The driving games market is a particular niche, made up of high-speed enthusiasts who scan the shelves every season to see that title that, better than the others, manages to perfectly restore the sensations of the track. In recent years, with the passage of the official WRC license in the hands of Kylotonn Games, Dirt has almost always been the master but 2017 could see the situation overturned as the French company presents itself to its third attempt with a chapter at last. revolutionized from the ground up and ready to compete on equal terms with the best exponents of the genre. Of course, if we were to compare WRC 7 to the quality achieved by PC simulators and Project Cars, the gap would still be extremely open, but on consoles and for Rally games, the competition is now really one step away. So let's see what has changed and what the WRC offer consists of this year.
Content in the first place, but are they enough?
WRC 7 strengthens its official license and arrives at the test benches with sixty tracks, thirteen official rallies and a more than satisfactory fleet of vehicles, which forgets the historic cars to concentrate instead on the racing cars of the current season. This new chapter is not a mere graphic and technical update of the predecessor as we said at the beginning but a real complete remake of the driving structure, physics and even the car models. Great strides have been made in each segment and the final result, both visually and in terms of response at the wheel, is truly satisfying. From the initial menu it is possible to decide one of the many activities to be carried out, where the main dish for the players always remains a full-bodied career mode, probably not as articulated as those seen in the Milestone titles of the past years, but still able to keep you busy for several hours. Above all, it is able to give you a general smattering of the game, with increasing difficulty and a challenge that gradually adapts well to the abilities of your virtual alter ego. It starts with a two-year contract in one of the WRC Junior championship teams and, stage after stage, you fight to excel against your opponents. The team has a marginal role in this case and what matters are the goals at the end of the season, with goals ranging from simply placing in the top positions to winning a certain stage or doing better than a direct rival. Unfortunately, there are no significant rewards and the feeling of growth or the possibility of doing something more between one stage and another is missing a bit but the simulation is basically about the life of a driver and we do it enough. However, we can take advantage of the forty-five virtual minutes between the various races to fix the car and repair any damage suffered, choosing through an extremely simple scheme on which of the dozen elements at our disposal to put our hands on: from the tires to the gearbox, passing from the bodywork and the engine. up to the steering wheel. If by choosing the semi-pro difficulty these interventions have minimal relevance, given that you will almost always arrive intact at the end of the races, increasing the level of simulation and the influence of damage will be very important to choose to adopt a strategy relevant to our driving style. that the minutes for repairs will hardly be enough to return to the track as if we had just left the dealer.
PlayStation 4 Trophies
By pursuing the career of WRC 7 you will almost naturally acquire at least fifty percent of the trophies available for the title, which require nothing more than to finish first during the various stages or to move up to a higher category. To get to platinum, however, you will also have to win all the special challenges, extricate yourself in the online matches and make evolutions, random or not, once on the circuit. WRC 7 also has an internal achievement system, which will need to be completed to unlock "Legend" the probably most complex golden trophy to obtain for this production.
Consistency and variety
The one proposed by WRC 7 is an extremely malleable driving experience and if on the one hand even the novice player can have fun with a simple pad and a purely arcade driving style, by moving the bar towards the most advanced simulation, very satisfactory results are obtained. even holding the steering wheel and sitting on a comfortable playseat. Kylotonn Games has therefore included in its rally simulator many variables and settings precisely to reach an audience that was as wide as possible, managing not to upset anyone this time. The driveability of the cars is in fact very good and perfectly reflects the new limitations imposed this year by the FIA championship with extremely powerful machines that are even more difficult to control. We really liked the work done on the weight distribution out of the turns and after the jumps, and also the transitions between the various types of surfaces feel vibrant. Asphalt, dirt and gravel make the car behave in a completely different way, giving back a good realism and asking for particular attention while driving. What is not rendered perfectly is instead the graphic aspect of the various surfaces, always too flat and lacking in signs of the passage of the other cars. It always seems to run on a prepared road, even on dirt roads, losing much of the difficulty of the typical rally depressions caused by the constant passage of the other competitors. What has been improved instead is the dynamism of the tracks with cars that finally come off the ground due to the numerous bumps, the ditches placed next to the roads and the endless ups and downs.
Sports Master!
When esports become a serious matter they begin to appeal to anyone and after Milestone, Kylotonn also follows the path of online competitions to add some spice to the weekly challenges, proposing to the best virtual pilots to then get to compete on a global scale. For lovers of shoulder-to-shoulder battles there is also the shared screen and also the hot seat mode for up to eight players. So if we are not in a bad way in terms of content, a little better could have been done with regard to the visual impact with ups and downs a bit in every situation. The cars are excellent but the physical model of the damage is not so accurate, the views and the edge of the track are good but the public has very backward animations and the frame rate, at 30 frames per second, drops when the particles on the screen increase, perhaps later. a restart in the sand, a symptom that the optimization work could have been done better and that the engine has not yet been squeezed to the maximum. Problems that are not actually there on Ps4 Pro, which still does not reach 60 FPS, only slightly improving the resolution of the textures. On the other hand, we hardly appreciated the voice of the co-driver: too mechanical and repetitive, with intonations clearly torn from a restricted sample and, for this reason, very little credible to the point of becoming even annoying in the most excited situations.
Comment
Tested version PlayStation 4 Resources4Gaming.com7.5
Readers (22)7.5
Your voteWRC 7 overall has fun and does its job very well, representing a clear step forward compared to the previous chapters and showing off a good, but not exceptional, technical sector. It is the perfect rally game for those who want to approach this genre without too many pretensions, without wanting at all costs a realism or a 100% refined simulation but still have the desire to whiz on the tracks with official cars and liveries. The single player career will keep you busy for several hours and online or local multiplayer, via split screen or hot seat, complete a more than satisfying package. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but the path taken is certainly the right one.
PRO
- Good reproduction of the cars
- Particularly malleable driving model
- Official WRC licenses
- The co-driver's voice is to be completely revised
- Technically it has several weaknesses
