Control, finesse, and focus. These are three things I do not have, especially at 9 PM on a Tuesday or 4 AM on a Wednesday. After last year’s WRC Generations, a new development team and a new publishing team bring EA Sports WRC. Of course, that means it was developed by Crawfish Interactive and published by Acclaim. I’m joking, it is the latest rally title from Codemasters and EA Sports. This places control of the series in the hands of those who helmed Dirt Rally 2.0 as well as the successor studio to the series’ original developer, Evolution Studios.

How does it fair against its recent counterparts? EA Sports WRC is a little bit more expansive, has a couple of extra modes to toy around with, new modes to create your own livery and entire car, and has quite a lot of performance woes at launch. It also has a long-term plan post-launch, which is set to add the German rallies (not THOSE ones) as well as a VR mode, which I think will be greatly welcomed (by me in particular). It also has a “School” for those of us who are extremely bad at rallying properly, but does it help?

It slightly helped me. I only personally attacked some squirrels cowering in trees instead of all of them. The physics got a bit of an overhaul this time out, and as a result, it takes some time to acclimatize to, especially using a wheel and the first-person camera. I don’t have many gripes with EA Sports WRC, though to say it was easy getting in a rhythm as I slid the back-end out while falling down a hill in style, that would be my starting point for some hole poking. Once you get in that rhythm though and can kick up dust at spectators standing perilously close, it clicks.

One of the many additions to what has thus far been a yearly series is a career mode with a focus on story if we can call it that. It is an outline of one at least, as you enter the WRC world as a privateer backed by someone named Max Lucre who’s heavily disapproving of you disappointing him and missing his goals set out for the “team,” which is practically you and a talking head, like Holly from Red Dwarf. Max is joined by your chief engineer, Keith, the name of a man who likes getting his fingernails dirty.

“Guided” (for lack of a better word) by these two you aim to either rise through the ranks of the WRC or go straight for gold by entering the top championship straight away. In this, you have to budget, hit graded targets on their level of difficulty, and (most importantly) you need to keep the money man (Max) preferably on the latter scale of moods ranging from: Angry, unhappy, happy, delighted, and ecstatic. I think of him as a pipe-smoking billionaire European in a velvet smoking jacket. I don’t believe he understands what the word ecstatic means.

It is somewhat the same as you’ve previously seen with Nacon and Kylotonn’s later releases, though I might hazard a guess it is broader rather than deeper. I’ll admit, I never got into the depths you could go with previous WRC titles, I don’t have infinite time to understand the minutiae. There is a more plug-and-play friendly attitude with Codemaster’s latest fairing in the world of rally, but it could be off-putting to fans of a more detail-focused experience. It does mean that once you’ve gotten into the rhythm of this new entry, it is easy enough to pick up and play from time to time.

You have the career mode giving you a sense of something to do, the live challenges with their leaderboards dominated by wizards completing them in impossible times, and time trials that seem bundled together to give you a bit of quick play. Of course, alongside the career mode, if you don’t want to live under the pressure of Max, you can take on the championship as one of the many drivers that have competed this year. This includes Craig Breen alongside championship rivals Elfyn Evans, Kalle Rovanperä, Thierry Neuville, and Takamoto Katsuta, to name a few.

I find the 50th-anniversary celebration of the WRC strange as it not only includes a live challenge system called “Moments,” the decision to include cars from across the decades, or any of that. It is the “moment” that highlights a “Scottish Driver” from Rally Finland 1992. Fans and casual observers of the WRC know you take command of the Subaru Legacy that was rolled multiple times that Rally. It is easy to speculate it might be a rights issue, though when you look closely at the bodywork as it crumbles to pieces on your daring drive, you can see “Colin McRae” with “Derek Ringer” under it.

The moments themselves are snapshots of the championship throughout the years, either fictitious and taking inspiration from drives like Colin’s, or recent real-world moments starring Rovanperä and beyond. It is a fine mode that is better than the Time Trials, but I do have to point out that they are limited-time events. Not only that, but EA has to EA and that means if you’ve got the super sexy deluxe version (or whatever it is called) you get access to more of them. If you have the EA Play version, you get access to even more.

It might not be the only live service aspect, though it seems the “Rally Pass” in the driver customization area doesn’t feel as aggressive as its F1 counterpart. It just sticks along, doesn’t come up with a screen telling you what you’ve recently unlocked either for a driver or for your livery decal collection, and it is overall out of the way. Yes, something with “VIP” attached to it hasn’t been too aggressive in an EA title in 2023. I guess the splash screen is right for once, “it’s in the game” and just so.

What is also in EA Sports WRC is several performance woes. The latest patch we’ve played on has been the 1.3 update which was to address some performance issues, though from a number of hours playing post-update, a PC beating all system requirements still had “hiccups.” Sometimes it is as simple as a handful of frames, which is negotiable but not Cities: Skylines II terrible. Though on occasion it has a massive drop and you’ll end up in the brushwood on top of several spectators wondering why your brakes also stopped the frame rate. I also had an odd Unreal crash or two.

Despite its EA-ness in places and performance that is anything but the most stable, I find myself enjoying quite a bit of EA Sports WRC. Maybe I’ll enjoy it a little more after a post-launch update (2024?) brings the VR experience to Rally Finland and beyond, as the first-person camera feels a little low to me. In motion, it is hard to say this year’s WRC is anything other than standard visually. However, the photo mode, despite its rather quick and jittery controls, offers the chance to create beautiful shots from your high-speed replays.

Ultimately, I don’t hate this year’s entry into the World Rally Championship series. It is a groundwork that will be built upon in the coming years as EA and Codemasters embed themselves into this five-year deal. This is only a slightly different Codemasters that helmed the highly beloved Dirt Rally 2.0. EA Sports WRC might not have it all, not yet anyway, but it is aiming for the bar set out by the same developer. I think the biggest hurdle to it is simply the performance as it stutters over crest and around corners on its way to the finish line.

A PC review copy of EA Sports WRC was provided by EA Sports for this review.

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EA Sports WRC

$49.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Good handling, once you get an understanding of it.
• A pickup-and-play attitude, always welcoming.
• Sexy photos of cars that are so dirty they should have their own fans.

Cons

• Tempramental performance.
• I'd like a little more control over the first-person camera.
• Some live service nonsense that will become frustrating.
• Rocks are sometimes boulders!