Drift into the world of rally championships in the latest racing game from EA! Find out more in our EA Sports WRC Review!
Even though the World Rally Championship doesn’t enjoy the same reach as Formula One, the discipline is still a thrilling experience for both drivers and spectators alike. Drivers participating in the WRC must adopt to all manner of terrain while battling the toughest foe of them all, the stopwatch. A motorsport with a skill ceiling height even higher than a Cathedral’s, was always going to be a challenge for virtual adaptions.
Reaching new heights…
The French based KT Racing has been the most prolific shepherd of the WRC licence and has released a new game almost every year since 2015. The developer has now handed the keys over to Codemasters who have succeeded in many areas in their first outing but the switch to Unreal Engine 4 might not have been the best decision. Over the years, numerous studios have attempted to bring the excitement of the WRC to the living room but does it hold up here? Find out in our EA Sports WRC Review!
EA Sports WRC Review – Gameplay
The appeal of playing WRC games is the same as watching the sport itself by seeing a snapshot of the world from the comfort of your own home and without consuming any nasty airline food. From the icy roads of Monte Carlo to the dusty dirt tracks of Kenya, the foliage and architecture of the world are on full display in WRC. Don’t let the beauty of the countryside deceive you my gentle reader, because this isn’t a motorsport for the faint of heart. Unlike other racing disciplines, drivers aren’t given a practice run of any the stages and must rely on their co-driver’s pace notes to guide them through some of the most dangerous roads on the planet.
EA Sports WRC isn’t one to hold your hand and will happily throw you into the deep end as assists are sparse with the lifesaving rewind feature being tossed into the bin. This is a game that demands time and practice but you will be rewarded when you finish a stage with less scratches on your car than your old copy of The Matrix on DVD. Despite its bargain price tag, the game has the biggest roster of cars to ever grace an official WRC game.
When listening becomes a critical skill.
As all the cars from the 2023 season of WRC, WRC2, and Junior WRC are included in the package, Codemasters has also given you a huge selection of classic cars spanning six decades of WRC history. Not every track from the 2023 calendar is included, since it would be a huge undertaking to reproduce all 250 stages. However, the 100 plus stages included in EA Sports WRC is still an impressive count and offers enough content to keep you glued to the screen for several weeks. The handling model is solid and there’s a variety of different gameplay modes to test your driving skills. Including the obligatory career mode where you build a team, allocate resources, and map out the events you wish to enter.
EA Sports WRC Review – Audio
Real world co-drivers Jonathan Jackson and Kirsty Riddick lend their chops for the in-game pace notes. While their delivery is serviceable, they don’t match the confidence and cadence of Phil Mills’ superb performance in Dirt Rally 2. EA Sports WRC supports up to 7.1 Surround Sound with a huge dynamic range and while no music is played during gameplay, the menus are occupied by a selection of licensed electronic and pop music. The soundtrack also includes songs from the likes of Dora Jar, M83, and William Orbits.
EA Sports WRC Review – Performance
While EA Sports WRC delivers on gameplay and content, the technology being deployed by Codemasters has been the source of many of this game’s woes. Codies has ditched the venerable EGO engine in favour of Unreal Engine 4. The justification for this engine swap was driven by the desire to include longer stages that weren’t possible using EGO. Personally, I don’t think it was the wisest decision since I experience fatigue instead of satisfaction after clearing one of the lengthy stages.
Let’s be clear, Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful engine and there’s a reason why it’s the most widely adopted middleware. Although its biggest Achilles’ heel is on full display when playing EA Sports WRC on PC in the the lack of shader compliance before entering the game. Since there’s multiple breeds of graphics cards on the market, shader compliance will remain a problem in the PC space, until the game industry addresses this instead of ignoring it. Thankfully many updates have been released to minimise this issue. While the stuttering hasn’t been eliminated entirely, their occurrence is far less frequent compared to what it was like at launch.
Blue actually goes faster in rallys.
EA Sports WRC is handsome game with densely detailed environments however, the visual fidelity is only marginally better than Dirt Rally 2.0. Yet the system requirements for EA WRC Sports are significantly higher. Dirt Rally 2.0 can easily run at 4K on an RTX 3070 using the high graphics preset without the framerate dropping below 60fps. Sadly, this metric on the same hardware was off the table until using the far more powerful RTX 4080. DLSS3 can help you achieve better framerates, but the lack of the Frame Generation as seen in WRC Generations is disappointing.
EA Sports WRC Review – Console Ports
Most of this review is based on the PC version of WRC but some was also sampled with the PS5 port. The most apparent advantage of playing on console was the superior loading times. Despite installing the game on a 5th Generation NVMe SSD, it took 10-20 seconds to load one of the races on PC. The PS5 conversion on the other hand will place you on the tarmac within a few seconds. The feedback from the vibration when using the PS5 dual sense controller is also terrific and transferring this to the PC release would be incredible. Unfortunately, the performance and image quality are not up to the same standard set by games previously developed by Codmasters.
Just touch the steering wheel gently to caress the car left.
Dirt 5, Grid Legends, and all the F1 games released on the PS5 offer a 120fps mode. Heck, even KT Racing’s WRC games supported higher refresh rates but EA Sports WRC only offers one performance profile capped at 60fps even though the game employs an aggressive dynamic resolution buffer. The framerate can randomly miss the 60fps target with some torn frames entering the fray. While the framerate drops aren’t a regular occurrence and VRR capable displays can massage these performance hiccups, it’s a sign of a game that needed a few more minutes in the oven. Furthermore the PS5 version doesn’t include PSVR2 support despite the PC version being fully playable in VR.
EA Sports WRC Review – Conclusion
EA Sports WRC is solid first stab from Codemasters. The excellent handling model coupled with an impressive roster of cars and tracks is sure to delight any budding rally enthusiast. The decision to drop the dependable EGO engine has generated performance hiccups on both consoles and PC.
Fin!
Codemasters isn’t going to abandon this game as patches are being dropped on a regular basis to address the game’s technical issues but this attitude of release a game, fix it later is becoming tiresome. I do think there’s a solid foundation for future instalments and I suspect the inevitable sequel will be an incredible game. For now, EA Sports WRC is a great game with a budget price that makes some of its glaring issues easier to overlook.
So, why should you play EA Sports WRC?
- A huge garage of cars spanning six decades of WRC history
- Up for a challenging driving experience that demands patience and practice
- Over 100 beautifully, rendered stages offering a virtual snapshot of the world
So, why shouldn’t you play EA Sports WRC?
- Can’t ignore shader compilation stutters on PC
- If you’re looking for a pick up and play, arcade like racer
- No assist options like rewind or automatic braking and steering
A review code was kindly provided by EA Games for the purpose of our EA Sports WRC Review. You can check out our other reviews here and if you haven’t already, be sure to join the Qualbert Discord to find out about the latest game and review updates!
