WRC5 Review

Let’s just jump straight to the elephant in the room, shall we. Kylotonn Games, the developer of WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship, aren't exactly known for their “big games” roster. Citing such hits as My Body Coach and Speedball 2 it would be remiss to expect a title that’s going to knock any of the bigger established names from their respective spots. Codemaster's DiRT Rally is already making big waves and hasn't finished it’s Early Access program yet, and Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO has previous WRC series developers Milestone at the head. But Kylotonn isn't just a shot in the dark for the official licensed game, instead, being chosen due to their creative director being ex-SimBin and their game director having worked on the fantastic V-Rally 3 amongst others. However, that choice doesn't take into account the rest of the development team, who, up until WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship had the games Truck Racer and Motorcycle Club as their experience for racing games.

Launching the game, you're greeted by the main menu. It’s nice and clear at the start, and there’s no issues working out what takes you where, and some friendly voice-overs help guide you through the various options. Looking to the on-line section, and I couldn't help but feel that particular voice-over had been phoned in somewhat, with the narrator's voice pitching up at the end of every sentence as if it were a question, rather than informative of your current selection.

I hopped into a quick race, to get a feel for the game before settling into any of the more demanding races. I picked the slowest class and a track of 100% tarmac so that there was little in the way of variables that could really catch me off-guard. This is where Kylotonn's inexperience with the genre starts to shine through. The first thing I noticed, was that the graphics didn't do much to convince me I was playing this on a current generation console, in fact, it’d be hard pushed to say that it wasn't just the Xbox 360 version ported to the Xbox One. I'm not naive enough to think that the entire road texturing should be different from the start of the stage to the end, but there should be enough variance that it’s not repeated on every one to two foot of road.

The cars handle sufficiently well, erring slightly on the side of feeling too light, or disconnected from the road surface at times. But the real let-down is the feedback (or lack thereof) you get from the car while racing through the narrow country lanes. I had to keep trying different buttons for the handbrake when I got started, as I wasn't sure the one shown in the configuration menu was really doing anything. There’s such little tyre noise in this game, that when using the hand-brake, there was no audible indication of the tyres having locked up. This also extends to cornering as well. Throw a Scandinavian flick as you enter a corner, and even on gravel, there’s no audible feedback from the tyres that you’re sliding, which makes it more difficult to gauge when to return power to the throttle. Different surfaces don’t affect this either, as there was barely any tyre squeal from hard cornering on tarmac and engine sounds all but disappeared when you’re not accelerating. It made for some very odd, very quiet moments during the game.

My co-driver did, at times, completely miss corners out of the pace notes, leading to some very hairy moments when you’re hooning down a road; trees bordering your car with about a meter to spare either side. One wrong move in rally and you’re as good as wrecked.

There was also some very perceptible frame rate drops too, dropping beneath 30fps on occasion, even in sections where there wasn't much going on. That said, and with previous problems under the belt, there’s still a decent feeling of accomplishment getting across the line and beating your competitors.

Before I got too settled with the controller, I thought best to connect the steering wheel and get used to it instead; after all, this is how I intend to play the game going forward. I hooked the wheel up, got seated in and relaunched WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship from the Xbox One’s dashboard. “Press menu to continue” said WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship, I pressed, and I pressed, and I then checked I was signed in on the wheel, and I continued to press buttons all over, to see if I could get into the game. “Surely not” I thought. I quickly launched Forza Motorsport 6 to ensure my wheel hadn't broken at an inconvenient time. I was up and in a race within a few minutes so it wasn't that... back to WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship... and I still couldn't get past the opening screen. I took to Google to find out if anyone else had a similar problem, and it turns out they did. So much so in fact that it transpired WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship shipped without steering wheel support on Xbox 360, Xbox One and PS3 platforms. I can understand a title like Need for Speed forgoing steering wheel support as it’s much more arcade in nature, but an officially licensed WRC game?

I slogged on through some career races and it was more of the same, but this time with the ability to repair the car between stages. Truly, at this point, I felt defeated. I no longer wanted to continue with WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship knowing that I couldn't enjoy it with the wheel. A patch is in the works apparently, but I have a feeling that WRC 5 FIA World Rally Championship will have been relegated to the back of the “games to play” list by the time that update comes round.

Local multiplayer is a hotseat affair, whereby the fastest time wins, so no real particular change from single player, you’re just waiting longer for your turn and online multiplayer is you vs. the ghosts of your lobby mates. A shame, as dealing with the consequences of the driver in front of you on course fluffing it up could have made for some interesting moments.

In all, it feels mediocre throughout - almost as though the release has been rushed in some way, whether that’s to appease license restrictions, shareholders or whatever. If this is the case, it’s a shame that Kylotonn’s name ends up being tarred with a less-than-stellar release. This could have been their breakaway game; the one that puts them up there with the big boys. As it stands now, it puts them with their bargain bin brothers.