car’s center of gravity is and where it isn’t, but this is not a simulator and is not meant to simulate, what a real rally car feels like, whatever the developers say. Dirt Rally 2.0 from almost four years ago is significantly better at simulating speed, friction and gravity.
As for the amount of content, KT Games took all of the content from WRC 8, 9 and 10 and put it together into what might perhaps be called the “Best of KT Games WRC”, one “biggest hit” more than another . The career mode and the multiplayer part of WRC 10 are included as well as all stages and all classic cars from all three games. Added a ranked mode where KT Games posts weekly online challenges that anyone can participate in and check their rank in the league just like in Dirt Rally 2.0 and this can keep generations alive longer than the previous title.
Advertising:
I’ve played all four predecessors quite a bit, so of course I skipped the tutorial and driving school part and jumped into career mode, which offers the same experience as WRC 10. And it’s not a good game mode, unfortunately. WRC 10 bugs keep popping up here and the problems pile up fast. Just like last year’s game, I’m crushing my competitors with odd data at certain stages like a 122 second lead, while I can finish 48 seconds behind the CPU-controlled competitors on the next stage, even if I’m clean with good rhythm and without big drive error. It seems haphazard at best and frankly unrealistic as much as it is full of bugs, and this coupled with the fact that the atmosphere and feel of the rally is anonymous and stiff at best means I quickly grow tired of ‘career mode’.
Unfortunately the sound is even worse. The sound of this game is just horrible and after having had a lot of patience over the past few years for KT Games to have time to fix things like this, I’m definitely running out of patience now. The sound of the vast majority of this year’s cars also sounds a bit like a mixer, and the fact that they’ve now cranked up the volume of gravel hitting the bodywork makes it sound even worse than it did in WRC 10, which is already a lousy one sound had . That raw, mechanical, metallic, shrill sound of the actual rally is completely gone and the fact that the studio decided not to improve on this for three years is sad indeed.
Another part that hasn’t been improved and which I also think is terribly bad is the presentation and menus which are oddly difficult to navigate for PC and don’t have full mouse support meaning you have to sit and navigate with the keyboard , to be able to use The Mouse. This is clearly a 100% console game ported to PC and the fact that the developers haven’t fixed the terrible mouse support that has plagued the series for the past three years is driving me nuts. The PlayStation 5 version is more attractive than the PC game (although neither version is too good) and has menus that work better and don’t crash, but technically we can’t say it’s not “last gen”.
The PS5 graphics are reminiscent of early PS4 games, with little collision work and low-resolution textures, and are so poorly optimized for PC that they’re running on a three-screen setup via an Omen 45L with an AMD Ryzen 9.64 GB, RAM and an AMD 6950XT Red Devil are hardly playable. Although I can easily run Assetto Corsa Competizione, Automobilista 2 or Dirt Rally 2.0 in “Ultra” on three screens at at least 70 frames per second, I am forced to set WRC Generations to “Medium” and disable many post-processing processing and still get it I don’t get more than 24-30 frames per second, that sucks. There’s no true triple screen support, no virtual reality and, as I said, the graphics themselves are far from impressive. The car models are worse than Dirt Rally 2.0 and the damage looks like something from the PlayStation 3 generation.
The only thing I really like about WRC Generations are the stages. The routes are incredible. KT has created many, many wonderful tracks over the years and now offers over 100 on this latest release. These are high quality, challenging, fun and unique rally tracks with excellent variety, more than any other rally game ever released. Of course that would have carried more weight if the driving feel and graphics were better and the sound was anything but paltry, but it is what it is and WRC Generations is a mix of three rally games with weak points that I don’t have can no longer turn a blind eye. On January 1, 2023, the Codemasters Dirt Rally 2.0 team will take over the WRC license, which I’ve been looking forward to for years. I think and appreciate that even his first game will be significantly better than this, which ends up being a very mediocre racing experience.
