No matter which category you end up driving in there are 6 set countries that span across them all, and as you go up the ranks, more weekends appear until you’re tackling all 14 rounds of these year’s competition. It’s the multistage rallies that are the showcase events though, and are what you need to build up to. Events vary as time progresses, but initially there are training sessions that act as time trials on short courses to help hone the driving skills, and successful completion nets cash, XP, kudos with the car manufacturer and morale in the team. The career runs from a calendar with set rallies scheduled through the year, and mostly optional events in each week between. There aren’t any driving tutorials on hand, yet there is a well thought out spoken overview of every part of the team management, so at least you’ll know where to pick events from even if the handbrake button is a mystery. Maybe starting in the lower ranks isn’t such a bad idea. I won’t lie, I was beginning to think that this was a deliberate ploy to draw out any career mode, but fortunately it loaded the team HQ and it started to pick up from there when it became clear that running a crew was integral to your success. If I couldn’t even get into WRC2, how was I going to be rally champion in the big boy leagues. It wasn’t a great introduction to WRC 8, feeling a bit devoid of substance and implying that the more exciting racing was locked off. Apparently, I’m too much of a novice to skip the basics through missing the time target by some distance.
Why not? I’m far from a novice at rally games. Slightly deflated after expecting something a bit more nuanced I ploughed on to trying out for the WRC2 division instead of starting in the Junior formula.
Looking forward to finding out what setting it would tweak for me based on my driving style, I belted through the course and waited for the result… traction control off, ABS on. So far so typical of a later version of a series with a hardcore fan base. It skips the menus for your first visit, dropping you directly into a short test track with little to no guidance and expecting you to know how everything works. So with a little trepidation I dived into the career mode to see what WRC 8 was going to offer. They’re also (quite bizarrely for officially licensed games) not always the most highly polished offerings. Previous versions have left me a bit cold, lacking much in the way of character to get behind, and I’ll be the first to admit it’s put me off playing every instalment. It’s an odd beast is official FIA series. Will the learnings by taking a year out and working on a rally game without the license constraints have fed its way into WRC 8? To compliment the 2019 FIA season, KT Racing and Big Ben Interactive have brought out their fourth iteration of the franchise, but with one minor difference since the last one in 2017… they’ve developed V-Rally 4 in the intervening time.
The official World Rally Championship games have fulfilled that need yet haven’t necessarily managed to provide an alternative to the masters of DiRT racing. Rally games aren’t exactly the most common genre on the planet and tend to have a pretty niche target market, so the best way of reaching that audience is with a licensed title featuring all the rounds and contenders.