Post by Grenville on Nov 26, 2005 14:50:14 GMT
The game opens up with WRC's famous "short circuit" theme. In the main menu you have a couple of choices: Quick rally(random), Stage, Rally, or championship.
Wanting to get stuck in I went straight for the championship. I chose Subaru with Petter Solberg. First thing I noticed was that the rallies are not in their correct order. Italy is 1st and Monte is 2nd to last. A little annoying for a die-hard rally fan but can be dealt with.
Driving experience. The game is VERY arcady. They said it would be but it is still VERY arcady. You feel like you never have grip. Its almost impossible to pull off a hairpin turn because you end up sliding into the scenery. Car sounds are appalling. Also each car feels the same. Also pace notes are bad when it comes to tight corners. Lastly the replay is crap as it has no sound. You can choose to have 1 of 5 songs playing but I am not sure why they did w/out the car sound. Even a helicopter sound would have been nice.
Now for some good points. Its still a lot of fun to drive. They do a ghost mode on each stage. You start in 10th and you see all the cars ahead of you. I like it as it is a little different. The drivers skills are loosely like that in real life. Peugeot are always winning the manuf. but Skoda does get up there sometimes.
Overall I enjoyed the game due to the fact that I have never played an official WRC game. The game feels like it was created by some guys who really don't know much about rallying. The stages are ok but not great. They have real names but don't resemble their real life counterparts. Japan is mostly tarmac and France is mostly gravel. Germany has a very good panzerplatte stage though with hinklesteins.
Playing WRC reminded me of playing a game on my old game boy. Its reminds me of V-Rally in which all the cars felt like a feather and never respected gravity. Would I recommend this game? Maybe. If you are like me and have never played a WRC game but if you have it on PS2 don't bother. Colin McRae is so much better as its realistic but not so much that its unplayable and the stages feel like stages. I still love WRC but its because its unique for me not because of its quality.