After taking a break, WRC franchise is back with WRC 8 bringing us the official WRC experience with it. WRC 8 is developed by KT Racing and published by Bigben. I was looking forward to WRC 8 for a long time because I really wanted to try out the new terrain and car handling physics that KT Racing developed alongside Citroen Racing Engineers and rally drivers. Is WRC 8 really the best WRC to date? We find out in this review of WRC 8. This review was made on Xbox One.
Traditionally, right after booting up WRC 8, you are put in the driving seat of a rally car on a rally stage which serves as a tutorial as well. This is basically an initial test of your driving skills based on which the game gives you a difficult setting suggestion. With that said, I never could complete the tutorial because it did not come with Pace Notes for some weird reason and I was not able to anticipate anything coming up ahead and kept wrecking the car beyond repair. I did give it a few tries though but still, the lack of Pace Notes in the tutorial rally was a bummer.
Moving on, I jumped directly in the brand new Career Mode of WRC 8 and this is where the magic started to happen. KT Racing has completely revamped the Career Mode for WRC 8 and it is now brilliant. The UI and how everything plays out in the mode really puts you in the mood to keep playing the game. Gone are the boring screens, replaced by an in-view of your Rally HQ where you will find different departments working in harmony so that your next rally is perfect.
As you move around the options on your left side, the right side of the screen moves to the relevant department showing people making important decisions and working as they should in a good environment. For me, this was a brilliant change and this is not just a visual overhaul as well. All this gives excellent control over different aspects of your rally team and your Career Mode. You do really feel like you are part of a crew now instead of just a virtual avatar guiding you here and there.
There are tons of things for you to manage on your Career screen now. The trusty calendar informs you of all the upcoming championship events. Since not all days are event days, you will find plenty of empty slots in your calendar but they don’t have to be empty. You can assign different activities for each day until the main rally event arrives. Events include training sessions, Historical Rallies, Extreme Condition events, and even Manufacture Tryouts.
These events will even let you win some cash on the side note along with trying out different unique rally cars which are not related to your main chosen rally discipline at all. They also serve a very good distraction from the mainstream racing because, after a hectic rally at Sardegna, everyone would like to have a few days to themselves. Winning in these events will also help in keeping your team Morale high and will help you build good terms with manufacturers from around the world.
Your crew now plays an important part in your rally career more than ever. With the new mechanics in place, you now have the complete freedom to hire, switch and fire different team members in your crew. Your crew is made up of 6 people each belonging to a specific department. You have an agent, a mechanic, a physical therapist, a financial director, engineer, and meteorologist. You can always choose the best ones for each position but remember that the better ones cost more and you have to pay your whole staff at the end of the day. The agent will ensure that you keep getting rare events while playing the rally. Your team will get exhausted during rallies and it is the job of the physical therapist to ensure that they remain on top of their game.
Coming to the mechanic, hiring a better mechanic will ensure that all your repairs are made in the shortest time possible during rallies. Having a sound knowledge about the weather of your next rally will ensure that you are going in with the best tires. This is managed by your meteorologist. The last one is the engineer and he assures that you gain more experience from all events that you participate in. Will everyone now assigned a specific role, you can see the importance of hiring and maintaining a decent crew for your career.
Apart from hiring good crew members, you can also use up to 2 Crew Perks which are passive bonuses and they apply to the entirety of the crew. You will unlock Crew Perks after certain progress in the Career Mode so it is not given to you straight away otherwise it would just make the game too easy for you. Another important factor in your Career is getting contracts from different manufacturers.
For this, you must ensure that you are on your best terms with as many manufacturers as possible in the game. If you are currently with a manufacturer, make sure that you win events because it will increase your reputation with your current manufacture and make them happy enough to offer you more contracts in the future with them. In addition, Manufacture Trout events are another source of getting in the good eyes of manufacturers who currently are not very interested in you.
Each manufacturer will also give you some objectives which could be short-term or mid-term. You can try to reach these objectives to make them even happier which guarantees a contract from them for your next season. Your contracts work from season to season so you must try to keep your current manufacturer as happy as possible otherwise you will have trouble getting a new contract. Look for rally specific objectives and other short/mid-term objectives and you will be fine.
Another brand new mechanic in Career Mode is R&D. This could be termed as a skill tree as well and there are four major departments in your R&D section which will help you unlock better options for yourself, your car and your entire team. Every time you level up and win events, you will win experience points which will, in turn, earn you some R&D points to do some research and purchase better options for your entire crew. There are four main R&D trees for you to unlock upgrades from.
These include Team, Crew, Performance, and Reliability. In the early stages, you will only have access to Team and Crew. Continue your Career and you will soon get options to opt for Performance and Reliability R&D as well. Team R&D tree contains upgrades that affect your entire team such as increased XP gain for everyone in your team after events, chances of finding rare crew members and bigger reserve for your crew.
The Crew R&D tree comes with different options such as unlocking advanced Crew Member spots such as the Financial Director and the Physical Therapist. This tree will also help you make your crew more effective such as reducing their task requirements and completion times. Performance R&D affects your car and includes options like getting more power out of the turbo, increasing the grip of different tires and also gives you access to better tires. Reliability R&D ensures that your car gets better at getting damage by increasing the damage resistance of different components.
All these additions and changes make the Career Mode more accessible and authentic for the rally driver who is managing everything. You can also keep your team’s morale high by winning races and different events. The more wins you accumulate, higher your team’s morale will be. However every time I completed the Manufacturer Tryout event, my team’s morale went down even if I won the event. I don’t know if this is a glitch or it is made this way. Now let’s move on the actual gameplay of WRC 8.
KT Racing announced during development that they’ve been working with rally drivers and Citroen Rally engineers to create the handling physics of WRC 8. After actually playing the game, I can actually vouch for that the physics in WRC 8 are much better than before. I will still not call them perfect but when compared to the last title in the franchise, WRC 8 is way ahead when it comes to terrain difference and how the car reacts to different terrains in the game.
You will actually feel the transitions from the tight asphalt surface to the loose gravel surfaces during the rally stages as well as the extremely challenging ice rallies of Monte Carlo. The cars react extremely well to terrain change and this is how is supposed to be. However, one thing I still found weird was that sometimes the cars felt like they are made from paper. They would hit a small rock and it would simply fly off in the opposite direction like it was made of paper.
In normal circumstances, such a hit would normal break off the wheel along with its suspension rather than sending the car flying in the opposite direction. In addition, the response to small bumps was a little too stiff even with the softest suspension settings. The car would react abnormally after hitting a jump at high speed and it would eventually end up in a ditch no matter how hard I tried to keep the car in control. Now when I mention these little hiccups, I did not say that the game is unplayable because of these.
These simply add more to the game and will give you the opportunity to create some epic crash videos as you come thundering down a straight, hit a small rock at the next bend and fly off in the opposite directing probably down a ditch. In addition, the AI response time to automatic time is too slow. For a rally driver AI, you would expect them to be extremely quick with their gear changes so I would recommend that you opt for the manual transmission or even if you are using semi-auto, keep an eye on your rev counter to switch accordingly.
Driving is never an easy task in WRC 8 because of the sheer viciousness of the rally cars and the extremely challenging surfaces and the roads that you will be driving on. The game offers different driving aids for newcomers which will ensure that you don’t lock up during heavy braking or lose too much traction while accelerating heavily. The game also has an amazing damage mechanic which affects the performance of your vehicle. Tires will lose their condition as the rally progresses so you will be required to watch out for them as well because you cannot expect to get a good grip with poor condition tires.
WRC 8 also comes with dynamic time and dynamic weather which in my opinion is one of the best things to arrive in the franchise. You start a rally in the easy setting of a quiet afternoon where the sun is settling. As you approach the end of the rally, darkness falls around you and it starts raining heavily making the rally a nightmare for you. This looks extremely authentic and I loved the transitions because it makes the game more challenging and more natural as well.
The level designs are amazing and since this is an official WRC sanctioned game, the levels in the game as created to extreme level detail according to the real rally events. Everything from the long straights of Rally Finland to the ever-changing sections of Rally Italia Sardegna to the most challenging rally stages of Rallye Monte Carlo is as close to the real deal as possible. If you are playing WRC 8, you are really driving on the best virtual adaptation of these rally stages.
When it comes to visuals, WRC 8 is not very pretty to look. It surely has its moments but when it comes to visuals, WRC 8 is not really a striker. They are good for open spaces and the levels look pretty amazing however some darker sections will really make it look like a dull game which is a big letdown for a game arriving at the end of the current generation. Normally, the earlier titles in any generation look a little dull and as the time passes by, the next titles become better and better, sadly this is not the case with WRC 8. It is not too bad to look at but not too amazing to look at as well. The cars and the levels look great but in every scene, a detail or two will let you down.
WRC 8 also comes with a lot of different modes for you to play in. You can take part in the brilliant Career Mode or you can simply choose a season or a single rally event and use any car that you like in it. Then there’s the brilliant test section which is essentially a playground for pushing your car to the max without worrying about the consequences. It comes with different road and terrain types so you can practice on every terrain that you want to. Online is also present in the game.
The cars are all the current generation official WRC cars used by their respective teams. There is not much else to brag about here. There are very few classic rally cars in the game but since the game is more focused on the current condition of WRC, it makes sense to include all the modern rally cars in the game. You will also find all your favorite rally teams in the game from all WRC disciplines such as WRC, WRC Junior and WRC 2.
Overall, WRC 8 is an excellent rally game in the franchise which we thought could not better after playing the last title in the franchise. It is far from perfect and is the best one overall however KT Racing and Bigben is on the right track. With WRC 8, the franchise is back on its solid feet and it is certainly the best title in the franchise. The new driving physics are brilliant and the brand new Career mode is excellent. The small nags might be fixed in upcoming updates for the game however it is still a solid rally game at its core and it is certainly for any rally fan.
Final Verdict:
Supporting brand new terrain and vehicle physics along with a completely redesigned Career mode, WRC 8 is a solid rally game. It is certainly the best WRC game to date and it shows us that KT Racing and Bigben have what it takes to really give the competition a headache when it comes to making a rally game. With WRC 8 as a base, we can see that the only way for the franchise is forward. For this year, WRC 8 is my favorite rally game and I will recommend that every rally fan out there must give it a shot. It is really worth it. Oh, avoid the annoying drones on the rally stages. They are extremely distracting and are responsible for some of my major car breaking crashes in the game.
Final Score: 8.5/10
