Game: WRC 8
Genre: Racing Simulator
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS 4, Xbox One and Windows)
Developers|Publishers: Kylotonn| Bigben Interactive
Price: $49.99 USD| $91.45 AUD| $59.99 CAD|£ 49.99|€ 49,99
Age Rating: US E| EU 3+
Release Date: 5th September 2019
Review code use, with thanks to Homerun PR
I like to think of myself as a casual racing fan, into high speed car races to party kart games. When I heard about WRC 8 being released, I wanted to give this game a chance thinking it involved in beating cars with sharp turns at a finish line.
WRC (short for World Rally Championship) is kind of a racing game, but a very different one that is more about bettering yourself rather than beating another car.
Audi-city
First off, this takes what you might know about other racing games and throws a hefty dose of realistic physics in the engine. Right away as you boot it up, you are asked your skill level and then set on a trial run course where you must reach the end. No tutorial, no menu saying what buttons you have to press (and no manual since I got this by review code); just trial by fire.
I set my skill at intermediate and crashed so badly, so many times. The race had to end right then and there because I practically FUBAR’ed my car.
How? Because I kept speeding up and tried to get the end faster that I ended up crashing. Even when I tried breaking and turning at the sharp corners. In other racing games, a crash to the wall would at least be a minor inconvenience as long as you have acceleration. But not here. Not in the open road racetrack.
Turning Acura-tely
The point of a game with cars is going fast. But in WRC 8 you have to keep an eye on making sure you don’t go TOO fast or your car will slip against the loose gravel and barriers that are part of the open environment races.
It’s kind of like Ultra Off Road in a way, however there’s a feature that automatically uprights your car back on the track if you get stuck. WRC 8 also literally railroads you back to the track if you veer off course for whatever reason.
You might have guessed that I’m having some issues racing well. I feel like the controls fight me as I try to learn how to balance between speed and turning. More often then not, I find myself pivoting the car diagonally before I even need to turn and veer right off the track.
Despite getting off course and seeing the trees up close, I didn’t actually notice or care about the low-res graphics. I played this game on handheld mode so the quality, when you squint, isn’t worse than in docked mode. They are serviceable to make the background. Since you will likely spend more time focusing on the car and road, that’s a good thing in my book.
With all the realism of managing a real car in the single file road, WRC 8 feels much slower than any racing game I’m familiar with, with four racing events at the end of a four-block month. The rally is a special 4 day event where you have to finish timed events each day, doing two races back to back. After the first two, you take a break for repairs before finishing the last two races.
They can take up to five minutes each to finish but somehow they feel like forever if you are prone to crashing like me.
To Infinti and Beyond
Luckily, the game does guide you through the garage and time management to get better at racing. After choosing your company to race and represent (based on real world car brands) you go to work. By racing, you earn certain kinds of employees that give benefits to future races. This also earns you goodwill and finance from your company.
For example, you can get a meteorologist that can predict the weather that happens during your racing/training days. The foreknowledge of snow and rain helps in preparing for rough driving. My parents can attest to that, driving during heavy snow months and even steep curved roads.
There’s an R&D skill tree with four major fields (one of them gets unlocked later). You earn points toward better upgrades depending on how you do in racing. The gameplay loop is to drive well enough to earn points, money and morale for your tiered staff members. And maybe use the points to get better stuff too.
Though I feel WRC 8 expects you to learn the controls all on your own, or know them already. All these features on the screen without any obvious tutorial makes it hard to understand the game, or know if I’m playing right. For example, I can’t tell if shifting gears on my speedometer is good or not. It boosts speed, but more speed makes it harder to turn the sharp corners in time.
Pass the Buick
Maybe it’s because this game wasn’t for me, or that I misunderstood what it really was at first. Maybe it’s because I (sadly) don’t have a driver’s license and don’t understand all the car lingo. It could even be because this is the eighth game in the series, and I jumped into this blind.
Whatever the reason, WRC 8 failed to really hook me as a game I should keep playing. Even on the easy mode I couldn’t get past the learning curve, much less optimize the controls. The car management has too much attention as it is dependent on driving skill, and can suffer for that. It punishes hard on not meeting the skill cap, and it’s actually kind of amazing all the crashing physics they show off here.
I still see this as a very well-made game at least, so I might feel a bit biased I was bad at it. Long time fans of the WRC series might feel right at home. But for anyone else that has a passing curiosity for this game, or thinking it as another kart racer, I suggest looking elsewhere.
Final Verdict: I’m not Sure
